Keeping it in the family

The Ford Motor Company has remained under family control since it was founded in 1903.

- STEVE CROPLEY meets the current custodians

When the motor car was new, 120 years ago, hundreds of crazy young men in all corners of the industrialised world - including one Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michiganfell to building self-propelled contraptions of their own design.

These vehicles and their successes varied greatly, but when it came to naming them, the inventors all did the same thing: they used their surnames. By the time the Ford Motor Company opened for business in 1903, we had Daimler and Benz, Peugeot and Panhard, Renault and Opel, Dodge and Lanchester. Even Alldays & Onions.

And more were waiting in the wings.

However, while companies run by their founders were once common, family and financial fragmentation now means they are rare. Porsche is still active, of course, but Ford is the only major car company to have been led and controlled by the founding family for its entire history (122 years and counting). The architect of its survival in this guise is its current executive chairman for the past 19 years, William Clay Ford Jr, known far and wide as Bill.

When Ford's charismatic big boss dropped into this year's Goodwood Festival of Speed as part of a brief UK tour, accompanied by his sons Will (aged 34) and Nick (29), both of whom have recently been recruited by Ford Motor from busy careers in non-automotive businesses, I grabbed the opportunity for a wide-ranging chat with all three.