Talk:Ford Motor Company

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An event mentioned in this article is a June 16 selected anniversary

Shouldn't Ford Motor Company and Ford (car) (or something to that effect) be different articles?

Ford Motor Company is the parent company which owns Ford, Mercury, Lincoln, Volvo, Jaguar, Land Rover, and Aston Martin and which controlls Mazda, while this article is primarily about the Ford division/brand.

Ford Motor Company is analogous to General Motors. Ford is analogous to Chevrolet. -- stewacide 23:32, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Until recently, it was just Ford, Mercury and Lincoln, and Ford kept all its divisions a bit closer than, say, GM. That's why, I think. --Morven 00:14, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

That was then, this is now :) To quote the FoMoCo website:

Ford Motor Company started the last century with a single man envisioning products that would meet the needs of people in a world on the verge of high-gear industrialization. Today, Ford Motor Company is a family of automotive brands consisting of: Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Mazda, Jaguar, Land Rover, Aston Martin, and Volvo. The company is beginning its second century of existence with a worldwide organization that retains and expands Henry Ford's heritage by developing products that serve the varying and ever-changing needs of people in the global community.

IMHO the article should reflect the current reality (should it not?).

AFAIK Ford (brand) is operated at the regional level (i.e. Ford Europe, Ford North America, Ford Australia, etc.). Lincoln and Mercury are operated as a seperate Lincoln-Mercury division under Ford North America. The European luxury brands are administered under Ford Europe within the "Premier Automotive Group", but have much more atonomy as a group and individually than Lincoln-Mercury within NA operations. Mazda is administered globally from Japan. All are under the controll of Ford Motor Company in Dearborn.

I remember a yew years ago there was an uproar in Dearborn when they replaced the Ford "blue oval" logo on the corporate headquarters with the "Ford Motor Company" script to reflect the new reality. They ended up putting the old logo back due to popular demand, but the point was made. -- stewacide 07:37, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Interesting article: [1] (http://wdb.wardsauto.com/ar/auto_big_blue_oval/) - didn't know it was the 2nd most recognized logo in the world.

Having thought about it, it would probably be a good idea to do the split - if only because otherwise the page threatens to become quite unwieldy. But what split do we want to do?

An obvious split is splitting as you said Ford Motor Company away as an article only about the parent company. Do we then want to split off the different regional Fords, since each one has a rather different history? There's not much commonality between Ford (US) and Ford (Europe), after all.

Another issue is history -- how do we divide it? There was a period where both 'Ford Motor Company' and Ford (US) were the same entity. --Morven 19:36, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I agree that the Ford subsidaries (Ford Europe, Ford North America, Ford Australia, Ford China, Ford South America, etc.) should be seperate articles since they don't have much to do with each other.

Also, the period where Ford (North America) = Ford Motor Company was very brief (since both Lincoln and the foreign subsidaries came early). The Ford Motor Company article should probably give a brief overview of the entire history (with links to the full articles) but should include more indepth early "common" history. -- stewacide 20:11, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Ford cars are known for their levels of high maintenence. This has come so far that an acronym has been made: "Fix Or Repair Daily". - isn't this an old argument? Perhaps it applies to US Ford models - in the UK Fords are known for being very reliable. There seems to be an acronym for other models, mostly unfair, probably intended as a joke (FIAT = Fix It Again Tony etc.). I propose we remove this paragraph - comments? --Dan Huby 16:04, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It's the typical kind of thing that advocates of another manufacturer make up about the competition. Ford, unfortunately, has a short and joke-acronym-friendly name! IMO, all such slurs should be removed from this and other articles, especially if (as here) it's presented as factual.

However, this was recently added by an anon IP and thus can be considered vandalism; I've removed. —Morven 18:02, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I just saw that the Dearborn Assembly Plant produced its last car on May 10, 2004. Someone may wish to discuss that in the article, or not. I guess it's the oldest Ford plant at the moment, but production is shifting to another plant in Flat Rock, Michigan —Mulad 05:47, May 11, 2004 (UTC)