Ford Motor Company: Pawning the Blue Oval to Survive the 2008 Crash

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

The Ford Motor Company was Henry Ford's third try. His first venture failed, and its leftover equipment became the Cadillac Motor Company. In June 1903 Ford launched with $28,000 from 12 investors, including John and Horace Dodge, and the investors installed Detroit banker John S. Gray as president. In 1913 the Highland Park plant's moving assembly line broke the Model T into 84 steps and cut build time from over 12 hours to about 90 minutes. The 1927 Model A brought laminated safety glass, and the 1932 flathead V8 came from casting the engine block as a single piece. In 1929 Ford helped build the Gorky automobile plant in the Soviet Union, and in World War II the Willow Run plant built B-24 bombers, at peak one an hour.

At the same time Ford's German and French subsidiaries made trucks for the German war effort under Nazi control, some using forced labor. After the Edsel flop and the 1964 Mustang, the 1990s profits relied heavily on Ford Motor Credit while Ford bought Jaguar, Aston Martin and Volvo. In 2005 its bonds were cut to junk. Alan Mulally arrived in 2006 with the Way Forward plan, closing 14 factories and cutting 30,000 jobs, and raised $25 billion by pledging nearly everything, including the blue oval trademark. Ford avoided a bailout but Mulally urged Congress to rescue GM and Chrysler to protect shared suppliers. In 2025 it dissolved its battery venture with SK Innovation, taking a $19.5 billion hit.

• Joseph Stalin praised Henry Ford in a 1944 letter for his help industrializing the Soviet Union.
• The 1956 Lifeguard package added rear seat belts and a deep dish steering wheel.
• A Ford research lab invented the SQUID, a superconducting magnetic sensor, in 1964.
• In March 2022 Jim Farley split Ford into Ford Model e, Ford Blue and Ford Pro.
• Ford announced it would demolish the Glass House, its Dearborn headquarters for 70 years.