Ford “almost pulled out of Australia” like Holden, says global boss

The global boss of Ford has revealed the US car giant was once close to exiting Australia at some point before or after the end of local manufacturing in 2016.

The Ford Ranger ute last year ended the Toyota HiLux’s seven-year winning streak to become the first Ford motor vehicle to top the Australian new-car sales charts since 1995 – as the company posted its largest year-on-year sales growth in more than 25 years.

However company CEO Jim Farley – a 17-year Ford veteran who oversaw the Blue Oval’s operations in Australia from 2017 to 2019 as vice president of ‘Global Markets’ – has revealed it may never have happened.

“[We have] the best-selling vehicle in Australia. We almost pulled out of Australia,” Mr Farley told investors earlier this month, in remarks spotted by Ford Authority.

It is unclear when Ford considered its exit from the Australian market.

However it was likely sometime around the end of local manufacturing – whether before the announcement in 2013, before the factory closure in 2016, or shortly afterwards – as the US car giant posted 11 straight years of sales decline from 2004 to 2016.

In 2015 Ford Australia posted its fifth year in a row of financial losses – amounting to $1.05 billion over the period, despite receiving $484 million in taxpayer funding across the previous decade – and just 70,454 new-vehicle sales, its lowest in decades.

By 2019 deliveries slumped to 63,303 vehicles, and 59,601 in pandemic-affected 2020.

Mr Farley’s remarks could also be interpreted as the company was left with a small footprint in Australia after the end of local manufacturing – therefore it “almost pulled out” – rather than considering leaving Australia entirely.

If Ford left Australia – as Holden (owned by General Motors) went on to do in 2020 – it would have Chrysler and Jeep (owned by the same parent company) as the last of the ‘Big Three’ US car makers operating locally.

Ford built its first vehicle in Australia in 1925 – more than two decades before the first Holden 48-215 in 1948 – and produced more than 3.5 million Falcons from 1960 to 2016.

Prior to becoming company CEO in late 2020, Mr Farley held a number of global Ford executive roles which would have given