Ford celebrates 100 years of writing truck history
EXACTLY 100 years ago, on July 27, 1917, Ford Motor Company set off on an adventure that would change the automotive industry forever. It began with the Model TT, a truck based on the hugely successful Model T car, and grew, over the course of a century, into the world’s bestselling truck brand.
Over the years, Ford trucks have been used by farmers, soldiers, construction workers, racing drivers, and even crocodile catchers. It is this versatility, capability and reliability that has propelled the company to so many decades of sales leadership, as shared in this look back through history.
But these achievements didn’t happen overnight. What follows is a tale of time, vision, innovation, and the constant quest to deliver trucks that meet and exceed even the greatest expectations.
It was the best of times The year was 1917, and nine years on from the release of the Model T, customer demand was for a vehicle that was tougher and more capable than anything that had gone before. Up stepped the Model TT.
Able to haul a payload of one ton, the TT helped change the way the world did work. Originally sold as a chassis only, with buyers supplying their own body, Ford went on to sell almost 1.3 million TTs until it was replaced in 1928 by the Model A and AA pickup, the latter one of the earliest members of the Ford dynasty of pickup trucks.
A few years later, the Ford Motor Company of Australia received a letter from a farmer’s wife asking for a vehicle that she and her husband could take to church on Sundays, but which could also carry a load of pigs to market on Monday. And so came the Ford coupeutility – the ute – in 1934, a vehicle synonymous with Australia, and representative of another key element of the company’s heritage; listening and responding to the needs of the people.
“With vehicles such as the early utes and pickups, Ford began changing the perception of trucks,” says Robert Kreipke, Ford’s Corporate Historian. “Whereas at one time trucks were considered purely work tools, Ford began to evolve them into a much more balanced vehicle for both work and recreational use.”
“These trucks provided inspiration for the later development of vehicles such as the F-Series and Ranger, which have been hugely successful across diverse markets all over the world,” said Kreipke.
Around the world in 40 years In the aftermath of World War II, Ford refocused its attention on North American truck design, and 1948 saw the introduction of the company’s first purposebuilt truck platform, and with it the opportunity to greatly increase the capability of Ford vehicles.
The first of this versatile new style of trucks was available in eight sizes, from the half-ton capacity F-1 to the three-ton capacity F-8; the birth of the famous F-Series, which has been the bestselling pickup in the United States every year since 1977, and the country’s bestselling vehicle outright for 35 consecutive years.
With each successive generation, Ford has continued to create and add features based on customer needs, with continuous innovation always key to its success.
The Tough that Ford Built In 1976, a copywriter for a Ford truck magazine advertisement wrote three simple words: Built Ford Tough, the phrase that would come to epitomize Ford’s commitment to creating strong, capable, safe and powerful trucks. It now defines what customers across the world have come to expect from the blue oval brand.
One of the first massproduced Built Ford Tough vehicles was the Ford Ranger, the company’s first compact pickup truck introduced in North America in 1982.
Originally designed and built in the U.S., Ranger’s reputation as a tough, smart and capable vehicle quickly caught on, leading it to thrive in a number of diverse markets around the world. It is now the most bought midsize pickup in Europe, South Africa, New Zealand, and a number of ASEAN markets such as Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar.
A BRAVE NEW WORLD
Over the years, Ford has continued to innovate and explore the performance and specialty truck segments, and the introduction of the Raptor name with the F-150 SVT Raptor in 2009 took this to even greater heights.
Inspired by desert racing trucks, Raptor has always been the ultimate highperformance off-roader, and its advances in areas such as engine efficiency, suspension, smart technology and raw power embody not just the Build Ford Tough spirit, but also the way Ford has influenced, revolutionized and reshaped how the world looks at trucks.
This includes the latest announcement to introduce its best-selling Built Ford Tough truck franchise to China with the launch of the F-150 Raptor in early 2017. Ford also confirmed that the popular Ford Ranger midsize pick-up will be launched in the world’s largest auto market starting in 2018.
So while the styling, power and capability of Ford trucks have all changed since the first Model TT rolled off the assembly line a hundred years ago, the company’s core mission to provide vehicles that address and surpass customer demands has remained the same, surviving even the greatest test of all: time.
FORD FACTS
The Model A, and subsequently the Model AA, were the first vehicles to sport an early version of the Ford script in an oval badge
More commonly known as the ute, the coupe-utility was designed by Lewis Bandt, at the time Ford of Australia’s only vehicle designer.
In 1941, Ford temporarily put a stop to all civilian vehicle production and began producing the first ‘general purpose’ vehicles – GPs, or jeeps – to assist the Allied effort in WWII
Ford has sold 26 million F-Series trucks in the U.S. since January 1977. If placed bumper-to-bumper, the line would be over 90,000 miles long, more than three-and-ahalf times the circumference of the Earth
CELEBRATING TRUCK HERITAGE
In time for its centennial, head on to a Ford dealership near you to get a Ford Ranger with the best deals up for grabs. Customers doing test drives for the Ranger can also get free trucker caps to celebrate Truck Month.