On the 31st of March 1925 the Ford Motor Company of Australia was officially established with the announcement that its headquarters, along with a manufacturing and assembly facility, would be located at Geelong, Victoria.
Officially an outpost of Ford Motor Company of Canada (which held the manufacturing rights to Ford vehicles in the British Commonwealth), the company first started assembling the Model T from CKD (complete knock-down) kits supplied by Ford of Canada in a disused wool storage warehouse while construction was in progress for the production facility.
Local production of the Model T gave way to the Model A in 1928, which was superseded by the Ford V8 in 1932, while the introduction of the Ford Coupe Utility in 1934 would kick off the long and continuing love affair with utes in Australian and New Zealand.
Locally assembled versions of models like the Prefect, Anglia, Zephyr and Escort all paved the way for the most Australian of all cars; the Ford Falcon (well, alongside the Holden Commodore that is), which started life as an American model adapted for Australia, before becoming a fully Australian designed, engineered and produced vehicle with the launch of the XA in 1972.
All of these vehicles - and many more - were celebrated at the Melbourne Showgrounds last week when Ford Australia held a special event for invited guests, dealers and the media where it not only launched the new Ranger Super Duty ute, but also a "Pro Converter" programme to connect its customers with Ford-certified conversion specialists (with an eye on the extreme conversion market opened up by the launch of the Super Duty), and announced a new three-year AU$1.5 million partnership with the Australian Red Cross.
While the company also celebrated a hundred years of sponsorship of the Geelong Cats Australian rules football club (that Ford says is the longest-running partnership in professional sport, kicking off the same year the company was established), the focus was still very clearly on the cars, with a breath-taking array of historic Fords on show.
Everything from a number of Model Ts right up to the all-electric Mustang Mach E were on show, with a collection of legendary Aussie Ford racing cars, a selection European Fords, many, many much-loved examples of the Falcon, and even a few oddities like the original concept car that would go on to become the Ford Territory SUV and replicas of the two main MFP Interceptors from the iconic Aussie movie Mad Max.
The event preceded the Geelong All-Ford Day that was taking place in the weekend, where a lot of the cars at the invitation-only event would also be on display to the general public.
Check out our gallery below for a sample of some of the cars on display.
