FORD CRANKS UP.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIV, Issue 277, 3 November 1924, Page 7

FORD CRANKS UP.

HIS AUSTRALIAN SCHEME. A MiLLION POUND POLICY. Victoria (8.C.) Oct. 21. With characteristic speed, Henry Ford has set the machine in . motion which will result in the formation of a company in Australia with £1,000,000 capital, and the establishment of five assembly plants and one body-manu-facturing plant. Three of the principals of the firm have sailed by the Makura for Sydney. These are Mr. Phillip Grandjean, secretary of the Ford Motor Company of Canada, Mr. Hubert French, sales manager, and Mr R. A. Macfarlane local manager at Toronto who will organise the Ford Motor Company of Australia, with a capital of £1,000,000. Five assembly plants and one body manufacturing plant will represent an investment or *700,000, while the balance will be invested in floating materials. I Messrs French and Macfarlane will remain in permanent charge of the business in Australia. What has induced the company to establish an Australian factory is that the export from Canada of finished cars has been practically prohibited by the high tariff, and the present Australian distributors will nave prices all in their own hands when they build bodies in Australia. The Canadian company will continue to make chasses in a knockdown form tor shipment to Australia. At present Australia is supplied with Ford cars by the Canada Ford Com* pany, though, although a distinct entity, is a branch of the parent company at Detroit. . ' Henry Ford, who is the son or a Michigan farmer, wag apprenticed to engineering as a boy, and, after trying his hand at farming, he built his first motor engine, and completed his first motor car in the backyard of hia home in Detroit. He. built another car, and then, with the aid of several other Went into the automobile business. In 1919 it cost him £15,000,000 to buy out the other shareholders. Last year it was estimated that Ford’s wealth was £450,000,000 —twice Rockefeller’s estimated fortune. In 1910 Ford, was producing 18,000 cars a year; in 1921 he produced a million and a-quarter.