The Ford in Britain Centenary File
Price £27.50
DESCRIPTION:
Ford of America was only months old when the first Fords came to the Shippeys’ American Manufacturers Direct Supply Agency showroom on Long Acre, London. Arthur Shippey thought he could sell a franchise for Ford cars so in March 1904 he displayed three at the Agricultural Hall, Islington. They were on the stand of the American Motor Car Agency, whose proprietor Aubrey Blakiston quickly ordered a dozen more. The car market looked promising and Blakiston exchanged shares in his syndicate against a 16-year lease of Shippey’s Central Emporium showroom, a prospect that appealed to an employee, Percival Lea Dewhurst Perry.
Perry became a shareholder in the American Motor Car Agency and was on hand when the first consignment of Fords were delivered in wooden crates. On 29 March 1911 Perry set up Ford Motor Company (England) Ltd, from a showroom at 55-59 Shaftesbury Avenue, setting out to make Model Ts at Trafford Park, Manchester, the hub of Britain’s rail network. By 1914 he was distributing vehicles in covered wagons to 1000 dealers. The workforce welcomed Ford; it paid the best rates, 10d to 1s 3d (4p to 6.25p) an hour, although under their terms of employment everyone had to be able to shift from trade to trade. Pre-First World War Britain became Ford’s second biggest market after the US, and Ford turned out, in the long run, more stable and consistent in the United Kingdom than the indigenous motor industry. It became integrated so completely into domestic industrial and manufacturing that it was often regarded (sometimes even by Detroit) as quintessentially British.
The nation’s hundred year love affair with Ford is celebrated in this book that rekindles the affection generations had with the big V8s, the practical nimble Anglias and Prefects, milestone cars like the Consul, Zephyr and Zodiac of the 1950s and the Escorts, Cortinas and Granadas later. For 40 years the Transit set a benchmark for middle weight commercial traffic. Ford’s place in the history of motor racing was secured at Le Mans, the world championship grand prix circuits of Formula 1 and was even successfully exported to Indianapolis, to the astonishment of the only slightly senior Ford of America.
The Ford in Britain Centenary File celebrates 100 years of the Ford Motor Company in Britain. It includes a complete history of the company plus a car by car review and technical spec of every model over the last century.
AUTHOR:
Eric Dymock trained as an engineer in Glasgow, writing for Glasgow Herald, Scotsman and Top Gear magazine of the Scottish Sporting Car Club. He joined the road test staff of The Motor, and from 1966 was Grand Prix Correspondent of The Guardian and later The Observer. As Motoring Correspondent of The Sunday Times from1982-1995 he won four Jet Media Excellence Awards, including the overall title in 1988. He wrote and researched motoring programmes for BBC2 and Thames Television, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Going Places, writing for The Times, Financial Times, and Daily Telegraph motoring sections. He was Motoring Editor of Sunday Magazine 1982-1985 and Road and Car, the RAC quarterly published by News International. Until 2006 he was motoring correspondent of Scotland on Sunday.
His books include Champion Year with Jackie Stewart (Pelham, 1970), The Guinness Guide to Grand Prix Motor Racing (Guinness Superlatives, 1980), The Sprites and Midgets (Motor Racing Publications, 1981), BMW A Celebration (Pavilion UK and Orion USA, 1990) and under his own Dove Publishing imprint Rover The First Ninety Years, and Saab Half a Century of Achievement which gained the Guild of Motoring Writers Montagu Award for 1997. Dove’s other books include Jim Clark, Tribute to a Champion, 1997 and the File series of Eric Dymock Motor Books, definitive histories of Audi, Renault, Vauxhall, MG, Jaguar, Ford in Britain and Land Rover. The Complete Bentley published in November 2008 brought his second Montagu Award in 2009. In 2004 the Association of Scottish Motoring Writers presented Eric Dymock with the Jim Clark Memorial Award for Scots who have achieved excellence in the field of motoring.
PUBLICITY:
Ford will be holding several events to mark their anniversary in 2011, starting with the Geneva Motor Show in March.
The film “Made in Dagenham”, a dramatisation of the 1968 strike at the Ford Dagenham car plant where female workers walked out (released October 2010), is due to be featured in the BAFTA Awards in February 2011, the same month as The Ford in Britain Centenary File will be published.
This publication is sure to attract reviews in the motoring press.
The book can be ordered directly from
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