49 Fun Facts About Ford

Which brothers were among the Ford Motor Company's twelve original investors?

Dodge brothers John and Horace built the engines and chassis of the earliest Fords and held a tenth of the company's stock, then launched a rival car of their own in 1914.

In which Michigan city is Ford Motor Company headquartered?

Dearborn is Henry Ford's home ground: he was born on a farm there in 1863, built his Fair Lane estate in the city and died there in 1947.

What was the Model T's famous nickname?

Tin Lizzie cost about $850 when it appeared in 1908, but Ford kept cutting the price as output soared, until a basic one sold for as little as $260.

Henry Ford was once chief engineer at a company named for which inventor?

Edison Illuminating Company of Detroit made Ford its chief engineer in 1893; he built his first car in his spare hours and quit in 1899 to start an automobile firm.

Roughly how many Model Ts were built in total?

About 15 million Model Ts were built between 1908 and 1927, more than any other car until the Volkswagen Beetle finally overtook it in 1972.

From 1914 to 1925, Ford sold the Model T in only which colour?

Black was the only choice for those twelve years, yet the earliest Model Ts had come in red, green, grey and blue before Ford standardised the paint.

In which country did Henry Ford build Fordlândia, a jungle town meant to supply rubber for his tyres?

Brazil's Amazon beat him: blight tore through the close-planted rubber trees and workers rioted against Ford-style rules, and the company sold the land back to the state in 1945.

Ford's moving assembly line of 1913 was inspired partly by the overhead trolleys of which Chicago industry?

Meatpacking plants took carcasses apart as they moved past the butchers; Ford ran the idea in reverse to put cars together, cutting assembly of a Model T from over 12 hours to about 93 minutes.

Ford's famous January 1914 wage announcement set a minimum daily pay of how much?

$5.00 a day more than doubled the old $2.34 minimum; thousands of job seekers lined up outside the plant in the January cold, and Ford's costly staff turnover fell away.

What did Henry Ford call the self-propelled vehicle he completed and test-drove in June 1896?

Quadricycle was a light frame on four bicycle wheels that Ford put together in a shed behind his Detroit home; he sold it for $200 to pay for a second car, then bought it back for $60.

After Henry Ford left the Henry Ford Company in 1902, it was renamed and became which luxury marque?

Cadillac was born when Ford's former backers, about to sell off the plant, were talked into building cars after all; they named the firm after the French founder of Detroit.

Henry Ford's chartered 'Peace Ship' sailed to Europe in a failed attempt to end which war?

World War I ground on regardless: Ford fell ill and sailed home only days after the ship reached Norway in December 1915, leaving the other delegates to carry on without him.

Charcoal briquettes made from Model T wood scraps, first sold as Ford Charcoal, became which brand?

Kingsford comes from the Michigan town that grew up around Ford's sawmill and charcoal plant, itself named after E. G. Kingsford, the cousin's husband who found Ford the timberland.

In the 1937 'Battle of the Overpass', Ford security men beat which future UAW president?

Walter Reuther and fellow UAW organisers were beaten as they arrived to hand out leaflets at the plant gates on 26 May 1937; news photographs of the attack made headlines across the country.

Which vast Ford complex, finished in 1928, had its own steel mill and turned raw materials into complete cars?

River Rouge was Henry Ford's bid to control every step himself: he had the river dredged so freighters could unload beside the plant, and 93 buildings rose around its own railway.

Which successor did Ford unveil in December 1927 after finally ending Model T production?

Model A reused the name of the company's very first car of 1903; Ford shut the old lines in mid-1927 to retool, and crowds mobbed showrooms when the newcomer appeared that December.

What was the nickname of the Ford Trimotor, the three-engined airliner that first flew in 1926?

Tin Goose airliners flew the daytime legs when Transcontinental Air Transport began crossing America in 48 hours in 1929, with passengers put on trains by night.

During World War II, which bomber did Ford mass-produce at its Willow Run plant?

B-24 Liberator bombers were built at Willow Run on a moving line like cars rather than by hand, and at the 1944 peak a finished one rolled out about every hour.

Which luxury carmaker did Ford buy out of receivership in 1922 for $8 million?

Lincoln was founded in 1917 by Henry Leland, who named it after the first president he had voted for; five years later it was insolvent and Ford's was the only bid.

Which Ford brand, produced from the 1939 to 2011 model years, was named after a Roman god?

Mercury was created to fill the price gap between everyday Fords and the company's luxury cars; after years of shrinking sales, Ford announced in 2010 that it would close the brand.

Which Ford brand, launched in 1957 and axed in 1959, became a byword for failure?

Edsel reached showrooms just as a recession hit sales of medium-priced cars, and Ford pulled the plug in November 1959 after barely two years.

Ford's ill-fated 1958 mid-price brand had Teletouch push-button transmission controls mounted where?

In the steering wheel hub, a ring of buttons replaced the gear lever; the electric system proved unreliable and was dropped for the 1959 models.

Ford asked Marianne Moore to suggest names for its new 1958 car and got 'Utopian Turtletop'; what was her profession?

Poet Marianne Moore was approached because Ford's researchers thought nobody understood words better; her other ideas included 'Mongoose Civique' and 'Pastelogram', and none was used.

Which Ford model debuted for 1955 as a two-seater created to compete with the Chevrolet Corvette?

Thunderbird outsold the Corvette many times over in 1955; Ford, which called it a 'personal car' rather than a sports car, then gave it a back seat for 1958.

The first Ford Mustang was introduced on April 17, 1964 at what event?

New York World's Fair crowds saw the car on 17 April 1964 and dealers took about 22,000 orders that day, although Plymouth's rival Barracuda had reached the market two weeks earlier.

The original Ford Mustang was built on the platform of which compact Ford?

Falcon underpinnings kept the sporty Mustang cheap to develop and to buy, at about $2,300, and Ford built its millionth within two years of the launch.

Which Mustang champion was fired by Henry Ford II in 1978 and went on to run Chrysler?

Lee Iacocca was sacked even though Ford made about $2 billion that year; hired by a Chrysler close to bankruptcy, he won a $1.5 billion federal rescue and returned it to record profits.

Which Ford model line was America's best-selling vehicle every year for over four decades through 2024?

F-Series pickups have led US truck sales since 1977; for 2015 Ford switched the F-150's body from steel to aluminium, which cut about 700 pounds from the truck.

Ford's GT40 won the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans, ending a six-year winning streak by which manufacturer?

Ferrari was the whole point: Ford built the GT40 with the single aim of beating the Italian team at Le Mans, and in 1966 its cars finished first, second and third.

What does the '40' in GT40 refer to?

Its height in inches: the roof sat just 40 inches off the ground; another firm held the GT40 trademark, so the taller 2005 revival was sold as plain Ford GT.

Which two drivers gave Ford its all-American Le Mans win of 1967?

Dan Gurney and A. J. Foyt were Americans in an American car; on the podium Gurney shook his champagne and sprayed it around, and he is credited with starting that racing tradition.

Which 1970s Ford subcompact was recalled in 1978 over fuel tanks that could rupture and burn in rear-end crashes?

Pinto recalls covered about 1.5 million cars; Indiana then put Ford itself on trial for reckless homicide over three deaths in a burning car, and a jury acquitted the company.

Which Ford SUV was sold from 1966 to 1996 and revived for the 2021 model year?

Bronco earned a fame Ford never planned in June 1994, when millions watched live as police trailed a white one carrying O. J. Simpson along a Los Angeles freeway.

The Ford Explorer rollover controversy involved tread separation on which maker's tyres?

Firestone recalled 6.5 million tyres in August 2000, and the two companies then blamed each other in public, the tyre maker pointing to the low pressure Ford had recommended.

Which car ended the Ford Taurus's five-year run as America's best-selling car in 1997?

Toyota Camry unseated the Taurus in 1997, just a year after Ford had restyled its bestseller around oval shapes, while Toyota had kept its own redesign conservative.

In 1998 Ford of Europe introduced the Focus as a replacement for which long-running model?

Escort was nearly the new car's name too: Ford settled on Focus only in early 1998, and the last of the old line was phased out gradually rather than dropped at once.

What was the nickname of Henry Ford II, who ran the company from 1945 to 1979?

Hank the Deuce became president at 28 and promptly fired Harry Bennett, the head of his grandfather's union-busting security force.

What was the nickname of the twelve-storey office tower that served as Ford's headquarters from 1956 to 2025?

The Glass House was left behind in 2025, when Ford moved into a new headquarters built where its old product development centre had been demolished to make room.

How is Bill Ford, who took over as the company's chairman in January 1999, related to founder Henry Ford?

Great-grandson of the founder, Bill Ford made himself chief executive too in 2001 after Jacques Nasser was ousted, then gave that job up to an outsider five years later.

Alan Mulally, Ford's CEO from 2006 to 2014, came from which company?

Boeing's commercial-aircraft chief was hired away in September 2006, when Bill Ford gave up the chief executive's chair himself to bring in an outsider.

What 2006 arrangement let Ford survive the 2008–09 crisis without bankruptcy or a bailout?

A large line of credit: in late 2006 Ford pledged nearly all its assets as collateral to borrow more than $23 billion, shortly before the credit markets froze.

How did the bosses of Ford, GM and Chrysler travel to Washington in November 2008 to seek federal aid?

By private jet, each in his own: lawmakers tore into them at the hearing, one likening it to turning up at a soup kitchen in high hat and tuxedo.

Ford owned which Swedish car maker from 1999 to 2010?

Volvo cost Ford about $6.5 billion in 1999 and fetched only $1.8 billion when it was sold to China's Geely in 2010, less than a third of the price paid.

In 2008 Ford sold Jaguar and Land Rover to which company?

Tata Motors, then India's biggest vehicle maker, paid $2.3 billion for the two British marques, about half of what Ford had originally spent to buy them.

Ford's 2021 electric crossover borrows the second half of its name from which classic Mustang performance variant?

Mach 1 began as a performance package for the 1969 Mustang; borrowing its name half a century later was Ford's way of tying an electric SUV to the pony car.

What is the name of the all-electric F-150 that entered production in April 2022?

Lightning was well received but never made money: Ford stopped building the all-electric pickup in December 2025 and kept the name for a plug-in hybrid successor.

Ford Field, which opened in 2002, is the home stadium of which team?

Detroit Lions have been Ford family property since William Clay Ford Sr. took the team over in 1964; his widow succeeded him, and their daughter Sheila Ford Hamp took charge in 2020.

Steve McQueen drove a green 1968 Ford Mustang GT in the car chase of which film?

Bullitt's Mustang was sold off after filming and spent decades as one family's runabout and garage relic, then fetched $3.7 million at auction in 2020.

Which future US Defense Secretary, one of Ford's 'Whiz Kids', became the company's president in 1960?

Robert McNamara had been in the job for less than two months when he left to run the Pentagon; he had joined in 1946 with nine fellow Army Air Forces veterans.