When Was Ford Founded
Henry Ford built his first car in 1896, which he called a quadricycle. His first venture into car manufacturing was the Detroit Automobile Company which was founded in 1899. However, the company foundered and was reorganised as the Henry Ford Company in 1901. In 1902, though, Henry Ford fell out with his financial backers and left the company with the rights to his name and just $900. Which in 1902 was probably quite a bit of money.
Anyway, Henry Ford turned to friend Alexander Y. Malcomson to finance another automobile company. The partnership Ford and Malcomson was created and the pair designed a car and began ordering parts. However, money was running out fast and the manufacturing firm were demanding payment. Malcomson had to turn to his uncle, John Gray who was head of the German-American savings bank. He suggested incorporating Ford and Malcomson and bringing in new investors.
And so, in 1903, Ford Motor Company was incorporated with 12 investors owning 1000 shares.
The motor company was immediately profitable, despite some shareholders reservations.
However, there were internal frictions and when Ford and Malcomson fought over the future of the company and Malcomson was frozen out of the company when Gray sided with Ford. He sold his shares to Ford and then Gray died suddenly in 1906 so Ford took over the role of president of the company.
So Ford Motor Company got off to quite a dramatic start.
Full List Of Every Ford Car Ever Made
The Ford Motor Company was founded in 1903 and the company sold their first Ford Model A on July 23, 1903. It would be another four years before the iconic Ford logo was created and a year later, Ford introduced the infamous Model T, the first affordable automobile. Many memorable vehicles have emerged from the Ford line over its rich history. The first Ford vehicle, the Model T, still remains one of the best-selling cars of all time, going on to sell over 15 million automobiles before its production end in 1927. The 1928 Model A was the first vehicle to sport the blue Ford oval logo and managed to sell over five millions vehicles despite emerging at the cusp of the Great Depression. In 1948, they introduced the F-Series line of trucks, which has been the best-selling vehicle in the United States since 1982. The Ford Mustang went on sale in 1964, celebrating its 50th anniversary of speed and style in 2014. In 1990, Ford launched the Sport Utility Vehicle craze in the states with the introduction of their SUV, the Ford Explorer. On this page we take you through the current Ford lineup in both Europe and the U.S as well as dive deep into the Ford models that have come from this amazing company over the last century.
The Model A Name Returned In 1928
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This era of the Ford Model A is more popular than the original, even though this iteration of the name only ran from 1928 to 1931. It was bigger than the Ford Model T, and had far more trims available. You could have it as a tuck, a station wagon, a roadster or coupe, even a taxi cab variant was built. And it soon became the second most successful Ford ever built.
With a 3.3 liter four-cylinder engine and a more modern three-speed transmission, the Ford Model A packed 40 horsepower. With a top speed of 65 mph, it could handle highways that didnt even exist yet.
In just 25 years, Henry Ford went from a single runabout car first bought by a dentist to conquering both domestic and international car markets. Without the Model A turning a profit at the turn of the century, there would be no Model T. And if there were no Model T, the Model A wouldnt have come back to replace it. In other words, these two cars were the origins of automobiles, and history wouldnt be the same without them.
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Introduction To Automobile History
It’s been a long time since the first car hit the streets, and automobiles have come a long way since. From simple steam and combustion engines, technology through automobile history has evolved to the point where we now have electric cars that produce zero emissions and arguably run better than their gasoline or diesel variants.
We still have a long way to go before we have the flying cars that science fiction has been promising us for decades. But, by looking back at the first vehicle and considering the evolution of cars, we can track progress and speculate on what is to come next. Here is a brief breakdown of the history of cars worldwide, with a focus on American car companies.
Impact Of The Assembly Line On Production
The immediate impact of the assembly line was revolutionary. The use of interchangeable parts allowed for continuous workflow and more time on task by laborers. Worker specialization resulted in less waste and a higher quality of the end product.
Sheer production of the Model T dramatically increased. The production time for a single car dropped from over 12 hours to just 93 minutes due to the introduction of the assembly line. Fords 1914 production rate of 308,162 eclipsed the number of cars produced by all other automobile manufacturers combined.
These concepts allowed Ford to increase his profit margin and lower the cost of the vehicle to consumers. The cost of the Model T would eventually drop to $260 in 1924, the equivalent of approximately $3,500 today.
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Henry Ford: Early Life & Engineering Career
Henry Ford driving his Quadricycle, circa 1896.
Born in 1863, Henry Ford was the first surviving son of William and Mary Ford, who owned a prosperous farm in Dearborn, Michigan. At 16, he left home for the nearby city of Detroit, where he found apprentice work as a machinist. He returned to Dearborn and work on the family farm after three years, but continued to operate and service steam engines and work occasional stints in Detroit factories. In 1888, he married Clara Bryant, who had grown up on a nearby farm.
Did you know? The mass production techniques Henry Ford championed eventually allowed Ford Motor Company to turn out one Model T every 24 seconds.
In the first several years of their marriage, Ford supported himself and his new wife by running a sawmill. In 1891, he returned with Clara to Detroit, where he was hired as an engineer for the Edison Illuminating Company. Rising quickly through the ranks, he was promoted to chief engineer two years later. Around the same time, Clara gave birth to the couples only son, Edsel Bryant Ford. On call 24 hours a day for his job at Edison, Ford spent his irregular hours on his efforts to build a gasoline-powered horseless carriage, or automobile. In 1896, he completed what he called the Quadricycle, which consisted of a light metal frame fitted with four bicycle wheels and powered by a two-cylinder, four-horsepower gasoline engine.
The First Mass Produced Car
The first practical cars featured gasoline/petrol-powered internal-combustion engines. These cars were built by numerous German inventors, with Karl Benzs invention being considered as the first practical car in the world. Benz replaced the horse of a horse-carriage with an engine that was able to run on fuel. The vehicle had three tires and had a front wheel that was smaller and lighter than the rear wheels in order to ensure that the car performed well in hilly terrain. Benz’s engine weighed about 220 pounds, was capable of generating about 0.75 horsepower, and was the most efficient engine at that time. His first car was built in Mannheim, Germany in 1885, and subsequently patented on January 29, 1886. Mass production of Benz’s car began in 1888 after a successful trip with his family from Mannheim to Pforzheim in August of that year.
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Where Was The First Ford Car Made
My kidâs gotten really interested in cars lately and sheâs been asking me a lot of car history questions that Iâm drawing blanks on. Where was the first Ford car made? Both of us would love to know.
Detroit, MichiganHenry Ford museum
- Henry Ford built his first experimental car behind his home in 1896
- The first official Ford production car was called the âModel Aâ and was assembled in 1903
- The famous Model T was produced in 1908
- Demand for the Model T was so high that Ford had to innovate his production methodsâcreating the worldâs first moving assembly line for vehicles in 1913
saves over $800 a year
Transmission And Drive Train
The Model T is a rear-wheel drive vehicle. Its transmission is a planetary gear type known as “three speed.” In today’s terms it is considered a two-speed, because one of the three speeds is reverse.
The Model T’s transmission is controlled with three floor-mounted pedals and a lever mounted to the road side of the driver’s seat. The throttle is controlled with a lever on the steering wheel. The left-hand pedal is used to engage the transmission. With the floor lever in either the mid position or fully forward and the pedal pressed and held forward, the car enters low gear. When held in an intermediate position, the car is in neutral. If the left pedal is released, the Model T enters high gear, but only when the lever is fully forward in any other position, the pedal only moves up as far as the central neutral position. This allows the car to be held in neutral while the driver cranks the engine by hand. The car can thus cruise without the driver having to press any of the pedals.
In the first 800 units, reverse is engaged with a lever all units after that use the central pedal, which is used to engage reverse gear when the car is in neutral. The right-hand pedal operates the transmission brake there are no brakes on the wheels. The floor lever also controls the parking brake, which is activated by pulling the lever all the way back. This doubles as an emergency brake.
Chassis / frame
Transmission bands and linings
Two main types of band lining material were used:
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Who Was Henry Ford
Henry Ford was an American inventor and business magnate and the founder of Ford Motor Company. He invented several vehicles, most famously the Model T automobile, and changed the auto industry forever by introducing the moving assembly line to car production. His industrial innovations were so economically impactful that the term Fordism came to refer to the mass production and consumption that they enabled, which then more broadly characterized the pace and nature of the postwar era’s capitalist economy.
Soviet Fords And The Gorki
In May 1929 the Soviet Union signed an agreement with the Ford Motor Company. Under its terms, the Soviets agreed to purchase $13 million worth of automobiles and parts, while Ford agreed to give technical assistance until 1938 to construct an integrated automobile-manufacturing plant at Nizhny Novgorod. Many American engineers and skilled auto workers moved to the Soviet Union to work on the plant and its production lines, which was named Gorkovsky Avtomobilny Zavod , or Gorki Automotive Plant in 1932. A few American workers stayed on after the plant’s completion, and eventually became victims of Stalin’s Great Terror, either shot or exiled to Soviet gulags. In 1933, the Soviets completed construction on a production line for the Ford Model-A passenger car, called the GAZ-A, and a light truck, the GAZ-AA. Both these Ford models were immediately adopted for military use. By the late 1930s production at Gorki was 80,000-90,000 “Russian Ford” vehicles per year. With its original Ford-designed vehicles supplemented by imports and domestic copies of imported equipment, the Gorki operations eventually produced a range of automobiles, trucks, and military vehicles.
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Ford Begins Crash Testing Its Vehicles
In the 60 years since then, Ford has performed more than 31,000 crash tests around the world. In recent years Ford has also used virtual crash testing to maximize the quantity and availability of crash data. In tandem with physical testing, the crash simulations help Ford gather more data than ever before.
The Ford Model A Was The Very First Ford
The first order for a Ford Model A was made on July 15th, 1903. Ernst Pfenning, a dentist in Chicago, bought the car for $850. His trim was a four-seater tonneau model, though the Model A was also built as a two-seater.
This runabout car packed eight horsepower from a two-cylinder, 1.7-liter gasoline engine. Paired with a two-speed manual, it was no screamer, with a top speed of 28 mph. But it could get people from A to B in comfort and style. After all, owning a car in the dawn of the 1900s was a symbol of status in a world where horses were commonplace.
Henry Ford had tried and failed at starting two other automotive businesses, and spent most of his $28,000 budget developing the Model A. But there was enough interest for the new company to make a profit. Other cars like the model AC were built, which boasted 10 horsepower rather than eight.
But the Model A wasnt what you would consider an affordable car. While $850 doesnt sound that expensive, consider that the average wage of 1903 was $489 a year. It took most people over a year and a half to earn enough money to buy one. But Ford got enough customers to turn a profit, leading to the development of the reliable and cheap Model T
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Early History: Model T And Assembly Line
Henry Ford built his first experimental car in a workshop behind his home in Detroit in 1896. After formation of the Ford Motor Company, the first Ford car, the original Model A, was assembled at the Mack Avenue plant in July 1903.
Five years later, in 1908, the highly successful Model T was introduced. Demand for this car was so great that Ford developed new mass production methods in order to manufacture it in sufficient quantities. In 1911 he established the industrys first U.S. branch assembly plant and opened the companys first overseas production plant in 1913 he introduced the worlds first moving assembly line for cars and in 1914, to further improve labour productivity, he introduced the $5 daily wage for an eight-hour day . Assembly-line production allowed the price of the Model T touring-car version to be lowered from $850 in 1908 to less than $300 in 1925 .
When Was The Ford Fiesta Launched
The Ford Fiesta was launched in 1976 by Ford of Europe. It was imported from Europe into the US market in 1978, and was launched into the economy segment. However, it was discontinued in 1981.
In 1979, Ford acquired a 25% stake in Mazda and in 1981, the third generation Escort won European Car of the Year for the first time. The following year, the Cortina was replaced with the Sierra after 20 years. Ford increased their stake in Mazda after it was having trouble in 1996.
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Ford Model T Price Then Versus Now
In 1909, a brand new Ford Model T would set you back $825, which is $25,721 in 2022 money. Just seven years later, in 1916, the price of a Model T was just $345, which comes up to $9,691 in 2022 money.
Given the historical significance of the Ford Model T, the car is still relatively attainable, compared to other iconic classics. At the time of writing this, a Model T could set you back between $14,000 and $26,000 depending on the version. If historical significance and heritage are what you are into, the T is steel, compared to million-dollar Cobras or rare muscle cars, which are well into the six-figure price range.
The Ford Model T Was The First Sales Success
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Theres no denying the Ford Model Ts significance in automotive history. It killed the original electric car, proving that gas power was cheaper and more effective. But to achieve that, the entire process of the assembly line and interchangeable parts had to be revolutionized. And after many efforts, the first Ford Model T rolled off the line in 1908, four years after the Model A was discontinued.
Building a Model T was divided into 84 different tasks, and because of this, one could be built in just 93 minutes. Every three minutes, a Model T could roll off the production line, far outpacing any other car builder of the day.
Back in 1908, a Ford Model T cost anywhere from $260 to $850, making it a universally affordable car. And by the 1920s, over half the cars registered in the world were Fords. Over 15 million of them were sold through its production, serving as a testimony to the rising middle class of the early 1900s.
The Model T packed 20 horsepower, thanks to a much larger 2.7-liter four-cylinder engine. It was a simple car, built as cheap as possible, and marketed through wild stunts. It climbed Pikes Peak, could navigate up stairs, and was all-around durable in an era where most cars werent. The first Model A was also marketed as a reliable vehicle, but after a while, they developed far more defects than the Model T did.
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