Ford in Europe: The First Hundred Years

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While Ford Motor Company was founded in the US and is known throughout the world as an American brand icon, the company's history in Europe closely parallels its American heritage; from the arrival of the first Ford cars in Britain in 1903 to the present day European organization that serves 42 countries across the European continent.

Ford has been a world organisation right from the beginning. Within months of the foundation of Ford Motor Company in Detroit on 16 June 1903, the first two Ford cars to reach Europe were being uncrated in London, where they went on show at the March 1904 Cordingley Automobile Show in the Agricultural Hall, Islington.

They caught the eye of a young man named Aubrey Blakiston, who set up a sales agency, ordered a dozen Model A Fords and took a lease on a showroom in Long Acre, a London centre of the coachbuilding and motor trade.

Sales were slow ?it took a year to sell those twelve cars ?but the agency took on a young 搈otor expert?named Percival Perry, who was to play a key role in the establishment of Ford in Europe.

In those early days France ?home of Europe抯 biggest motor industry ? seemed the best place from which to coordinate European business, and in fact one of the earliest sales of a Ford automobile was made there early in 1904. So in 1908 a Paris Branch Company was set up to supervise European sales, under an American named H.Baker White. The importance of his appointment was reflected in the size of his salary, a then-colossal $24,000, equivalent to around $1.5 million in modern terms.
Manufacturing Operations are soon Established
But the powerhouse of Ford抯 early European operations turned out to be Britain, where Percival Perry had taken over the sales agency and sales were booming following the launch of the competitively-priced four-cylinder Model N in 1906. In 1909 a British branch company was set up under Perry抯 management, and the strength of the market led to the opening late in October 1911 of Ford抯 first factory outside North America, at Trafford Park, Manchester.

A couple of years later, assembly started in premises in Bordeaux, initially run by the leading French agent, but soon taken over by Ford Motor Company.

During the First World War Perry, who had been appointed Assistant Controller of the UK government's Agricultural Machinery Department, persuaded Henry Ford to build a tractor plant (the first purpose-built Ford factory in the Old World) not far from his father抯 birthplace at Cork, Ireland. The first Fordson tractor left the assembly line on 3 July 1919. Uniquely, Ford Ireland was a private venture of the Ford family until 1920.
Model T drives European Expansion
Henry Ford抯 vision of the Model T as the Universal Car gave his company an immense advantage. The Model T was the first automobile to be conceived as a true 'World' car, and a string of European plants and national sales companies controlled from Detroit were established in the early 1920s to support its runaway success. Apart from minor differences of paint and trim to meet national preferences, the end product was identical in every market.

The first European assembly plant of this postwar expansion was in Copenhagen, where Ford Denmark was founded on 25 June 1919. Henry Ford抯 most trusted production associates, William Knudsen and Charles Sorensen, were both Danes, and it was Knudsen who shaped the expansion of Ford across Europe in the early 1920s while Sorensen turned down a proposal for a joint venture in France from the ambitious Andr?Citro雗.

Anxious to open a plant to serve southern Europe, Ford proposed building a new factory at Bordeaux, but the French authorities proved uncooperative and so an assembly plant was opened in a former wine bodega in the free zone at Cadiz, Spain.

Assembly continued on a small scale in Bordeaux in a building so inadequate that completed cars had to be stored down the middle of the road outside the factory gates. This unsatisfactory state of affairs continued until 1925, when production was transferred to a factory in the Paris suburb of Asni鑢es.

One of the most remarkable Ford factories was established in a former warehouse in Trieste, Northern Italy in 1922. During the 1920s, it had a 75 per cent share of a market covering 36 countries on three continents, including Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Georgia and Azerbaijan.

Surprisingly Germany, where the first practical motor car had been invented in the 1880s, came late in Ford抯 European scheme of things, and the first German Ford company was not established until 1925, starting assembly in a rented canalside warehouse in Berlin in 1926. The Berlin operation was set up by Ford Denmark staff from Copenhagen, and while the chief clerk, who effectively ran the business, could read German, he was initially unable to speak the language!

Other prewar assembly plants were located in Belgium (Company founded 1922, assembly began the same year), Netherlands(Company founded 1924 - assembly began 1932); Turkey (Branch founded 1928 - assembly began 1929); Romania (Company founded 1931 - assembly began 1936) and Hungary (Company founded 1938 - assembly began 1941). Companies with no prewar assembly facilities were Sweden (Company founded 1924); Egypt (Branch founded 1926); Finland (Company founded 1926); Portugal (Company founded 1932) and Greece (Company founded 1932).

The first Russian dealer had been appointed in 1907, but it was to be tractors that brought Ford into prominence in the post revolution era.

Fordson tractors made a great contribution to the economic revival of Russia after the Revolution, with more than 25,000 Fordsons in use across the Soviet Union by 1926, transforming Russian agricultural methods. The Russians regarded the Fordson tractor so highly that they established a factory in Leningrad to build replicas of it at the rate of 20 a month.
Life after the Model T
Until late 1927 the European operation was based on the Model T which, while cheap to buy, was taxed heavily on engine capacity in European markets, and from being the world抯 best-selling car, Model Ts' sales faltered as other mass-producers offered smaller, lighter, faster cars which were more attractive to the general public. The launch of the all-new and thoroughly modern Model A for 1928 was accompanied by a complete rethink of how Ford did business in Europe.

Henry Ford had split his European interests after the war into twelve separate companies, but, as the 1920s developed, he recognized the need to coordinate these companies to make the European business more effective ?a move that showed great foresight, when set against the way modern pan European companies are run.

The basis of the strategy was the centralization of Ford抯 European activities in England and the formation of a new company, Ford Motor Company Limited to serve this purpose. At the heart of the ?928 Plan? was a new factory - 搕he Detroit of Europe?- to be built on reclaimed marshland at Dagenham in the UK, as the hub of Ford抯 European activities. Built at the then immense cost of ? million, the new Dagenham plant built its first vehicle, a Model AA truck, on 1 October 1931.

But since the inauguration of the plant site in May 1929 the world had been plunged into depression. Demand for the Model A car, which though cheap to buy was relatively expensive to tax and run, plummeted. In its first three months of operation, Dagenham sold just five Model A cars and the new Ford of Britain company was faced with ruin, kept going only by sales of commercial vehicles.

Europe抯 flagging fortunes were boosted by the introduction of the first Ford specifically designed for Europe, the 933cc Model Y. Designed inside five months, the Model Y was shown in prototype form at special Ford motor shows across Europe, starting with Ford Britain抯 one-make exhibition at the Albert Hall, London, in February 1932. By August it was in production.

Ten months from drawing board to full production was a remarkable achievement, but the situation was desperate.

Henry Ford抯 vision was amply rewarded. Ford Britain, in deficit in 1932-33, recorded a profit of ?.39 million the next year, with the Model Y giving Ford 54 per cent of the British market for cars of 8 hp and under. It was also assembled in Ford factories in Cologne, Paris, Cork, Copenhagen and Barcelona and the basic design survived until 1959 in Britain.

Almost contemporary with Dagenham was Ford抯 new German factory, built alongside the Rhine in Cologne. However, in the political climate of the 1930s, the Cologne Ford plant found economic life very difficult indeed, with imports of raw materials such as rubber and copper only permitted in exchange for dollars

In 1929, Ford US began helping the Russians to build an assembly plant just outside Nizhni Novgorod. As a prelude, Ford Model A cars and trucks had been assembled in a small plant in Moscow. The new plant at Nizhni - which was renamed Gorky in 1932 - opened on New Year's Day 1931. It struggled from the start and in 1932 produced less than 24,000 Model As against a production target of 140,000. The Ford contract was terminated in 1935, but the Russian-built Ford, known as GAZ, continued in production over the next decade and helped lay the foundation for the development of the Russian auto industry.                
Ford in Europe:  The First Hundred Years         


       
Depression, Protectionism and War in Europe
The problem with the 1928 plan was that it had not foreseen the level of protectionism that would arise in Continental markets during the 1930s as a result of the Depression, nor the hostility that would be directed against Ford, still perceived as an 揂merican?make even though it had been doing business in Europe longer than many indigenous manufacturers.

In France, where a 'Buy French First' campaign had been started in 1931, actively supported by Renault and Citroen, Ford manager Maurice Dollfus pointed out the contribution that Ford made to the French economy: 揟he motor, the rear axle, the body panels and the wheels are received from abroad; the chassis, front axles, lamps radiators, electrical equipment, dynamos, tyres and the body finishing are French ... 30,000 people depend on the existence of Ford France for their living.?br>
But it did little good and Ford France tried to boost its image by forming an alliance with the old-established Mathis company of Strasbourg to build V8 cars under the name 揗atford? The venture lasted less than a decade. A new Ford factory was built in the late 1930s south of Paris at Poissy, but it had hardly begun production when World War Two was declared.

Ford Spain抯 assembly plant in Barcelona was an early victim of the Civil War. Occupied by pro-Government Loyalists within two weeks of the outbreak of hostilities in 1936, the plant struggled along until Barcelona fell to General Franco抯 Nationalist troops in 1939. It never recovered, and was sold to local interests in 1954.

By the late 1930s the plan for an integrated European Ford was in ruins, with both Germany and France building models which had less and less in common with the British products.

Ironically, there was probably more coordination of Ford抯 Continental European facilities during the war (when the occupied plants in France, Holland, Belgium and Denmark were controlled by Ford Germany) than there had been in peacetime!

The British company抯 contribution to the war effort was remarkable; Dagenham built over 13,000 tracked Universal Carriers, more than 250,000 V8 engines and over 185,000 military vehicles, while a specially-built factory in Manchester manufactured well over 30,000 supercharged 27-litre Rolls-Royce Merlin V12 engines for such famous British warplanes as the Hurricane, Mosquito and Lancaster.
Post War Rebirth
Aided by support from Dagenham, Cologne was quickly back in production after the declaration of peace in 1945, but the divergence in product design which had begun in the 1930s increased during the 1950s and 1960s, to the extent that in many Continental markets the products of Ford Britain and Ford Germany were market rivals.

By now, the Ford Motor Company was headed by the dynamic young Henry Ford II, who had taken over from his grandfather in September 1945, three days after his 28th birthday. Though Ford had been active in world markets virtually from its foundation, the company had no formal coordinating body for its worldwide operations until an International Division was formed in September 1946.

Early in 1948, as soon as he had implemented the necessary reorganisation of Ford of America, young Henry came to inspect his European companies.

The contrast between Britain and Germany was vividly shown during Henry Ford II抯 visit. At Dagenham, poised to export 6000 cars to the United States within six months, he drove the plant抯 250,000th postwar vehicle off the line. In Germany it was the 10,000th postwar Ford truck that Mr Ford drove away. Cars had been a luxury the market could not afford.

Cologne launched its first postwar car, the famous 揃uckel?(Hunchback) Taunus, during 1948. The aerodynamic 2 door was a significantly shaped hatchback with headlights integrated into the bumper. It continued in production until 1952, when a 1.2-litre Taunus was unveiled.

Meanwhile, Dagenham was planning Europe抯 most advanced range of family cars, the four-cylinder Consul and six-cylinder Zephyr. With Ford抯 first overhead valve engines, strong monocoque bodyshells and the first-ever application of MacPherson Strut independent front suspension ?a system that would become an industry standard ?the new cars caused a sensation on their launch at the 1950 London Motor Show.

Ford France, which had followed an independent course after World War Two, building a V8 model called the Vedette which was totally out of tune with France抯 austerity regime, ceased production in 1954 and the Poissy factory, which had never achieved its full potential, was sold to the French Simca company.

During the 1950s Britain kept up the momentum with a range of excitingly-styled models - new Consuls and Zephyrs and the 105E Anglia. But Ford Britain and Ford Germany were developing competing model lines over this period, which made little business sense. Although on one occasion at least, this rivalry proved very beneficial.

When Sir Patrick Hennessy the Chairman of Ford Britain discovered that Ford Germany was working on a new front-wheel drive Taunus codenamed 揅ardinal? he ordered his product planners and engineers to develop a new family car to better the rival product. The result of the competing efforts was two winners: the 1962 Cortina, a model line that became an industry legend and the Taunus 12M, which was powered by a new V4 engine and broke new ground for Ford, as it was the company抯 first-ever front-wheel drive car.
Towards European Integration
It was, however, increasingly apparent that developing two separate model lines was an unnecessary duplication of effort by Ford抯 European companies, and a study group under John Andrews, the California born head of Ford Germany, investigated how a combined Ford organisation might operate within a common European market.

The first joint development programme carried out by Britain and Germany was 揚roject Redcap? which produced the highly successful Transit van. Launched in 1965, it quickly became an industry best seller ?and has maintained that position ever since.

It also spearheaded the renewal of Ford activities in Turkey, where a special version of the popular van was developed with help from Ford commercial vehicle engineers for production by the Turkish Otosan company. This was part of the Ko?Group (which began selling Ford vehicles in 1928) and in which Ford took a 30 per cent shareholding in 1983. Ford Otosan today is a joint venture between Ford and Koc, each with a 41 per cent share.

Now that it was proved that intercompany cooperation could work successfully, in the summer of 1967 Henry Ford II concluded that the time had come to form a 揊ord of Europe?organisation and placed John Andrews in charge of it. From then on the two companies worked together on all future model programmes.

The geographical difficulties posed by having separate engineering and development centres located 400 miles apart at Dunton in Britain and Merkenich in Germany were overcome by the establishment of a company airline which acted as the cement to hold the European organisation together. In later years Ford was to pioneer other methods of communication such as video conferencing to link the various components of Ford of Europe.

Ford of Europe not only coordinated the research and engineering programmes for Ford in Europe, but also integrated the manufacturing and purchasing processes across the European operations, realizing significant economies of scale. For 1967, this was a ground breaking development, anticipating the expansion of the European Community and the introduction of the Single Market.
Major Manufacturing expansion
More efficient manufacturing methods saw the phasing out of the local assembly plants in Ford抯 smaller European markets in favour of large manufacturing units supplying the national sales companies with complete vehicles.

The 1960s saw the opening of major new plants at Halewood in the UK and Genk in Belgium. Halewood began production of the Anglia in 1962 and Genk started up in 1964, building the Taunus and then the Transit.

Further expansion followed with the opening of Ford Germany's Saarlouis plant in 1970 , now home to the Focus, but at that time producing Escort.

A new transmission plant in Bordeaux was added in 1973 and a new engine plant at Bridgend in Wales in 1980. A large car factory opened up in Valencia in 1976 to serve the increasingly important southern European markets. Its initial product was Ford抯 first front wheel drive minicar, the phenomenally successful Fiesta.

For both Bordeaux and Valencia there was an element of homecoming for Ford, as Bordeaux had seen the beginning of Ford car assembly some 60 years earlier, while Ford was returning to manufacture in Spain for the first time since the Civil War.

Another important facility to be added during this decade and a half of major expansion was Ford's principal European proving grounds at Lommel in Belgium. The Lommel facility was established back in 1965 and incorporated a wide variety of test tracks, from a high-speed banked oval circuit where cars can be driven "hands off" at speeds of 200 km/h (125 mph) to a "torture track" of cobble and faithfully-reproduced replicas of Europe's most demanding road surfaces. Lommel also gained the steepest hills in the Low Countries when its "Lommel Alps" test hills were purpose-built in 1970.

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