Ford Germany - Relocation To Cologne

Relocation To Cologne

In March 1929 General Motors purchased a controlling 80% holding in Opel: Henry Ford's reaction was a prompt decision to build a complete Ford auto-factory in Germany, and before the end of 1929 a site at Cologne (Niehl) made available by the mayor of the city, Konrad Adenauer was acquired by Ford. The 170,000 m2 site was originally intended to support an annual production of 250,000 cars, suggesting a continuation of the spirit of boundless economic optimism that seized western industry in the months preceding the 1929 Wall Street crash. Locating the plant directly beside the Rhine, ensured that, as with Ford's other principal European manufacturing locations in Manchester, Dagenham and Berlin, excellent access existed to the water transport network. On 2 October 1930 Henry Ford, then aged 67, together with Adenauer, aged only 55, laid the foundation stone for the Cologne Ford Plant: construction, which cost 12 Million Marks, progressed rapidly. The assembly operation in Berlin came to an end on 15 April 1931, and on 4 May 1931 the first Cologne produced Ford rolled off the production line. The first vehicle produced was a Ford Model A based truck which, whether by coincidence or by design would also be the first vehicle produced by Ford's new plant at Dagenham, England in October 1931. From that time an increasing proportion of the Ford vehicles sold in Germany were also made in Germany rather than being imported. The Model A was joined at Cologne in 1932 by the Model B.

Small car manufacture started in 1933 with the Ford Köln, a year after its British launch as the Model Y, but it did not have the same impact in Germany as it did in Britain as it was undercut in price by the small Opel.

The Ford Rheinland was a unique model for the German market made by fitting a four-cylinder 3285 cc engine into a Model B V-8 chassis but most products continued to be Detroit designs albeit with local names. The Eifel was the German version of the 10 hp sold in Britain as the Model C and this was joined in 1939 by the first of the long running Taunus range.