Ford-Werke GmbH
"Eine Idee weiter."
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| GmbH | |
| Industry | Automotive |
| Founded | August 18, 1925 |
| Founder | Henry Ford |
| Headquarters | Niehl, Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany |
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Number of locations
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Two manufacturing facilities |
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Key people
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Gunnar Herrmann (CEO) |
| Products | Automobiles |
| Owner | Ford Motor Company |
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Number of employees
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28,842 (2009) |
| Parent | Ford Deutschland Holding GmbH |
| Website | Ford.de |
Gunnar Herrmann
(Chairman)
Ford-Werke GmbH is a German car manufacturer headquartered in Niehl, Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia and a subsidiary of Ford of Europe, which in turn is a subsidiary of Ford Motor Company.
The earliest presence of the Ford Motor Company in Germany was a parts operation set up in Hamburg in 1912.
At the end of 1924 the US Ford Motor Company established a sales office in Berlin which at the start of 1925 received a permit to import 1,000 tractors. In 1920 the government had imposed a tariff so high that it amounted to a prohibition against importing foreign automobiles, but this was reversed in October 1925. The move had evidently been anticipated by Ford, since on 18 August 1925 the Ford Motor Company Aktiengesellschaft had been entered in the Berlin Companies Register.
During 1925 an assembly plant was constructed in a rented warehouse in the district of Berlin, which was well located for receiving deliveries of kits and components via the country's canal network. On 1 April 1926 the first German assembled Model T was produced, using imported parts. The Berlin assembly operation produced 1,177 Model Ts in 1926 and a further 2,594 during 1927 which was the Model T's final year: in August 1927 Model T production in Berlin ended, and it was nearly a year before, on 20 August 1928, Ford auto-production in Berlin recommenced, now of the Ford Model A.
In March 1929 General Motors purchased a controlling 80% holding in Opel: Henry Ford's reaction was a prompt decision to build a complete Ford auto-factory in Germany, and before the end of 1929 a site at made available by the mayor of the city, Konrad Adenauer was acquired by Ford. The 170,000 m2 site was originally intended to support an annual production of 250,000 cars, suggesting a continuation of the spirit of boundless economic optimism that seized western industry in the months preceding the 1929 Wall Street crash. Locating the plant directly beside the Rhine ensured that, as with Ford's other principal European manufacturing locations in Manchester, Dagenham and Berlin, excellent access existed to the water transport network. On 2 October 1930 Henry Ford, then aged 67, together with Adenauer, aged only 55, laid the foundation stone for the Cologne Ford Plant: construction, which cost 12 Million Marks, progressed rapidly. The assembly operation in Berlin came to an end on 15 April 1931, and on 4 May 1931 the first Cologne produced Ford rolled off the production line. The first vehicle produced was a Ford Model A based truck which, whether by coincidence or by design would also be the first vehicle produced by Ford's new plant at Dagenham, England in October 1931. From that time an increasing proportion of the Ford vehicles sold in Germany were also made in Germany rather than being imported. The Model A was joined at Cologne in 1932 by the Model B.
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Wikipedia