It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, The company sells automobiles and commercial vehicles under the Ford brand, and luxury cars under its Lincoln brand. They have minority ownership but a plurality of the voting power. Ford introduced methods for large-scale manufacturing of cars and large-scale management of an industrial workforce using elaborately engineered manufacturing sequences typified by moving assembly lines. By , these methods were known around the world as Fordism.
Ford owned the Swedish automaker Volvo from to Ford is the second-largest U. The Henry Ford Company was Henry Ford's first attempt at a car manufacturing company and was established on November 3, This became the Cadillac Motor Company on August 22, , after Ford left with the rights to his name.
The first president was not Ford, but local banker John S. Gray , who was chosen in order to assuage investors' fears that Ford would leave the new company the way he had left its predecessor. During its early years, the company produced just a few cars a day at its factory on Mack Avenue and later at its factory on Piquette Avenue in Detroit , Michigan.
Groups of two or three men worked on each car, assembling it from parts made mostly by supplier companies contracting for Ford. Within a decade the company led the world in the expansion and refinement of the assembly line concept, and Ford soon brought much of the part production in-house, via vertical integration. Henry Ford was 39 years old when he founded the Ford Motor Company, which became one of the world's largest and most profitable companies.
It has been in continuous family control for over years, and is one of the largest family-controlled companies in the world. The first gasoline-powered automobile was created in by the German inventor Karl Benz , with his Benz Patent-Motorwagen.
