SHOW TIME!

MORLEY HAS BEEN CLOCKING UP THE KAYS CHECKING OUT WHAT'S HAPPENING IN THE LOCAL AUTOMOTIVE WORLD

- DAVE MORLEY

I went to a fantastic event recently. The venue was the Melbourne Showgrounds and the occasion was the 100th anniversary of the establishment of Ford Australia. Now, 100 years is a long time in any game, but for a company to have moved from an assembler, to a fully-fledged manufacturer and then to a design and engineering centre, and still be a pretty vibrant part of the community, is not a bad effort.

Yes, yes, I know; it'd be nicer if Ford was still making Falcons and Fairlanes and Territories here, but that ain't the way the world works right now. But it’s still great to see that Ford feels it's part of the country and things like its 100 years of sponsorship of the Geelong footy club (the longest, continuous sporting team sponsorship deal in the world, I'm told) tend to back that up.

And let's face it, if you're like me, you've maybe owned one or two - maybe even a handful of - Fords over the years. At last count I've owned something like four XR6 Falcons, and I still have my Mark 2 RS2000. Not to mention my father-in-law's Model T that is A: Now in my keeping, and B: Being a 1924 model is one year older than even Ford Australia.

The actual event was part car show, part side-show, with celebrity car-nut Shane Jacobson MC-ing, and no less celebrities than Dick Johnson, a slew of Supercar drivers, former Wheels magazine editor Peter Robinson, and even Henry Ford's great-grandson (and the current boss of Ford) Bill Ford taking to the stage to address a crowd of about 2500 packing the showground’s main grandstand.