An article on Henry ford
In 1903, Henry Ford launched the Ford Motor Company with the grand sum of $28,000 from twelve investors, including John and Horace Dodge, who were later to form their own Dodge Motors, initially to supply spare parts to the growing Detroit motor companies. This was not Ford’s first venture into business. He had previously founded the Detroit Automobile Company in 1898, to market his unsuccessful Quadracycle and the Henry Ford Company in 1901.
For Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company it was a case of third time (very) lucky.
Ford initially launched his Model A’, to be followed by models B, C etc chronologically, rapidly becoming the biggest manufacturer of automobiles in the United States with 8,729 cars produced in the three years to 1906. In 2007, Alan Mullaly, Ford’s Chief Executive, announced that car production was at its lowest for several years with (only) 16.14 million cars produced that year. That is a measure of the success of the Ford Motor Company over a century of car production.
Ford’s steady and shrewd stewardship of the company saw an early opportunity of partnering with Firestone tyres, a strong brand with which he rightly foresaw success. The launch of the model T’ in 1908 was perhaps the biggest turning point for the Ford Motor Company, and no less than 15 million of these famous cars were produced until the model was withdrawn in 1927. Ford has been quoted as saying that the consumer could have “any colour at all, so long as it’s black” This has become a well-known phrase, but was typical of Henry Ford’s astute business brain in cutting production costs to a minimum and maximising profits and company growth.
Among Ford’s pioneering business practices was the voluntary introduction of a $5 per hour minimum wage for his Detroit workers, a reduction in the working week and a productivity-related bonus scheme. The popularity of the Ford Motor Company as an employer further ensured its continuing success.
In 1909, Ford realised the potential of business in Europe, founding the Ford Motor Company (England) and opening the first factory outside the United States in Manchester, England in 1911. In 1919, after the First World War, control of the company passed to Henry’s son Esdel Ford, who rapidly opened factories by factories in France, Denmark, Germany Austria, South Africa, Australia and Canada. By the end of 1919, Ford was producing 50 percent of all the cars manufactured across the globe.
When Edsel died at just 43 years of age in 1943, Henry Ford was persuaded to appoint Edsel’s son, Henry Ford Jr. as President of the company. At about this time, the Ford Motor Company had taken over production of the B-24 bomber aeroplane from Consolidated Aircraft and used their expertise to run a 24 hour production line to produce 600 aircraft in a single month.
In 1956, under Henry junior’s stewardship, the Ford Motor Company became publicly owned, but with the Ford family dynasty retaining some 60 percent of the stockholding.
Through a series of acquisitions and mergers, the Ford Motor Company has gone from strength to strength and remains probably the most successful motor manufacture the world has known.
