If the Model T Ford was vital to Ford-USA’s future, the Ford 8 hp Model Y was the single model which set Ford-UK on the way to market leadership. It was Ford’s first truly small car, their cheapest-ever car, and it opened up Ford motoring to the masses.
Until the 1930s, Ford-UK’s fortune was tied up in the assembly of American models such as the Model T and the Model A. The building of a new factory at Dagenham, in Essex, and the onset of the Depression in Europe made Ford desperate for something smaller, cheaper – and domestic. Although the Model Y was British-made, it was engineered and styled entirely in the USA. Those were the days when Ford ruled its world-wide empire from Dearborn, near Detroit, with a rod of iron. Every part of the car – the chassis, the tiny side-valve engine, and its style, came from the other side of the Atlantic.
The result was a car whose blood lines were still in evidence at Ford until the end of the 1950s, when the last of the Popular models was built. In 27 years, all the cars in this family were based on the same simple chassis frame, with transverse-leaf spring suspension on front and rear beam-axles, and with a version of the side-valve engine. Early Model Ys boasted 933 cc and 23 bhp, while the last, definitive units had 1,172 cc and 36 bhp.
Sold from mid-1932 as a cheap and cheerful two-door (Tudor) saloon for little more than £120, the Model Y immediately carved out a 40 per cent share of the 8 hp market, which had hitherto been dominated by the Morris Minor and the Austin Seven. |
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The Model Y was so outstanding that when the Minor was renewed, it was replaced by a clone of the small Ford.
Model Ys provided marginal motoring at a very low cost, with tiny maintenance costs from an expanding line of Ford dealerships; nothing was allowed to push up the price. Four-door saloons soon joined the range, and there were specials from outside coachbuilders. The high point (the low point, really, in pricing terms) was when the stripped-out Popular of 1935 was launched, at a retail price of only £100 – the first time this had ever been achieved for a British series-production saloon.
The Model Y was slow, it only had a three-speed gearbox, and it had a tendency to wander from side to side on the road as its suspension flexed, but (like the Model T which preceded it), it provided unbeatable value and ample space for a complete family. Nearly 158,000 were produced in five years, before the re-styled and somewhat larger Model C 8 hp and 10 hp Fords took over in 1937. In that short time a principle had been established, which continues to this day in the current Ford range.
This was Ford’s first truly small car, their cheapest-ever which opened up Ford motoring to the masses with the bloodline of its design still in evidence until the end of the 1950s with the Ford Anglia and Ford Prefect.
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