Ford Motor Company

Henry Ford was born in 1863 and grew up on a farm in Dearborn, Michigan. From 1891 he worked as an engineer for the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit and was promoted to chief engineer two years later. In 1896, in a shed behind his home, he built his first gasoline-powered vehicle, the Quadricycle.⁠[1][1][1]

Over the next several years he made two unsuccessful attempts, with investor backing, to start a car company. The Detroit Automobile Company, formed by some of the investors in 1899 and later renamed the Henry Ford Company, clashed with him because his partners wanted to put a passenger car on the market while he kept refining his designs; he left in 1902, and the company was then reorganized as the Cadillac Motor Car Company.⁠[1][1][2]

At 9:30 a.m. on June 16, 1903, Henry Ford and 11 other stockholders signed the incorporation papers in Detroit; the next day, when the Michigan secretary of state’s office received the articles of association, Ford Motor Company was officially incorporated. It was Henry Ford’s third attempt at founding an automobile business. A month later the first Ford car, the two-cylinder, eight-horsepower Model A, was assembled at a plant on Mack Avenue in Detroit; at the time only a few cars a day were assembled, built by hand by groups of two or three workers from parts bought from other companies.⁠[2][2][3][1][1]

On April 1, 1904, about 10 months after the company was founded, stockholders authorized the purchase of 3.11 acres on Piquette Avenue in Detroit for $23,500; the next day the board authorized Henry Ford and director John Dodge to plan a building costing no more than $76,500. The three-story brick-and-timber factory was finished by the end of 1904 and produced the Model C, F and B, followed from 1906 by the Model K and Model N. By 1906 Henry Ford owned 58.5 percent of the company.⁠[4][4][4][4][2]

On October 1, 1908, Ford introduced the Model T, a car for the masses, assembled by hand at the Piquette Avenue plant; only 11 were made in the first month. It had a 22-horsepower four-cylinder engine and heat-treated steel, weighed about 1,200 pounds, could reach about 40 miles per hour, and its cheapest version initially cost $825. At the beginning of 1908 there were fewer than 200,000 cars on American roads; by 1918, half of all cars in the United States were Model Ts.⁠[5][6][6][6][6][6][1]

Because the Piquette plant could not keep up with demand for the Model T, the Highland Park plant designed by architect Albert Kahn opened on Woodward Avenue on January 1, 1910. Its main building was a four-story factory 865 feet long, and its glass roof and walls of windows earned it the nickname “Crystal Palace.” Model T production moved there from Piquette in January 1910.⁠[5][7][7][7][7][4]

To lower prices, Ford broke Model T assembly into 84 steps, each worker doing only one, and, inspired by the continuous-flow methods of flour mills, breweries, canneries and Chicago meatpacking plants, first applied moving lines to components such as engines and transmissions. On December 1, 1913, the Highland Park plant began using the first moving assembly line for an entire automobile, cutting the time to build a car from more than 12 hours to one hour and 33 minutes; in February 1914 a mechanized belt moving at six feet per minute was added. On June 4, 1924, the 10-millionth Model T rolled off the line at Highland Park.⁠[8][8][8][8][8]

Mass production steadily lowered the Model T’s price: a new car cost $850 in 1909 and only $260 by 1924, and in 1914 an average assembly-line worker could buy one with four months’ pay.⁠[5]

In 1914 Ford raised workers’ pay to $5 a day for an eight-hour day, up from $2.34 for nine hours, setting a standard for the industry. The wage lifted many low-skilled workers into the middle class, allowing them to afford the products they made, and employee turnover dropped dramatically.⁠[2][3]

In 1918 Ford began building the Rouge complex on 2,000 acres along the Rouge River in Dearborn, designed by Albert Kahn, with the aim of making vehicles from raw materials to finished product on site: the river was dredged so ore freighters could enter, and the plant had its own foundry, coke ovens, glass factory and steel mill, along with more than 90 miles of internal railway. Its first project was building Eagle Boats for the U.S. Navy during World War I. When it was completed in 1928 the complex had 93 buildings; between 1919 and 1926 its total number of employees reached 75,000.⁠[9][9][9][2][9][9]

Other stockholders opposed building the Rouge plant because of its enormous cost. In January 1919 Henry Ford resigned as president and his son Edsel Ford succeeded him, though the elder Ford kept control of operations. After a court battle with stockholders led by the Dodge brothers, Henry Ford bought out all the minority stockholders by 1920. Also in 1919, the present Ford Motor Company was incorporated in Delaware and acquired the business of the Michigan company of the same name incorporated in 1903.⁠[2][10][1][11]

On February 4, 1922, Ford bought the struggling luxury automaker Lincoln Motor Company for $8 million. Lincoln had been founded in 1917 by Henry Leland, one of the founders of the Cadillac brand; at the time Ford was losing market share to General Motors, which offered a range of models while Ford focused on the utilitarian Model T. Edsel Ford persuaded his father to make the purchase and played an important role in developing Lincoln as Ford’s first luxury brand.⁠[10][10][10][10]

By the 1920s consumers wanted style, speed and comfort, and demand for the Model T declined. On May 26, 1927, the last Model T rolled off the line after some 15 million had been built since 1908, when Ford was the largest automaker in the world. That year production moved to the Rouge complex and the new Model A was introduced, with better horsepower and brakes and a choice of colors from the start.⁠[6][6][6][1][1][1][10]

The new Model A was outsold by General Motors’ Chevrolet and Chrysler’s Plymouth and was discontinued in 1931. In 1932 Ford introduced its first V-8 engine, but by 1936 the company had dropped to third in industry sales.⁠[1][1]

Henry Ford long opposed unionization and refused to come to terms with the United Automobile Workers (UAW) even after his competitors had done so. In 1937 the “Battle of the Overpass” took place at the Rouge complex, when Walter Reuther and other union organizers were beaten by Henry Ford’s strongman Harry Bennett and his men; the National Labor Relations Board afterward ordered Ford to stop interfering with union organizing. In 1941 Ford signed its first contract with the UAW.⁠[1][9][1]

In 1941 Ford built the Albert Kahn-designed Willow Run plant on 975 acres of farmland owned by Henry Ford near Ypsilanti, Michigan, to mass-produce B-24 Liberator bombers, with the U.S. government contributing $200 million. The plant initially struggled to transfer automotive assembly methods to aircraft production and to recruit workers, and later hired many women. At its peak in 1944 Willow Run produced a B-24 every hour; of the roughly 18,000 B-24s Ford built, half came from the plant. Detroit thereby earned the nickname “Arsenal of Democracy.”⁠[12][12][12][12][12][12][3]

As of December 31, 2025, Ford operated through three customer-centered business segments: Ford Blue for gas-powered and hybrid vehicles, Ford Model e for electric vehicles (including extended-range EVs) and embedded software, and Ford Pro for commercial customers, with financial services provided by Ford Motor Credit Company. Its vehicle brands are Ford and Lincoln.⁠[11][11][11][11]

Ford is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol F. The founding family continues to control the company through a special class of stock; as of October 2026, Jim Farley is president and chief executive officer and William Clay Ford, Jr. is executive chair and chair of the board.⁠[13][14][15]

Ford Motor Company: Official website: https://corporate.ford.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[11]