Ford’s astonishing record
At the onset of World War I, Henry Ford, an adamant peace advocate, was on the brink of a great expansionist project on the River Rouge southeast of Dearborn in Michigan. Nonetheless, he substituted wartime contracts for car manufacturing during the war and turned back his own personal profits on them to the government.
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During these years he was at logger heads with the other company stockholders over the matter of how to spend company profits. Ford believed that a company's prosperity depended upon expansion, and he had selected a site on the River Rouge where he could integrate production and assembly. His stockholders instead wanted their dividends.
Calling the inactive stockholders anti-social parasites, he bought them all out in 1919, becoming master of his company and extending out his industry to Long Beach in 1927. Expansion continued even after the onset of the Great Depression in 1929.
After World War I, Ford had a new concern. Wartime shortages and price increases demonstrated to him that he needed to control raw materials and transportation.
He therefore purchased a controlling interest in 16 coal mines, 700,000 acres of timberland, a rubber plantation in Brazil, and purchased a fleet of Great Lakes freighters to transport ore from his mines and sand for his newly-acquired glass works.
In 1926 this large-scale success story was on the brink of decline. Trusting his instinct for the market, Ford had refused to introduce innovations such as the hydraulic brake, six or eight-cylinder engine, or choice of colour (black on every car since 1914). As sales went down, Ford lowered the price, but that tactic enjoyed short-lived success.
While he still led the field in low-priced cars, his sales were declining as Chevrolet sales grew. Bending to the wishes of his son, Edsel, to company managers, and to dealers all over the country who were facing bankruptcy, Ford finally consented to a new "X-car" design.
In his lifetime, Henry Ford left an astonishing record on the American scene, widely recognised as a mechanical and business genius. He taught the industry, leaving the doors to his Highland Park Plant open to all for study and for adaptation to their own factories.
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Socially responsible, his workers received not only high pay, but industrial safety, a clean and healthful work place, prohibition of discharges by foremen, medical care, a trade school for boys, and the use of company gardens where they could grow vegetables.
Ford employed the handicapped, and he was the only employer in the industry who hired blacks for every manufacturing operation.
His oldest grandson, Henry Ford II, took over from him in September 1945 when he stepped down at a turning point in the Ford empire, two years before the older Ford passed away on April 7, 1947.
Today, in 2016, Ford is the fifth largest vehicle manufacturer on the globe, after Toyota, Volkswagen, General Motors and Renault-Nissan. Still headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, the company employs close to 200,000 employees worldwide and in 2015, sold 6.6 million passenger and commercial vehicles under the Ford brand, as well as luxury cars under the Lincoln brand.
In addition, Ford also owns Brazilian SUV manufacturer, Troller, and Australian performance car manufacturer FPV. In the past it has also produced tractors and automotive components. The Ford group owns a 2.1per cent stake in Mazda of Japan, an eight per cent stake in Aston Martin of the United Kingdom, and a 49 per cent stake in Jiangling of China.
It also has a number of other joint-ventures in key markets such as China, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and Russia. It is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and remains controlled by the Ford family, although they have minority ownership (40per cent).
Ford previously owned and run British brands (Jaguar and Land Rover), as well as Swedish automaker Volvo in the more recent past (1999-2010). In 2011, Ford discontinued the Mercury brand, under which it had marketed entry-level luxury cars in North America and the Middle East since 1938.
We conclude the Ford discovery next week with a focus on its Lincoln luxury brand.
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