Ford Australia

Country

Australia

Parent

Ford (USA)

Subsidiaries

Brands

Ford

Location

Headquarters and main plant: Broadmeadows, Melbourne, Victoria.
R&D center: Geelong, Melbourne, Victoria.

Sales figures

2008: 104,715 units

Introduction

Apart from USA and Europe, Australia is another location where Ford has full capability of developing and producing its own cars. The sole product created by Ford Australia is Falcon, a large and tough car designed to the requirements of Aussie and Kiwi. For decades it has been rivaling Holden Commodore as the top-selling car in Australia. However, as the market is shifting towards smaller and more fuel efficient cars in recent years, its future is doubtful.

Brief History

The Australia operation of Ford was established in 1925 by Ford Canada. Initially it produced Model T from kits imported. After WWII, it assembled mostly European Ford models such as Consul and Zephyr.

By the mid-1950s, Ford realized that in order to compete with Holden in price, it had to localize production rather than continue assembling cars from imported components which were taxed heavily. Therefore in 1960 it adapted the American Ford Falcon for production in its newly built Broadmeadows plant. However, the early Falcon was not renowned for reliability as it was not designed for the tough conditions of Australian roads.

1972 Falcon XA

The American Falcon died in 1970, but its name continued to live in Australia. In 1972, the first Australian-engineered Falcon, codenamed XA, was launched. Although still employed a lot of Detroit technology and styling theme, it was tailor-made for Australian roads. In the next 3 decades, Falcon continued evolving away from its American roots and became a distinguish breed. It usually rivaled with Holden Commodore as the top selling car in Australia.

1998 Falcon AU

Nevertheless, sales of both cars had been declining since the mid-2000s due to high fuel price and intense competition from Toyota. As production of Aurion / Camry was localized, Toyota took the top spot since 2004.