The Ford Motor Company is a multinational corporation that has its base in Dearborn Michigan. Henry Ford is the founder and on June 16, 1903 the automaker was incorporated. Ford owns a small stake in Mazda and Aston Martin as well as owns Volvo cars, Ford, Lincoln and Mercury brands. Jaguar and Land Rover, Ford’s former UK subsidiaries, were sold to Tata Motors of India in March 2008.

The Ford Motor Company was established in 1903 by Henry Ford in a renovated factory with about $28.000 in cash from twelve investors. Henry was forty (40) years old when he founded the company which later became on of the world’s most profitable and largest automobile companies. The company was also successful in surviving the Great Depression, a period which many companies did not survive. Ford Motor Company is also one of the largest family owned and controlled companies in the world and continues to be controlled by the Ford family for more than 100 years.

Due to the number of vehicles sold annually, Ford is presently the fourth largest automaker in the world. Ford was in the third rank as it fell from second place in the annual vehicle sales, this happened for the first time in fifty six (56) years. Although Ford was below Toyota, on various occasions the company outsells Toyota. In the 2008 Fortune 500 list, Ford was ranked as the seventh over all American based company. This ranking was according to 2008 global revenues of $146.3 billion. In the same year, that is 2008; 5.532 million automobiles were produced by Ford with approximately 213,000 employees located at about ninety (90) facilities and plants around the world. Since 2007 J.D Power and Associates gave Ford more initial quality survey awards than any other automaker. Five of Ford’s vehicles have been positioned at the top of their categories and fourteen vehicles were ranked in the top three.