We recently had an interview with the owner of a Ford dealership in Zaandam. At the age of 93, he is still working, but his company has also been a Ford dealer for a hundred years. This year, Ford Motor Company is celebrating exactly 120 years since it was founded. We thought that was a good reason to take a look at what Fords from the entire twentieth century are driving around in our country. To keep things clear, we have made a top 3 per decade of the most common Ford models of that period.
Fords in the Netherlands go back to the very beginning. Henry Ford didn’t spend much time coming up with names for his different models, he just went through the letters of the alphabet. So the first Ford was an A in 1903, followed by a C and after a number of other models the Ford Model T appeared in 1908. And of each of those three models, there is one from the period 1900 to 1909 in the Netherlands. In the subsequent period, 1910-1919, there were only two models, namely 1 Model C and 104 Model Ts. And we still see that T in the 1920s, because production continued until 1927. When the alphabet ran out, Ford started again with the A for the next model, and the A-Ford of the late 1920s also became a great success. So we see that in our country there are 325 A’s from the 1920s and 630 from the 1930s.
The Willys Jeep from Ford!
But what do we see there with the 1940s? The Willys Jeep? Of course. The United States sent its armies all over the world during World War II and the Jeep was an indispensable tool for all those armies. The Jeep was developed by the small American manufacturer Willys-Overland, but it did not have enough production capacity. So Ford also built many thousands of Jeeps for the American army in the 1940s. They also built other army vehicles, so we also got a number of amphibious GPAs in our country.
American import
From the 1950s onwards we started to see the difference between American Fords and European models. From the period 1950-1959 we see two American models at 1 and 2 and only then the British Ford Prefect. This is of course not a reflection of the Dutch fleet at the time, but it does clearly show that many vintage cars have been imported from the United States over the years. This also becomes apparent when we arrive at the 1960s. At the time, the Netherlands was teeming with Fords Taunus and Cortina, but what is now on license plates from those years is mainly American. Just think, there are now ten times as many Mustangs from that time as Taunussen in the Netherlands!
The Mustang still has the upper hand among Fords from the 1970s, but in the 1980s we see that interest in American models is waning. There it is the Escort and the Sierra that we mainly see. And finally, in the 1990s the emphasis was on the Ford Focus.
Three Fords from the period 1900-1909
A 1
C 1
T 1
Henry Ford on his first A.
Fords from the period 1910-1919
T 104
C 1
Ford T Runabout.
1920-1929
A 325
T 131
Phaeton 7
Henry Ford had little imagination when it came to model names, if he had run out of letters he simply started again with the A.
1930-1939
A 630
B 24
Y 23
Ford Köln Cabriolet Limousine from 1933, aka a Ford Y.
1940-1949
Willys Jeep 370
Super Deluxe 27
GPA Amfibisch 25
1950-1959
Thunderbird 148
Fairlane 60
Prefect 52
1955 Ford Thunderbird.
1960-1969
Mustang 2.730
Taunus 268
Thunderbird 253
1970-1979
Mustang 558
Taunus 399
Capri 320
1980-1989
Escort 1.494
Sierra 1.232
Fiesta 445
1990-1999
Focus 4.375
Fiesta 3.332
Escort 1.822
Bron: Vinacles
2023-10-14 12:00:58
#Fords #century #driving #Netherlands
