Ford Motor Company Before World War I

The Ford Motor Company began in 1903 as a brainchild of Henry Ford and 11 other stockholders. The company was restructured from the failing Detriot Automobile Company seven years after Henry Ford built his first car, a gasoline-powered vehicle known as the Quadricycle. It ran on a four-horsepower engine and was steered with a tiller, not a steering wheel.

The newly found Ford Motor Company sold its first car, the Ford Model A, on July 23, 1903, after spending all of its $28,000-investment on production. But by the time it was 1908, Ford had introduced the famously successful Model T.

The Model T was a sturdy and affordable machine, a not-very-common feat of engineering at the time. Whereas manufacturers then built most cars for luxury, Ford built this car from tough vanadium steel alloy, allowing it to travel the undeveloped roads of the time. There was so much demand for the Model T that the company had made a little over 10,000 cars in its first year. The Model T forced the company to move to a bigger plant and come up with new production methods to meet the demand.

By 1913, the Ford Motor Company had streamlined the craft of assembling so well that they had reduced a 12-hour production time to less than three hours. Later that year, they still managed to reduce the time to about an hour and a half. One of Ford’s productivity elements was increasing the daily wage from $2.34 to $5. Thanks to the efficiency of the assembly line, he could reduce the price of the Model T touring car from $850 to a little less than $300 in 1925.

While many think that Ford’s international activity started in 1911 with the opening of the production plant in Manchester, England, they had really started their international activity in 1904 with Ford Motor Company of Canada. Ford built the production plant in Windsor (then known as Walkerville), Ontario. It was positioned across the Detriot River, near other Ford facilities. However, the Canadian quarter was an autonomous structure, with different investors from the one in the US. Its purpose was to reach the market in Canada and the British Empire.

By the end of 1918, Ford Motor Company had started producing cars in Ireland, England, and France. Not long after, other European companies joined the Ford sphere of influence, such as Denmark, Austria, and Germany. Before 1925, Ford had factories in Argentina, South Africa, Australia, and even Japan.

Perhaps one of the most significant feats of Ford’s early history was the construction of the River Rouge Complex in Dearborn, Michigan. But before Henry Ford built the plant, the stockholders were against the idea of this expensive plant. Consequently, Henry Ford bought their shares, and Edsel Ford (Henry Ford’s son) assumed the title of president of the company in 1919.

They built the River Rouge Complex to contain everything necessary for car production; glass and tire factories, steel mills, a power plant, and a depot for rubber, iron ore, lumber, and coal.

By the time World War I had begun, the Rouge Complex was ready to roll out boats, cars, trucks, airplane engines, and other necessary vehicles to support the Allies in the war.