Ford’s Brisbane Legacy Stands Taller

In response to Cath Lewin’s interesting article in the November magazine about Holden’s manufacturing at Acacia Ridge, I thought it would be a good idea to write a story about the history of Ford Motor Company at Eagle Farm. GMH’s plant at Acacia Ridge only operated for less than 20 years, whereas Ford operated at Eagle Farm for 72 years, from 1926 until 1998. I worked there for over 20 years from 1978 until it closed. When I was asked where I worked, I was always surprised to hear many people tell me they didn’t even know Ford had a factory on Kingsford Smith Drive and built motor vehicles there.

Canadian H.C. French arrived in Australia in 1924 to investigate the establishment of manufacturing in Australia. In 1925, the Ford Motor Company of Australia Pty. Ltd was registered. Ford commenced to build factories in Geelong, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Fremantle. These were the days of the famous model T which was followed by the model A in 1928.

100 Years of Motoring Australians and Their Cars explains why the Ford Factory was blessed with the steeply raked roofs – its design was based on Ford Factories in the US. The roofs over in America had the need to withstand four tonnes of snow, not necessarily a need in Eagle Farm.

Over the years, Ford Eagle Farm plant turned out all sorts of Fords, model T, A and B and during World War 2, ceased motor car manufacturing to build landing craft, boats, and various assortment of components for the military.

After the war, motor car production started up again and during the 1950s, Customlines, Zephyrs and other English models were assembled at the Brisbane plant.

The new XK Falcon was released in Australia in 1960, and the first Brisbane built unit come off the assembly line on 13 July, 1960. Falcons were built there until 1978 when the last Brisbane XC was built. All Falcon production came from the Broadmeadows plant in Melbourne after May 1978. At the same time, ZH Fairlane and P6 model LTD production moved to Brisbane plant, with build numbers up to 45 per day.

In 1979, the new ZJ Fairlane and FC LTD, based on the new XD Falcon were released. These were followed by the ZK Fairlane and FD model LTD in 1982 and the ZL Fairlane and FE LTD in 1984. These models were built up to 1987 and were the last Fairlanes and LTDs to be built at Eagle Farm. The new 1988 models based on the EA Falcon were all built in Melbourne.

Truck production was moved to Brisbane from Broadmeadows in 1987. Ford’s heavy truck models were built there, namely Louisvilles, Ford Cargos as well as F series models and Ford Traders sourced from Mazda in Japan. Various upgraded models were built, but the UK sourced Cargo truck production was discontinued in 1991 and the F series finished up in 1992. A small number of Ford New Holland tractors were assembled for many years at Eagle Farm.

The new model HN80 Louisville was released in 1997, and was to be the final heavy truck model built in Australia. Ford US sold the entire heavy truck business to Freightliner in 1998, so that was it for Ford Brisbane plant. The site was sold to GJ James and the plant was demolished in around 2003.

In all the time I was there (21 years), I don’t recall any strike action. I can remember a stop work meeting once and all the factory workers assembled on the front lawn, but we didn’t go on strike. Even in Melbourne (Broadmeadows) and Geelong (many thousands of workers then), there were very few industrial issues (as I remember anyway). Some of Ford’s many suppliers sometimes went on strike over some issues, which in some cases resulted in plants having to shut down. One I remember is glass supplier Pilkington going on strike for quite some time and we ran out of glass so we had to shut down.

I recall Ford Australia had something like 14,000 employees in the early to mid 1980s.

Some information sourced from Shane Birney’s “Australia on Wheels”. Otherwise from my memory of working there. – David Sutton