Ford Ireland (Officially, Henry Ford & Sons Limited) is the Irish subsidiary of the United States-based automaker Ford Motor Company. It formerly operated an assembly plant for motor vehicles and was part of the automotive industry in Ireland.
Company history
Pre-War
Henry Ford founded the company in Cork in Ireland on 17 April 1917. This was the first factory Ford had purposely built outside of America anywhere in the world. He decided to use Cork as the place for his first factory abroad as it was in Ballinascarty, County Cork where the Ford family emigrated from in 1832 after living in Cork for over 300 years. Work on building the plant took two years.
The first tractor rolled off the production line on 3 July 1919. The factory was used to build tractors initially. In July 1919, it started production and turned its tractor brand into Fordson, and made 303 tractors in 1919. In 1920, there were 3,626 tractors built and the sum of £327,000 was also spent on a machine shop, foundry expansion, new wharves and equipment for the plant. The sale of the Fordsons was primarily in Ireland and Britain. Large numbers were also shipped to Bordeaux, Cadiz, Copenhagen, Romania and the near east. The original goal was to build 20,000 Fordson tractors a year.
Edward Grace, managing director of Henry Ford & Sons, realised it was uneconomical for Cork to rely solely on Fordson to survive, as it was more costly for distributors of Fordson tractors to buy stock in Cork than it would be if they were to buy in Dearborn Michigan. He also saw that Manchester needed extra production facilities for Model T cars. Cork had a machine shop and foundry that were not being used to their full capacity. In 1920 Since Ireland was still part of the United Kingdom at the time, there were no customs duties. This is how the production of parts for Ford of Britain started in the Cork plant, and by August 1920 Cork started producing all Manchester's cast-iron requirements for the Model-T, including the engine. but by the end of 1920, tractor output from Cork fell to 1,433. In February 1922, Cork Corporation ordered the company to comply with the terms of the lease or face expulsion (The 1918 Corporation lease of the land had specified that Fords provide work for 2,000 Cork workers.) The directors of Henry Ford & Son opposed the rationale claiming that the economic and political climate had changed radically within three years of the company setting up in Cork. Cork Corporation backed down from their requests. During the rest of 1922, the Cork company narrowed its tractor operation by clearing its stocks and building another 2,233 Fordsons.
After the Irish Free State was founded on 6 December 1922, the British government announced that from 1 April 1923 customs would be charged for deliveries from Ireland. This made deliveries uneconomical. So after the 7,605th Cork-built tractor came off the line, Tractor production ended on December 29, 1922. Edward Grace assembled all the equipment used in tractor manufacture and shipped everything to Dearborn, Michigan.
Since Ford of Britain was building a large new plant in Dagenham, the Cork plant started to build engines and rear axles for the Ford Model T, and these were delivered to England. Other Ford plants in Europe were also supplied. Ford France and Ford Germany came into question from 1925. This continued until production of the Model-T in Europe ended in 1927.
Had Grace not seen that tractor production was not financially viable, the plant at Cork may not have started making cars. By the time the Ford Model T was discontinued in December 1927, over 10,000 units were made in Ireland. Moreover, trucks emerged. From 1928, Ford Model A were delivered to Ireland from England and were equipped with engines in Cork. The standard engine was disadvantaged due to its displacement and RAC Horsepower rating. The company, therefore, developed a smaller engine, which was rated at 14.9 HP instead of 24 HP, and also supplied these engines to other Ford plants in Europe and Japan.
On 1 April 1929, the production of tractors started again. It was the only Ford tractor factory in the world at the time. However, due to the economic crisis of 1932 and renewed customs duties caused tractor production to be moved to Dagenham. From then on, the Cork Plant was solely an assembly plant.
During the war, the plant in Cork was closed, and some of the workers form the Cork plant went over to the Dagenham plant in Essex. After the interruption in assembly, vehicle production was continued in February 1946.