Trafford Park, Manchester

A hundred years ago this month (March) Henry Ford’s man in Britain wanted to lease a Manchester tramcar factory. Henry was not convinced. He may have thought history bunk but knew his geography and it didn’t make sense to assemble Model Ts 40 miles inland. Their components from Detroit were cheapest by ship. Henry knew Manchester wasn’t on-Sea.

Bristol-born Percival Lea Dewhurst Perry had taken over the American Motor Car Agency of Long Acre, London in 1905 and knew a good thing when he saw one. He had unpacked the first Model Bs from wooden crates at Vauxhall Bridge Wharf on the Thames. Perry’s ocean-going ships would bring vanadium steel frames and engines from America. They would bypass Liverpool by the Manchester Ship Canal and unload straight into the old tram factory, to make brand new Model Ts.


Perry’s agency partner of 1905, Aubrey Blakiston had been worried too. They had been selling only one car a month, so Blakiston resigned in 1907, leaving Perry to sell the Model N (above); a bargain at £120. Perry poshed them up with landaulette bodywork and sold 50 from the new Perry, Thornton and Schreiber. It had seven employees and moved to Westminster Bridge Road for the launch of Model T in October 1908. Eight were sent over for the Olympia Motor Show.

Now Perry needed help with the tram factory. He went to Detroit and asked Henry Ford for support. It didn’t amount to much at first. Yet Henry knew exports were essential for his vision of cars by the thousand. Almost as soon as he had started making them he was sending them across the Detroit River where Ford Canada held the concession for the Dominion, in effect the great Edwardian British Empire. Henry convinced Ford Canada’s proprietor, Gordon McGregor, to waive its rights to the United Kingdom. McGregor agreed: “The rest of the Empire is enough for me,” and Perry returned, reassured.

Ford company secretary James Couzens had an idea. If Perry wanted to build cars in Britain he needed a bigger organisation. So, in March 1911 Ford Motor Company (England) Ltd began selling Fords from 55-59 Shaftesbury Avenue. Then, as now, Ford had designed a car for the world.

1912 Model T Town Car
Henry had stipulated his European factories should be next the sea, to be supplied by the shipload. His line across the Atlantic made landfall in Ireland, from where his father had emigrated in 1847. The tramcar factory won the race, although by the 1920s Ford was building tractors on the quayside at Cork.


Manchester was fourth largest port in Britain. Only London, Liverpool and Hull did more trade. Canny Mancunians finished their Ship Canal in 1894 because it was costing almost as much to bring goods and raw materials from Liverpool, as it had to ship them across the Atlantic. Canal managers built factories at Manchester docks. Ford’s had belonged to the British Electric Car Company (BECC), which made tramcars for everywhere from Ayr to Egypt, until a rival bought the company and closed it down. The buildings on the corner of Westinghouse Road and First Avenue were empty until Percival Perry came to set up Henry Ford’s first factory outside America.


Its neighbour on the canal side was a crane manufacturer, Frederick Henry Royce. Born, like Henry Ford, in 1863 he too went into cars.

Trafford Park had its own railway siding and by 1914 Ford sent Model T cars, vans, lorries, ambulances and buses in covered wagons to 1000 dealers. Perry thought Manchester, “The best geographical and economic centre for our business,” and workers welcomed Ford. Its 10d to 1s 3d (4p to 6.25p) an hour were the best rates in the industrial north. Prosperous pre-First World War Britain became Ford’s second biggest market after the US. Ford was more stable and consistent than the indigenous motor industry and by the time the 250,000th was shown at the Empire Exhibition, Wembley it was not just assembled in Britain. King George V and Queen Mary visited the stand that advertised British Cars made of British Parts by British Labour.


Ford became integrated so completely into industrial and manufacturing life that it was often regarded, sometimes even in Detroit, as British.


The Ford in Britain Centenary File, now on sale, £27.50.

Kylie and Kars

Kylie Minogue likes cars but she has moved up-market. In 2002 Ford sponsored her 39-date European Fever Tour, from Cardiff to Barcelona. She was pictured with the production StreetKa roadster to provide a preview before it went on sale in 2003. “The partnership with Kylie was the perfect way to show off StreetKa ahead of its launch,” said Peter Fleet, marketing director. “StreetKa and Kylie had a lot in common; they were both small, beautiful and stylish.” The car was formally unveiled to the public at the Paris Motor Show in September 2002.
Well, now it’s the Lexus CT 200h. Lexus will be lead sponsor of Kylie’s 2011 UK concert tour, Aphrodite – Les Folies. Elegant, contemporary and chic, trills today’s press release from Lexus. Director Belinda Poole shares Peter Fleet’s view: “Kylie is the perfect ambassador for Lexus. She has the energy, style and popular public profile that will re ach directly to customers new to the Lexus brand.” Kylie, “who has enjoyed huge success as an actor, singer, dancer, model and designer”, was thrilled too: “I’ve been lucky enough to have a preview of the car, which is stylish and elegant…” She will have her own specially specified Lexus.
The Sunday Times once ran a series, which ran alongside my motoring column, on Stars and Cars. It had to be discontinued when it became obvious that many celebrities didn’t own any cars. They had not chosen them. They drove round free in those secretly on loan from manufacturers and then gushed about them like Corporate Press Releases. Kylie's a smart girl and at least she’s honest about it.

Model T Ford on Ben Nevis

Getting a Model T Ford up Ben Nevis was a formidable undertaking. Dudley Grierson got about two-thirds of the way up on an MMC-Werner motorcycle in 1901 but Henry Alexander, the Edinburgh Ford dealer, made it all the way in May 1911. Ford of Britain, celebrating its centenary this year, has just released a picture from its archives showing the car on a mountainside bridge. Alexander and his chums had to build some crossings over rocky screes and tumbling burns, and the car underwent a certain amount of dismantling. It had only minimal bodywork. Snow-chains were used but since a Model T weighed only 1200lb (544kg) manhandling was possible. I got as far up as Grierson once, on foot, on narrow steep pathways.
Easily assembled. Easily taken apart to ascend Ben Nevis The first British Ford assembled from imported parts was produced on 23 October 1911. Ford’s Irish factory supplied chassis items until Joseph Sankey, of Hadley Shropshire, could take over so by the 1920s Model Ts were made from home grown components. A moving production line came in September 1914. Assembly had been a stationary affair with axles and chassis laid out on the floor and building a Model T took 12 hours. Moving assembly tracks had been used elsewhere, but Ford waited until components could be made accurately enough to be interchangeable. Build time was cut to an hour and a half. The following year the flywheel magneto operated an electric lighting set, not altogether satisfactorily, since being dependent on engine speed, the lights grew dim when driving slowly. The Model T’s success was overwhelming. All other Fords were discontinued to try meeting the demand. A quarter of a million Model Ts came off the line at the new Detroit Highland Park plant; 3000 a year made Ford Britain’s biggest car maker. Historian Anthony Bird wrote: “To say of the Model T Ford that it was a remarkably bad car would be tantamount to doubting the judgement of the 15,007,033 satisfied customers who bought the Lizzie during her production life of 19 years. To placate their shades and turn aside the howls of angry derision which must greet the statement let it be rephrased, to say that Henry Ford, like Carl Benz before him, was an obstinate man whose undeniable ingenuity was tinged with perversity, with the result that his masterpiece was marred by some curiously maladroit features.”
From The Ford in Britain Centenary File: Available March

Safety Fast

1974-1977 Ford Granada Ghia Coupe featured in The Ford in Britain Centenary File, an Eric Dymock Motoring Book available March 2011
There is not much new in the latest anti-speeding wheeze. The return of cameras by Prohibitionists was predictable. Roundheads propose one of those fatuous speed awareness courses to anybody exceeding limits by only a little, at £100. The Times parrots the airy talk of, “some 800 people a year,” being killed if speed cameras are decommissioned. “Populist objection to speed cameras cannot withstand … scientific research,” it says. It should be cautious. Climate changers and global warmists, to say nothing of millenium buggists, salmonella scaremongers, passive smoking soothsayers, panics over BSE, DDT and a dozen more hysterical “scientific researches” produce a jaundiced view of “experts”.
Campaigners follow predictable paths. A half-truth, an emotive pull, an expert advocate will set a bandwagon rolling and if the result is a Puritanical ban on rich speeding drivers so much the better. A dozen years writing for The Guardian showed me how it was done. Opinion was entrenched on speeding. I never subscribed to the newspaper’s political stance, although to its credit, once nominated as a contributor it left you alone. Your opinions were your own. Alastair Hetherington probably took the view that if I got myself into what he would regard as a hole, I should stop digging. All that was required was the house style of writing, which was the most demanding of any newspaper for which I wrote. Right-click to enlarge

If you wanted reader reaction, whimsies on speeding guaranteed it. During the first oil crisis 50mph limits were imposed to save fuel. Guardian readers of 23 December 1974 loved them.

This correspondence column of 6 January 1975 was quite restrained. Mr Burke seems perversely pleased to drive a 90mph car. A bit racy for 1974.

Porsche - Peter Schutz

My BMW Z3 and road test Porsche
I once stood with Peter W Schutz, the American chief executive of Porsche AG, as he waxed eloquent over the quality and longevity of his cars. “You know what,” he said to me. “Every time I see a Porsche leave the factory I know not only have we sold a car, but also we will go on selling it spares for years.” True. The factory had a bodyshell in primer parked outside in all weathers and it never decayed. Maybe it’s still there. They had to sell bits for crashed Porsches, worn-out Porsches and in due course restored classic Porsches as the cherished things lasted for decades.

Porsche sold spares at premium prices. It sold everything at premium prices. Schutz, who replaced Dr Ernst Fuhrmann as CEO in the 1980s, knew that replacement components’ business was a bankable asset. Why, a Porsche headlamp glass could cost £100 when everybody else’s were a couple of quid. Now high-power flush-fitting Halogen units are £400 and upgrades to Xenon or Litronic levelling ones are £800.

Ford Focus headlight features on new Dove book, out March
Now everybody has caught on. Headlights are much superior to those of only a few years ago. I notice it going from a newer test car to my BMW or Nissan. Those that swivel with the steering are especially clever. How like cranky American politicians to ban them on Citroëns.

The cost of headlights has gone up and up on ordinary cars well below Porsche in the price pecking order. Audis run from £270 for an A3 to £390 on an A6. But are the distinctive LED running lights strictly necessary? They seem to me more like advertising gimmicks to identify drivers of upper-class cars.

Nothing’s new. Our family Wolseleys had a little light-up badge in the middle of the radiator proclaiming our social status after dark. You didn’t want to be confused with Austins, Morrises or Vauxhalls. As a small boy I was proud of that little light and cross with father when he refused to replace its single festoon bulb. Like festoon bulbs in Trafficators it failed. Father didn’t understand status.

Premium Brands

Volkswagen Group sells more cars than Ford in Britain. That’s not just Volkswagens of course. It is also Seats, Skodas and Audis. You could include other VW-related nameplates, Bentley maybe, Porsche and Lamborghini although the numbers would not add up to much. It was a bit different in 1991 when everybody was into acquiring a premium brand as a means of improving profit-per-car. Ford sought Jaguar and Volvo, General Motors Saab, while Toyota created Lexus and Nissan Infiniti.
Right-click to view
Ford is now back to just Ford. If it still owned Jaguar-Land Rover and Volvo, or wasn’t busy relinquishing its stake in Mazda, VW might not have taken the lead. Ford claims it is less concerned about market share than about profit. Well, it would say that, wouldn’t it, yet it is probably true. The engines and components it still makes for Jaguar and Volvo, a relic of its ownership years, must make a useful contribution to its balance sheet. An Aston Martin V12 started life as a doubled-up Mondeo V6 after all, and Ford-made bits will go into Indian-owned Jaguar and China-owned Volvo for a long time to come.

VW has been good at absorbing other makes and keeping them all on board. It is rationalising its engineering, concentrating development of sports and luxury cars at Porsche against opposition from Audi, which keeps the 2007 modular longitudinal matrix for the Audi A4, A5 and Q5. With the dust is settling on who owns what at Porsche and VW, Martin Winterkorn told Audi executives just before the Porsche AGM at the end of November that it will keep the lead in developing large luxury cars. Winterkorn reassured Porsche that it won’t be merely a tenth VW brand and will develop the Panamera and future Bentleys, as well as a sports car platform for Porsche, Audi and Lamborghini. It will have a new wind tunnel, a design centre with a hundred new engineers and integrate electronics at Weissach.