History of Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Company

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"Ford" redirects here. For other uses, see Ford (disambiguation).

Ford Motor Company

Ford World Headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan, USA, known as the Glass House.

Type

Public company

Traded as

NYSE: F

(S&P 500 Component)

Industry Automotive

Founded June 16, 1903; 111 years ago

Founder(s) Henry Ford

Headquarters Dearborn, Michigan, U.S.

Area served Worldwide

Key people William C. Ford, Jr.

(Executive Chairman)

Alan R. Mulally

(President & CEO)

Products Automobiles

Luxury Vehicles

Commercial Vehicles

Automotive parts

Services Automotive finance

Vehicle leasing

Vehicle service

Revenue US$146.91 billion (2013)[1]

Operating income

US$5.42 billion (2013)[1]

Net income

US$7.15 billion (2013)[1]

Total assets

US$202.02 billion (2013)[1]

Total equity

US$26.38 billion (2013)[1]

Owner(s) Ford Family (2%)

Employees 181,000 (2013)[1]

Divisions

Ford

Lincoln

Motorcraft

Subsidiaries

List[show]

Website Ford.com

The Ford Motor Company (also known as simply Ford) is an American multinational automaker headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. The company sells automobiles and commercial vehicles under the Ford brand and most luxury cars under the Lincoln brand. Ford also owns Brazilian SUV manufacturer, Troller, and Australian performance car manufacturer FPV. In the past it has also produced tractors and automotive components. Ford owns a 2.1% stake in Mazda of Japan, a 15% stake in Aston Martin of the United Kingdom, and a 49% stake in Jiangling of China. It also has a number of joint-ventures, two in China (Changan Ford Mazda and Ford Lio Ho), one in Thailand (AutoAlliance Thailand), one in Turkey (Ford Otosan), and one in Russia (Ford Sollers). It is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and is controlled by the Ford family, although they have minority ownership.[2] It is described by Forbes as "the most important industrial company in the history of the United States."[3]

Ford introduced methods for large-scale manufacturing of cars and large-scale management of an industrial workforce using elaborately engineered manufacturing sequences typified by moving assembly lines; by 1914 these methods were known around the world as Fordism. Ford's former UK subsidiaries Jaguar and Land Rover, acquired in 1989 and 2000 respectively, were sold to Tata Motors in March 2008. Ford owned the Swedish automaker Volvo from 1999 to 2010.[4] In 2011, Ford discontinued the Mercury brand, under which it had marketed entry-level luxury cars in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Middle East since 1938.

Ford is the second-largest U.S.-based automaker and the fifth-largest in the world based on 2010 vehicle sales.[5] At the end of 2010, Ford was the fifth largest automaker in Europe.[6] Ford is the eighth-ranked overall American-based company in the 2010 Fortune 500 list, based on global revenues in 2009 of $118.3 billion.[7] In 2008, Ford produced 5.532 million automobiles[8] and employed about 213,000 employees at around 90 plants and facilities worldwide.

The company went public in 1956 but the Ford family, through special Class B shares, still retain 40 percent voting rights.[9]

Contents

[hide]

• 1 History

o 1.1 20th century

o 1.2 21st century

o 1.3 Logo evolution

• 2 Corporate affairs

o 2.1 Executive management

o 2.2 Financial results

• 3 Operations

o 3.1 North America

o 3.2 Europe

o 3.3 Oceania

o 3.4 East and Southeast Asia

o 3.5 South and West Asia

o 3.6 South America

o 3.7 Africa

• 4 Products and services

o 4.1 Automobiles

o 4.2 Trucks

o 4.3 Buses

o 4.4 Tractors

o 4.5 Financial services

o 4.6 Automotive components

• 5 Motorsport

o 5.1 Stock car racing

o 5.2 Formula One

o 5.3 Rally

o 5.4 Sports cars

o 5.5 Touring cars

o 5.6 Other

• 6 Environmental initiatives

o 6.1 Compressed natural gas

o 6.2 Flexible fuel vehicles

o 6.3 Electric vehicles

o 6.4 Hydrogen

o 6.5 Increased fuel efficiency

o 6.6 PC power management

• 7 Sponsorships

• 8 Sales numbers

• 9 See also

• 10 Notes

• 11 References and further reading

• 12 External links

History

Henry Ford (ca. 1919)

A 1910 Model T, photographed inSalt Lake City

Main article: History of Ford Motor Company

20th century

Henry Ford's first attempt at a car company under his own name was the Henry Ford Company on November 3, 1901, which became the Cadillac Motor Company on August 22, 1902, after Ford left with the rights to his name. The Ford Motor Company was launched in a converted factory in 1903 with $28,000 in cash from twelve investors, most notably John and Horace Dodge (who would later found their own car company). During its early years, the company produced just a few cars a day at its factory on Mack Avenue in Detroit, Michigan. Groups of two or three men worked on each car, assembling it from parts made mostly by supplier companies contracting for Ford. Within a decade the company would lead the world in the expansion and refinement of the assembly line concept; and Ford soon brought much of the part production in-house in a vertical integration that seemed a better path for the era.

Henry Ford was 39 years old when he founded the Ford Motor Company, which would go on to become one of the world's largest and most profitable companies, as well as being one to survive the Great Depression. As one of the largest family-controlled companies in the world, the Ford Motor Company has been in continuous family control for over 100 years.

After the first modern automobile was already created in the year 1886 by Germaninventor Carl Benz (Benz Patent-Motorwagen), more efficient production methods were needed to make the automobile affordable for the middle-class; which Ford contributed to, for instance by introducing the first moving assembly line in

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