A Brief History of Ford Motor Company

Henry Ford and 11 business associates founded Ford Motor Company. In 1903, incorporation papers were filed in Lansing, Michigan. Henry Ford started the company with a small amount of cash and a few supplies that were necessary to begin the operation. The operation started out small, with only 10 employees. Working together, the employees were able to produce a few cars daily. This small company would later become one of the world's largest corporations.

The first cars made by Ford were named using the letters of the alphabet. For many years, Ford experimented with car models and some never made it to the public. Through trial and error, Ford came to realize that the future of the company depended on building an inexpensive car that was available to a large market of people. In 1908, the Model T was introduced to the public. The car was a huge success. It was such a success that another factory was opened to meet the demand. During the production of the Model T came the introduction of the assembly line and higher minimum wage.

Ford Motor Company just kept growing after that. In 1925, Ford acquired Lincoln Motor Company and entered the luxury car market. In 1941, Ford began producing vehicles for the military. Ford would halt production on civilian vehicles and focus only on military vehicles for over 3 years. Henry Ford died in 1947. He left the company to his oldest grandson, Henry Ford II. In 1956, shares of stock in Ford went up for sale. Millions of shares were sold on the first day. Many popular models of cars were built during the 1950's and 1960's. The Thunderbird and Mustang were two of the most popular. Ford would later acquire Aston Martin, Jaguar, and half of Mazda, Volvo, and Land Rover.

In 2001, Ford was forced to recall over 300,000 vehicles to replace faulty tires. This was a huge cost to Ford. Ford was also accused of knowing about the faulty tires and did nothing to fix the problem. Several deaths were link to the bad tires. This caused stock prices to dive and employee morale was very low. Shortly after, Ford launched a major restructuring in hopes of improving employee morale and increasing profits. With the creation of many new car models, profits began to rise, in the sluggish economy; time will tell if the success will be long-term.