Talk:Ford Motor Company

Old Ford Motor financials?

I'm looking for old financial data since the company's founding until the present. Unit sales, revenue, costs, profits, etc. Are there wikidata or other trusted data sources that takes us beyond the recent 20 years? Phil Wolff (talk)

Semi-protected edit request on 28 March 2023

In the section about indy car racing,

change "These speed records still stand as of 2018.[172]" to "These speed records still stand as of 2022.[172]" Sschwartz2013 (talk) 05:31, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

 Done Lightoil (talk) 10:01, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Aston Martin

Didn't Ford sell its remaining 8% stake in Aston Martin? 2601:2C6:5000:92F0:D9E9:6984:7D37:5EEE (talk) 23:00, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

I thought they sold it back in 2008 but article is locked so I can’t fix it 2601:19E:4300:83E0:1D0:CFDA:9F25:44AF (talk) 14:56, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Do you have a reference?  Stepho  talk  21:13, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 1 May 2023

requests will be declined. -->

. --> }} 67.208.195.234 (talk) 20:49, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. --Urbanoc (talk) 21:19, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

1999 sales

According to a report from 1999, Ford was excepted to produce or sell 7.77 million vehicles in 1999. This number included Mazda, which was owned to 1/3 by Ford 1996 to November 2008. However, OICA shows that Ford produced "only" around 6.5 million in 1999, and excludes Mazda, I wonder why.

According to this report, Ford (including Mazda, Volvo, Jaguar, Lincoln) was also expected to increase its vehicle production to 9.15 million a year in 2005, and surpass General Motors as the largest automaker. 90.231.234.93 (talk) 18:25, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

It's hard to comment on "this report" when we don't know what that report is. Links would be helpful.

It's always a difficult question for whether to combine brands or to list them separately. In this case, I agree with OICA to list Mazda separately. Ford has always been closely linked with Mercury and Lincoln for almost it's entire existence. The advertising of them was always Ford for the common many, Mercury for the more affluent man and Lincoln for the rich man, with buyers expected to change brands as their economic position improved. Mazda, Jaguar, Volvo Range Rover have joined and later split from Ford, were not intimately linked to Ford for extended periods of time and did not form part of that economic progression.

Also be aware that some reports are US only, N.America only, or world-wide. And whether or not they include pickups, light trucks, full size trucks (eg 20 ton), motorcycles, knockdown kits (common in export markets) and vehicles made but not sold. A real minefield.  Stepho  talk  23:58, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

My first point on that is Mazda never came to be a consolidated subsidiary of Ford, even if Ford had a sizeable, potentially controlling stake. And Japanese companies are strongly guaranteed by the government, so less than 50% there may be a theoretical controlling stake but not an actual one. That's the reason I think Ford/Mazda and other companies (VW/Suzuki, Renault/Nissan..) were always counted separately by OICA despite the shareholdings technically giving control to one side.

Second (and this is a confusion very common, especially among American editors) production and sales are not the same thing. Companies sell all the time things they didn't actually produce (some are trillion dollar ones, as Apple) and claim sales in minority-owned operations as their own (eg Ford neighbour GM). It looks good at AGMs.

Third, OICA had to decide to which manufacturer it gave the production numbers, as companies tend to count for themselves facilities in which they only have a minority or a de facto non-controlling stake. The press and shareholders may go with it, but OICA needed to avoid the double counts. --Urbanoc (talk) 12:20, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

1999 report in which Mazda is included in Ford's total production (estimated to 7.77 million in 1999, including Mazda; OICA, which excludes Mazda, estimated around 6.5 million). Ford, including Mazda, was expected to surpass General Motors as the largest automaker in 2005, with an estimated production of 9.15 million vehicles, in comparison to G.M. which was estimated to produce 9.10 million. (However, Ford's production stagnated in the 2000s, so Ford even didn't keep its place as the second-largest automaker; Ford was the second-largest automaker, behind G.M. for the last year in 2004, with 7.91 million vehicles - including Mazda - as Toyota, with 7.87 million vehicles in 2004, increased its production to 8.4 million vehicles in 2005.) 212.100.101.104 (talk) 22:06, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Before we proceed, what do you complain about on this article exactly? I didn't find your points of contention the first time I looked around, but I supposed the 1999 OICA rankings were mentioned in passing. I glanced the article again a couple of times, and still didn't find anyting on 1999 OICA rankings. Most of the general rankings I found through the artice were sales and revenue/profit rankings by American media companies (like Forbes) which aren't generally considered too biased and certainly not try to diminish Ford (sometimes Tesla, but that's another point). Other mentions come from Ford itself (certainly not a source aimed at diminish Ford in positive rankings). There's a lot of conflating sales with production (as I said, something common in articles edited by Americans). The only use of an OICA ranking I found was a 2015 one in the lede, but by that time Ford was already almost completely out of Mazda, so a 1999 Mazda share ownership is a moot point, and you are free to remove that info as isn't presented in-line with Wikipedia policies, it uses Wikipedia as a source instead of OICA and doesn't clarify the ranking is the OICA one (as you mentioned, there are other production rankings, all of them paywalled BTW). Your criticism seems to be directed at the OICA ranking as a whole, not to a thing mentioned here, so the discussion should be cut/pasted to Talk:List of manufacturers by motor vehicle production where it makes sense, if you agree. If not, there's nothing more to say as this is irrelevant here. My following statements are made as if the discussion was moved.

So, after clarifying that caveat, I can answer to your post. Thanks for the news article discussing the ranking. If LA Times is correct, at least is actually a production ranking instead of a sales ranking, which a lot of people tried to equate here (the study is lousy and laughably wrong, however, I'd look to read it too have a good time, but I don't want to spend the money...) I'd say the absolute statement "33.4% share is considered controlling interest" is just plain wrong, as that's not how things work in practice in the Japanese corporate world. You can have even less than that and actually control a company and more and the company can still operate independently if provisions are made. That only applies at things like naming directors and certain legal proceedings (ie from a legal standpoint). I still think OICA took the sensible route here.

Having said that, there was never opposition to add alternative production rankings that use other criteria. And PricewaterhouseCoopers is widely used through Wikipedia, especially in US-focused articles, so I don't oppose its usage here. If, as part of the study, Autofacts created a 1999 ranking and not just focused on the two American companies and if you have access to such ranking, you can add it here alongside the OICA one. But we won't use that failed study to "fix" the OICA ranking as that is original research and is against Wikipedia policy. That wouldn't be an OICA ranking but a Wikipedia made up ranking combining things arbitrarly. Hope that clarifies things. --Urbanoc (talk) 12:23, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

According to OICA's 1999 report, Ford produced 6.638 million vehicles in 1999 (excluding Mazda), and Mazda (then 33,3 % owned by Ford) 967 000 vehicles. Combined, Ford-Mazda produced 7.605 million, almost 100 000 less than 7.7 million which was estimated in the report that Ford was expected to increase its production to 9.15 million in 2005, and then surpass General Motors (with estimated 9.10 million in 2005) as the largest automaker. 212.100.101.104 (talk) 20:17, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Ah, so your real goal is to "prove" that Ford is bigger than GM. That OICA report separates Ford and Mazda. It also separates GM and Isuzu. With some creative accounting we can "prove" either one is bigger by choosing whether to include full subsidiaries, partial subsidiaries, cars only, cars+pickups, cars+pickups+heavy trucks, US only production, global production, knock-down kits, etc, etc.  Stepho  talk  23:15, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

I never said Ford is bigger than G.M., but that Ford was expected in 1999 to increase its production to 9.15 million vehicles a year by 2005, and then surpass General Motors as the largest automaker, as General Motors was expected to produce 9.10 million in 2005.

Please listen or read more carefully what I'm saying or writing! 212.100.101.104 (talk) 17:19, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Please state clearly what changes you want made.  Stepho  talk  23:17, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

In 2004, most news reports claimed that Ford had been surpassed by Toyota as the second-largest automaker (behind General Motors) in 2003, but that was not the case if Mazda's sales/production would be included, alternatively if Toyota would be counted alone without Daihatsu and Hino.

According to OICA, Toyota (including Daihatsu and Hino) produced more than 7.1 million vehicles in 2003 (of which over 6.2 million by Toyota alone), and Ford around 6.5 million. However, Mazda made around 1 million in 2003 and Ford-Mazda would therefore be larger than Toyota both in 2003 and 2004; first in 2005 did Toyota surpass Ford. 90.231.234.93 (talk) 22:51, 22 July 2023 (UTC)