Sunday 1st October 1911

Ford opened its first an assembly plant outside North America, a former tram factory in Trafford Park, Manchester, England, employing 60 staff to assemble the Ford Model T. The need to import parts from the American mid-west must have complicated the assembly process, since the Trafford Park plant quickly took to purchasing components on its own account far closer to home. For two years bodies were delivered to the Trafford Park assembly location individually on handcarts from a firm of body builders called Scott Brothers, located down the road. Ford purchased Scott Brothers in 1912. By now, however, Ford in Michigan were beginning to bring together various manufacturing techniques initially at their Piquette Avenue Plant and, after 1910, at their Highland Park factory.[1] By 1912 Ford had in effect invented assembly line auto-production and work went ahead to apply the new techniques at Trafford Park. The new techniques were introduced progressively, but between 1912 and 1913 output doubled from 3,000 to 6,000 cars. In 1912 the British built Model Ts were offered for £175 on the domestic market at a time when Austin a powerful UK based competitor, were offering their smaller slower 10 hp model for £240: finding customers for the Manchester built Fords does not seem to have been a problem. Trafford Park was on schedule to produce 10,000 Fords in 1914 when the outbreak of war intervened. Understanding of mass production techniques advanced considerably between 1914 and 1918, even if the output of the cutting edge technologies was now represented by munitions. Henry Ford took a pacifist line but it appears that the Trafford Park plant remained employed for the production of vehicles, possibly with the emphasis on agricultural tractors. When peace broke out, the Trafford Park plant was extended and output grew rapidly. However, in 1919, following several policy disputes, Perry left the company and Ford in Dearborn applied a more direct approach to UK manufacturing. By the early 1920s, the view was taken that the Trafford Park factory was reaching its limits: in 1924 Henry Ford sent over a senior representative to identify and purchase a suitable site for a larger plant, and later that year a site was acquired at Dagenham, although Ford UK production continued to be concentrated at Trafford Park until the Dagenham plant became operational in 1931. By this time Perry had been lured back, appointed chairman of the newly formed British Ford Motor Company Limited in 1928. The final car produced at Trafford Park emerged in October 1931: in the same month the first vehicle emerged from the new Dagenham facility