The Henry Ford Company was Henry Ford's first attempt at a car manufacturing company and was established on November 3, 1901. This became the Cadillac Motor Company on August 22, 1902, after Ford left with the rights to his name.[16] In 1903, the Ford Motor Company was launched in a converted factory, with $28,000, equivalent to $980,000 in 2024, in cash from twelve investors, most notably John and Horace Dodge, who later founded the Dodge Brothers Motor Vehicle Company.
The first president was not Ford, but local banker John S. Gray, who was chosen in order to assuage investors' fears that Ford would leave the new company the way he had left its predecessor. During its early years, the company produced just a few cars a day at its factory on Mack Avenue and later at its factory on Piquette Avenue in Detroit, Michigan. Groups of two or three men worked on each car, assembling it from parts made mostly by supplier companies contracting for Ford. Within a decade the company led the world in the expansion and refinement of the assembly line concept, and Ford soon brought much of the part production in-house, via vertical integration.
Henry Ford was 39 years old when he founded the Ford Motor Company, which became one of the world's largest and most profitable companies. It has been in continuous family control for over 100 years, and is one of the largest family-controlled companies in the world.[17]
The first gasoline-powered automobile was created in 1885 by the German inventor Karl Benz, with his Benz Patent-Motorwagen. More efficient production methods were needed to make automobiles affordable for middle class people. To which Ford contributed by, for instance, introducing the first moving assembly line in 1913 at the Ford factory in Highland Park.[18]
Ford introduced methods for large-scale manufacturing of cars and large-scale management of an industrial workforce using elaborately engineered manufacturing sequences typified by moving assembly lines. By 1914, these methods were known around the world as Fordism. Ford's former UK subsidiaries Jaguar and Land Rover, acquired in 1989 and 2000, respectively, were sold to the Indian automaker Tata Motors in March 2008. Ford owned the Swedish automaker Volvo from 1999 to 2010.[6] In the third quarter of 2010, Ford discontinued the Mercury brand, under which it had marketed upscale cars in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Middle East since 1938.[7]
Ford is the second-largest U.S.-based automaker, behind General Motors, and the sixth-largest in the world, behind Toyota, Volkswagen Group, Hyundai Motor Group, Stellantis, and General Motors, based on 2022 vehicle production.[8] The company went public in 1956 but the Ford family, through special Class B shares, retain 40 percent of the voting rights.[3][9] During the 2008–2010 automotive industry crisis, the company struggled financially but did not have to be rescued by the federal government, unlike the other two major US automakers.[10][11] Ford Motors has since returned to profitability,[12] and was the eleventh-ranked overall American-based company in the 2018 Fortune 500 list, based on global revenues in 2017 of $156.7 billion.[13] In 2023, Ford produced 4.4 million automobiles, and employed about 177,000 employees worldwide. The company operates joint ventures in China (Changan Ford), Taiwan (Ford Lio Ho), Thailand (AutoAlliance Thailand), and Turkey (Ford Otosan). Ford owns a 32% stake in China's Jiangling Motors.[14][15]