Ford Motor Company through the Ages

The Ford Motor Company (FMC) was founded in Detroit in 1903 and began shortly thereafter exporting cars to European branches. Cross-border assembly started in Canada in 1904 and was later implemented in the European markets. The first European plant was established in 1911 in England, and this was followed with other lower volume assembly plants across the European continent. All the plants and branches assembled and sold the Model T, using American methods and practices. This proved to be a success in the beginning, but in the long run, “(…) this proved a costly and unsuccessful strategy in Europe’s diverse markets” (Bonin et al., p. 15). By the late 1920s most of its European subsidiaries were struggling and Ford had to change his approach to the European market.
In the interwar years, FMC twice changed course in Europe. In 1928 it introduced a plan for regional integration. This plan started with the creation of a giant new plant at Dagenham in England. The Dagenham plants main focus was support and supply of materials to other European plants in order to limit the need for American export of goods, and instead integrate the European Ford plants in manufacturing, supply, and ease the trade across European borders. Using the Dagenham plant as headquarters for European operations proved extremely difficult. This was due to the tariff barriers within Europe and the pressure from countries insisting to keep Ford manufacturing locally if it wished to sell in their national markets. “The result was a retreat from planned regional integration to fragmented and nationally oriented markets” (Bonin et al., p. 16). These changes in course also affected the approach Ford made towards its production practices, and for the first time,...

... middle of paper ...

...market and sought to rejuvenate the industry by moving production to Germany instead of exporting finished products. This was mainly due to increased shipping and tariff costs, but also because of the stagnation of the American automobile market in the late 1920s. In 1931 Ford opened a large production factory in Cologne, Germany. The factory was not limited to assembling cars, but also produced various machinery such as motors, transmissions

After 1933, government regulations and restrictions on production consistently reduced the company's capacity to act autonomously. As a commercial passenger vehicle production was slowly eradicated, government contracts became the sole source of business. Without these contracts, predominately for trucks in Ford-Werke's case, Ford would have lost all its German investment as the subsidiary withered due to a lack of market.