page_title: Ford Australia
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Ford Australia / History
caption_attribution_description: T-model Ford car parked outside Geelong Library at its launch in 1915
context_page_description: The Ford Motor Company of Australia Limited, known by its trading name Ford Australia, is the former Australian subsidiary of United States-based automaker Ford Motor Company. It was founded in Geelong, Victoria, in 1925 as an outpost of Ford Motor Company of Canada, Limited. At that time, Ford Canada was a separate company from Ford USA. Henry Ford had granted the manufacturing rights of Ford motor vehicles in the British Empire, to Canadian investors.
  Ford Australia's first products were Model Ts assembled from complete knock-down kits provided by Ford of Canada. It is best known in more recent times for having produced the Falcon, originally a US model introduced in Australia in 1960, but adapted to Australian requirements and road conditions.
context_section_description: On 31 March 1925, Ford announced that Geelong, was to be the Australian headquarters. The first Australian-built Ford was a Model T that came off an improvised production line in a disused Geelong wool storage warehouse in June 1925, while work started on a factory in the nearby suburb of Norlane. In 1928 the factory switched to the Model A and was followed by the Ford V8 in 1932.
  In 1934, the company released a coupe utility based upon the Model A American Ford "Closed Cab Pickup Truck" that had been produced for 6 years from 1928. The local designer was Ford engineer Louis (Lewis) Bandt. During the Great Depression, banks would not extend credit to farmers to purchase passenger cars- in the belief they were unnecessary luxuries. However, they would lend money for the purchase of "working" vehicles. The coupe utility fulfilled the need of farmers to have a workhorse which could also be used "to take the wife to church on Sunday and the pigs to the market on Monday".
  In 1956, the company bought a large tract of land in the northern Melbourne suburb of Campbellfield, and in July 1961 announced that the new Melbourne factory would become the company headquarters.
  Ford Australia was one of Ford's five product development centres globally. It now fully imports cars and trucks for the Asia/Pacific region after the closure of its Australian operations. It was expected to retain about 1300 workers in Australia.
caption: Ford Model T parked outside the Geelong Library at its launch in Australia in 1925
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