Ford

The Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F) is an American multinational corporation based in

Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and

incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury brands, Ford

also owns Volvo Cars of Sweden, and a small stake in Mazda of Japan and Aston Martin of

England. Ford's former UK subsidiaries Jaguar and Land Rover were sold to Tata Motors of

India in March 2008.

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. Henry Ford's methods came to be known around the world as Fordism by

1914.

Ford is currently the fourth-largest automaker in the world based on number of vehicles sold

annually, directly behind Volkswagen. In 2007, Ford fell from second to third in US annual

vehicle sales for the first time in 56 years, behind only General Motors and Toyota.

However, Ford occasionally outsells Toyota in shorter periods (most recently, during the

summer months of 2009). As of 2008, Ford has become the second largest automaker in Europe

(only behind Volkswagen), with sales that occasionally exceed those in the United States and

large markets in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Ford is the seventh-ranked overall

American-based company in the 2008 Fortune 500 list, based on global revenues in 2008 of

$146.3 billion. In 2008, Ford produced 5.532 million automobiles and employed about 213,000

employees at around 90 plants and facilities worldwide. Starting in 2007, Ford received more

initial quality survey awards from J. D. Power and Associates than any other automaker. Five

of Ford's vehicles ranked at the top of their categories and fourteen vehicles ranked in the

top three.

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