FORD 100: MILESTONE FOR FORD AUSTRALIA

In the first week of April 1925, Ford Motor Company of Australia Pty Ltd was founded in Geelong, Victoria.

- MARK HIGGINS

To celebrate this significant milestone, a 'History in the Making' centenary event was held at the Melbourne Showgrounds, attended by several members of the Ford family, many past and current employees, along with dealers from Australia and New Zealand.

Hosted by Shane Jacobson, who proudly owns a ZB Fairlane, many well-known and rare models were exhibited starting with a replica of Henry Ford's Quadracycle, a genuine Model T, the famous ute created by Lewis Bandt at the Geelong plant, and several GT and GT-HO Falcons, including one of the very few Phase IV models. Also on show was the XT Falcon GT that finished third in the 1968 London to Sydney marathon, the Falcons that crossed the line 1-2 at Bathurst in 1977, Allan Moffat's famous Trans Am Mustang, Dick Johnson's rockstar 1980 XD Falcon and many more.

Ford racers were there including Johnson, John Goss and a crop of the current blue oval stars.

A smorgasbord of momentous Fords that graced our roads this past century, took part in a parade in front of a packed grandstand at the Showgrounds.

And this is where the Ford Australia story began.

It was 1923 when North American Ford executives visited Australia to seek out a base to set up an operation to direct all Ford activities in the country.

Two senior Ford executives were part of a six-person advanced party scouting Australian locations, Hubert Charles French and P. W. Grandjean, the then secretary of Ford of Canada. After their visit, Grandjean wrote to Edsel Ford in 1924, that “the time is ripe to carry on a business in Australia with our own organisation”.