While Holden's origins lie in the safe, sleepy CBD of Adelaide, the origins of Ford Australia must be sought much further afield, in a far-off land shrouded in myth and legend... Canada.
The Promised Land
Freshwater lakes, ice hockey and maple syrup: Canada is land of contrasts. It's also basically the inverse of Australia – a huge, sparsely-populated country of vast plains and stark natural beauty, but forbiddingly cold rather than punishingly hot¹. That Ford's journey to our shores involved a detour there, however, is owed to another shared quirk: We were both members of the British Commonwealth at a time when that actually meant something.
The Canadian in question was Gordon Morton McGregor, and he was the son of William McGregor, the president of a wagon company based in Walkerville, Ontario. Gordon took over management of the company in 1901, and upon the death of his father in 1903, became its president as well. At a meeting with his brothers Walter and Donald in 1904, Gordon is reported to have said: "There are men in Detroit who say every farmer will soon be using an automobile. I don't see why we can not build them here in the wagon factory." That led to a deal with no lesser creature than Henry Ford, to build Ford automobiles for sale throughout the Commonwealth, apart from Britain.
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| Inside Walkerville Wagon Works, c.1914. Every Australian Ford built before 1925 passed through here. (Source: Windsor Prints) |
The McGregors were in prime position to take on this business – literally, as their position was in the city of Windsor, right across the river from Detroit, Michigan. Like Albury-Wodonga, Windsor and Detroit are effectively one city, even though a river border runs between them², and Ford had just opened his first proper factory at 461 Piquette Avenue, Detroit³, replacing the rented plant at 588-592 Mack Avenue. In 1904, Canada was already a self-governing Dominion but, unlike Australia (which still used British pounds), Canada had been using the loonie since 1857. This unique positioning halfway between the U.S. and U.K. gave Canadian businesses a bit more leeway when it came to currency exchange and trade, making the McGregors Ford's gateway to Australia.
It was a good moment to ally with Ford, as in 1906 they'd produced 8,729 of the 33,200 cars built in the U.S. In 1907, Ford alone was responsible for 35 percent of the American market and starting to look further afield. They reportedly saw Australia, "as their largest single foreign market", and began efforts to organise their business here. In August 1909, the head of Ford of Canada dispatched R.J. Durance and his wife Ivy to the Port of Melbourne to set up an office and establish a distributor in each state. The initial appointments were:
- NSW: Davis & Fehon Motors Ltd
- Vic: Tarrant Motor Company
- SA: Duncan & Fraser Ltd.⁴
- Qld: Queensland Motor Company
- WA: Graves & Dwyer Motors Ltd
- Tas: D.R.S. Nettleford & Co.
Each of these distributors gained the sole right to import Fords from the McGregor plant in Windsor, each working out their own import arrangements, spare parts supply and pricing. From there, local garages were encouraged to service Ford products and fit only genuine spare parts, which they bought through the relevant state distributor.
The Model T
In 1909, the Ford in question could only be the evergreen Model T, a car destined to remain in production for nearly twenty years. The Model T had debuted on 1 October 1908, and it was an immediate hit in its native U.S. The perfect car for the times, it was a machine of pure functionality and no fat. It was powered by a 177ci (2.9-litre) side-valve four-cylinder engine that developed 20 brake horsepower (15 kW). It had a two-speed epicyclic transmission and could achieve a maximum speed of 70km/h, with an average fuel economy around 9 litres per 100km.
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| 1915 Model T parked at Johnstone Park, with the GM Hitchcock Memorial Art Gallery visible in the background. |
As early as 1909, it was clear that Henry Ford believed that he had developed a completely perfect motor vehicle, as that year he adopted the same development policy the Soviets had used with the T-34: "No new models, no new motors, no new bodies, and no new colours." No modification was accepted unless it made the Model T cheaper and faster to build, which partly explains how the asking price dropped from an initial $825 to just $259 (just over $28,000 to $4,600 in 2024 USD) by the time production ended. In 1912, he even asserted that the car could not be improved, and given a staggering 15,007,003 Model Ts would be built by the time the lines shut down, in the moment that probably didn't seem so absurd. In 1921, Ford held 55.7 percent of the US market, while arch-rival General Motors languished on just 12.7 percent. By the time it was finally dropped, half the cars ever built were Model Ts.
[As an aside, this period is doubtless the origin of the apocryphal phrase, "You can have any colour, as long as it's black." This was in fact only true for U.S.-built Model Ts produced between 1914 and 1926: Black Japan Varnish was indeed the preferred finish, but only because that particular enamel dried faster than anything else on the market. Earlier models had come in a broad range of colours, and the invention of Duco by DuPont in the 1920s, combined with flagging sales, eventually forced Henry to bring back the rest of the rainbow by 1926.]
The Model T proved as big a hit in Australia as it had in the U.S. and, more than any other vehicle, is credited with motorising the great southern land. Mr and Mrs Durance had brought with them a brace of fully-assembled Model Ts and demonstrated them to Australian country towns, with great effect. Durance famously declared, "Ford agencies were appointed anywhere smoke came out of a chimney," and they did their job well, with some 250,000 Model Ts ending up on our shores. Ford's share of the Australian market reached an astonishing 69 percent in January 1925, higher than Holden would ever achieve – yet it would fall to less than 35 percent within a few years.
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| 1912 Model T at Gundagai Historical Museum (own work). |
The Dalgety Plant
This early bull run was halted by changes to the situation both locally and Stateside. In Australia, the problem was the growing discontent with the distributors gouging their own sub-dealers, not just the customers. One example was the South Australian distributor, Duncan & Fraser (again), which had divided their state up into a system of "Urban Dealers" and "Limited Urban Dealers". The difference was that an Urban Dealer could sell anywhere, but a Limited Urban Dealer had to remain within their own territory – an arrangement that was clearly unfair, as at any time an Urban Dealer could step in and undercut a Limited Dealer's sales. Naturally, Duncan & Fraser hadn't forgotten to designate themselves an Urban Dealer, inciting plenty of resentment among their sub-dealers. It was like this everywhere, and it was serious enough that in 1923 Ford of Canada dispatched two of their executives, Hubert French and Mel Brooks (no relation), to sort it all out.
French wrote a comprehensive study recommending Ford replace the existing system of state distributors with a single in-house assembly plant. The state distributors remained mercifully unaware that the original proposal contained this bombshell until it was too late:
We would eliminate the present distributors – six in number – and turn their present sub dealers into main dealers. By doing so we could reduce the price of our product to the public approximately 10% and increase our dealer profit 33.3%.
In short, without any prior discussion – without even informing them, in fact – every state distributor was to be downgraded to just another dealer, effectively ending their monopolies.
Within three months of getting permission, Henry's son Edsel Ford had cleared $3 million to get the project up and running, and French and five other executives boarded a boat back to Australia. Upon arrival, one of their first tasks was to locate a suitable site for the new factory. The facility needed proximity to an urban centre to provide a good supply of labour, and it had to have a deep-water port to bring the kits into the country by ship. French had initially wanted Tasmania, but was talked into accepting Geelong, Victoria instead – then Australia's fourth-largest city, and soon to become one of the largest manufacturing hubs in the country, home to Ford, International Harvester, Shell and Alcoa.
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| Norlane under construction, mid-1925. |
French secured 100 acres owned by the Geelong Harbour Trust near Corio Bay, already home to a pub and an old wool store, in what would soon become the suburb of Norlane (traditionally Wathaurong land). To tide them over while it was under construction, French rented what has usually been described as a "disused wool shed"⁵ from Dalgety & Co. at the eastern end of Gheringhap Street.
On 31 March 1925, Ford incorporated two new companies: the Ford Manufacturing Company of Australia, and the Ford Motor Company of Australia. Split for tax purposes, they effectively operated as a single unit, with Hubert French as the first General Manager. One of the company's first actions was to block the state distributors from importing any more kits from Canada and pressured them to use up their existing stocks instead. They were told it was a strategy to clear the shelves of the excess cars they were choosing to hold onto in a declining market, but its real aim was to starve both the distributors and their customers of new cars, creating a "vacuum" for the new company to move into.
In fact, neither the distributors nor the infant Ford Australia would ever regain the numbers seen in the early 1920s – not with the Model T, at least. As we know, the economic headwinds started early for Australia, and the numbers tell the tale. In the last three months of 1924, Duncan & Fraser sold 263 Fords in South Australia. In January 1925, the total dropped to just 66. February saw a rebound to 143, but then March dropped to 125; April, 92; May, 65; and June, a mere 42.
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| Model Ts lined up outside Dalgety's, 1925. |
Nevertheless. on 1 July 1925, Ford Australia officially unveiled the first locally-assembled Model T, built from a CKD (Complete Knock Down) kit manufactured in Canada, and priced at a very competitive £185 (just shy of $18,500 in 2023). There were three colours available: Empire Grey, Cobalt Blue and Imperial Buff. They began rolling off the rather primitive, 12-metre Dalgety assembly line on 25 July, but at first they were available in only limited numbers. The supply chain had been disrupted to make sure everything now flowed through Geelong, meaning Duncan & Fraser had to ship their custom coachbuilt bodies interstate on a train, only to get them back later as completed motor cars weeks later. Worse, what came back was typically of rather poor quality, and the time delay before finished cars returned to their dealership was crippling. July 1925 was a new low for Duncan & Fraser, with only 24 completed cars delivered that month.
Norlane
Fortunately (for the company, at least), by the end of the year Ford had a proper assembly plant ready to go. It was located at the corner of Melbourne and North Shore Roads, Norlane, and it featured a rather charming façade of red brick and whitewashed concrete pillars, capped off with an odd "inside-out" roofline. This was to be the headquarters and manufacturing base of the first major overseas car company to set up shop in Australia, and the first large factory in Victoria designed for mass production using assembly lines. Ford would still be using it in one capacity or another right up until they ceased manufacturing in 2016.
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| When it was first built, the Norlane plant was surrounded by farmland. Today? Not so much. (Source: Facebook) |
That meant for 1926, Ford were able to proudly announce their new, "improved" Model T – which was basically just the old one, except it now had an all-steel body stamped out at Norlane instead of a wooden one coachbuilt by, just for example, Steenbhom Motor Bodies of Alexandria, NSW. The Prussian-born Aaron Moses Steenbhom had immigrated to Australia in the 1850s, and his descendants had began a coachbuilding company in the horse-and-buggy days, only turning to motor bodies around 1905. The first car bought by hire purchase in Australia had in fact been a Steenbhom-bodied Ford, but with Norlane online such boutique manufacturers were surplus to requirements, and Steenbhom quietly closed down in 1927.
Sadly, such is often the cost of progress, and it was going to get worse before it got better.
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| Closer shot of Norlane, c.1935. (Source: Lovell Chen) |
¹ I cannot even imagine what negative thirty Celcius must feel like. I've worked with commercial freezers that operate at that sort of temperature, but the idea of walking outside and experiencing that just shorts out my brain.
² A quirk of the border in this area was that the U.S. actually lies on the northern side of the river, with Canada to the south.
³ Ironically, only a stone's throw from Fisher Body where the Holden prototypes would one day be built.
⁴ As is their wont, Broken Hill answered to Adelaide rather than Sydney.
⁵ It says a lot about my upbringing, I think, that that phrase led me to picture a literal shearing shed. Looking up the address on Google Maps, however, reveals a dockside warehouse instead, which makes a lot more sense.
