When the motor car was new, 120 years ago, hundreds of crazy young men in all corners of the industrialised world – including one Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan – fell to building self-propelled contraptions of their own design.
These vehicles and their successes varied greatly, but when it came to naming them, the inventors all did the same thing: they used their surnames. By the time the Ford Motor Company opened for business in 1903, we had Daimler and Benz, Peugeot and Panhard, Renault and Opel, Dodge and Lanchester. Even Alldays & Onions. And more were waiting in the wings.
However, while companies run by their founders were once common, family and financial fragmentation now means they are rare. Porsche is still active, of course, but Ford is the only major car company to have been led and controlled by the founding family for its entire history (122 years and counting).
The architect of its survival in this guise is its current executive chairman for the past 19 years, William Clay Ford Jr, known far and wide as Bill.
When Ford’s charismatic big boss dropped into this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed as part of a brief UK tour, accompanied by his sons Will (aged 34) and Nick (29), both of whom have recently been recruited by Ford Motor from busy careers in non-automotive businesses.
I grabbed the opportunity for a wide-ranging chat with all three. My first somewhat crude question – why are you here? – took us rather swiftly to the heart of their purpose.
The trio were at Goodwood to appreciate cool cars and trucks, they said, and to mark the all-important 60th anniversary of the Transit – the van that forms the basis of Ford’s thriving commercial vehicle business.
They were also contemplating what would be Bill’s first visit to Ford’s 2026 Formula 1 powertrain partner, Red Bull Racing – from which CEO and team principal Christian Horner had just been sacked. However, Bill also made it crystal clear that a big part of this three-man tour was about publicly living out the family heritage, embodying the family brand.
For Bill, maintaining family control of the company isn’t primarily motivated by power or profit, even if such things are clearly important if Ford is to remain healthy.
Much of it is about maintaining the focus of his great-grandfather Henry, who, while roundly criticised for views that wouldn’t wash in today’s world, funded a vast array of philanthropic projects and believed, once the company began to thrive, that Ford’s purpose was to try to make the world better.
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It's staggering how Ford have mismanaged and squandered their dominance in Europe. In the UK, for example, they dominated the market for decades even up to the last few years. Quite how they've slept through this collapse is bewildering. They used to have a reach into every segment and unusually do ok in each - their badge has been regarded enough to not look out of place on a city car, a family car, a pickup truck, a van, a sports coupe... yet today they've almost disappeared from the high street in terms of dealerships, they have no city car, no Supermini, the Focus and Mondeo have gone too. They sell 2 rebooted VW's in the form of Explorer and, I struggle to write it without vomiting, the 'Capri' - their vans are now VW's in disguise. They don't make trucks anymore as far as I can tell. It's going to have to be one radical plan to turn this around if they even want to. The idea Ford, that legendary badge known for being cars to the masses for over a century, can survive into the future by sticking a Ford badge on other people's platforms is laughable.