Some posts can make us authors feel like putting on a pith helmet and going on an archaeological dig. Let’s rewind the clock a hundred years. Well before Toyota, Datsun or any other major domestic automaker, Japan already had a couple of large-scale car assembly plants, which produced Fords and Chevrolets. Those were the cars that really got this country on four wheels.
The first car imported into Japan was a Panhard & Levassor, which travelled from the Tsukiji fish market district, near Tokyo Bay, up to Ueno – about 5km. The year was 1898 and the people who saw this modern miracle were very impressed. Naturally, a few home-grown efforts at automaking soon followed, including by the likes of Mitsubishi and Isuzu, but for the longest time, cars were a very rare sight.
The country was a lot more interested in railways at the time. Roads were primitive, even impassable by anything but foot traffic or horses in many areas. Automobile import licenses were nonetheless granted and a budding automotive scene developed by the 1910s, with some limited local assembly of CKD kits, such as the 1910 Laurin & Klement above (308 units made). The first Ford Model T arrived in 1913; Ford imports only became regular four years later, but the cars were still imported fully assembled, and thus subject to a 25% import tax.
The first Ford plant set up outside of North America was in the UK in 1911; in 1925, the first to be set up in Asia was the Yokohama factory, photographed above circa 1930. For the initial couple of years of operation, Model Ts rolled off the production line. Ever since the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, Ford’s products had become extremely popular in Japan: Model Ts were turned into improvised emergency vehicles and buses in the devastated capital city, proving their reliability and flexibility.
Private car ownership remained well out of reach for all but the 1% of the 1%, but the fleet market was now becoming significant. The advent of the Model A, which started coming out of the Yokohama plant in November 1928, coincided with a boom in taxi companies in Tokyo and major cities around the Empire.
Thus the Model A En-taku (“one-yen taxi”) became a fixture of Tokyo’s prewar street scene. Thanks to this one-yen flat fee for the whole city, cabs were suddenly affordable for middle-class customers. Demand for cars skyrocketed, and Ford and GM had the market pretty much all to themselves from the mid-‘20s to 1936, when Japanese authorities started implementing restrictions on foreign-owned car factories. Ford’s Yokohama operation went from being the top car and truck producer in the country in the early ‘30s to Ford pulling out of Japan entirely in 1940.
Petrol restrictions from 1941 to 1946 meant that a lot of Ford and Chevy taxis were mothballed for a few years, but they resumed service after that. A fair few Fords were also produced as Model AA trucks and had a long service life. All in all, Model As were Tokyo street furniture well into the ‘60s.
As far as I know, Japanese-made Model As are exactly identical to any other Model A, save for the steering wheel being on the right-hand side. Same 40hp 3.3 litre 4-cyl. side-valve engine, same three-speed manual gearbox, same suspension and brakes. Whatever changes were adopted in Detroit were also adopted down the line in Yokohama and everywhere else.
What is a lot more difficult to figure out is what the factory actually produced in terms of body styles. As far as I can tell, the overwhelming majority of Yokohama Fords made in 1928-32 were the standard “Fordor” six-light sedan, which makes a lot of sense if they were meant for taxi service.
Obviously, some phaetons were also produced, notably for the police and the military, but I’m not sure about the rest. It would seem a few roadsters and coupes were made in Yokohama (some period photographs would attest to their presence), but those would have been very much the exception. Or they could have been specially imported from other RHD markets by wealthy individuals.
This particular car is very well-known in the little world of Japanese classic car collectors. It was originally a police car and was given by them to Keio University in the early ‘50s. It has been regularly rolled out to classic car events since the ‘60s, when Model As started becoming less common in Tokyo traffic.
Ford produced well over five million Model As in five years. An unmitigated success, even as the bottom fell out of the US economy and competition from Chevrolet became far more heated than before. Japanese production is but a tiny drop in that ocean of Fords: from late 1928 to June 1932, about 14-15k Model A cars and 2500 Model AA commercial vehicles were assembled in Yokohama. Those modest numbers were still huge compared to anyone in the country at the time, except GM’s Osaka plant.
Ford assembled Model As in many countries – Chile, Belgium, Turkey, Spain, Germany, France, Argentina, Brazil, England, Mexico… The only Ford assembly line in Asia was located in Japan. And whereas many of those other locations had other large carmakers present, Ford became Japan’s leading automobile manufacturer. Ninety-five years on, Ford does not even have an official importer there, so blue oval sales in this country are presently nil. There may be a handful coming in by private means, but right now Ford’s Japanese footprint is dwarfed by that of Bentley, Maserati or Hyundai. The only way is up.
Related posts:
Curbside Classic: 1929 Ford Model A – The Best Ford Ever – Maybe Even The Best Car Ever, by PN
Curbside Classic: 1930 Ford Model A – True Classics And Their Unending Appeal, by Rich Baron
Curbside Capsule: 1931 Ford Model A – Canada’s Capital, Eh?, by BillHaven
Curbside Classic: 1930 Ford Model A Pickup – The Modern Pickup is Born?, by JPC
CC Twofer: 1930 Model A, 1936 Ford – The Fords of Iceland, by T87
Car Show Classics: 1928-31 Ford Model A Sport Coupes – See You In September, by Aaron65
CC Capsule: Ford Model A Roadster – Ready For 2113, by PN
Vintage Motor Trend Road Test: 1931 Ford Model A Roadster – 0-60 In…∞, by PN
COAL: 1929 Ford Model A Standard Coupe – Chapter 12, A Is For Awesome, by JPC
Is the roof supposed to be higher on the left side than the right or is there a damaged bow in the roof structure?
Something obviously is amiss there.
I hope my friends JoAnn & Richard see this, Richard maintains one of these for a customer of his.
Yes we saw this at lunch time. Nice article, I had no idea that Ford had such a presence in Japan back then. I noticed on the one-yen taxi that there are brackets in front of and behind the front tires, I am guessing they are to keep the mud from building up on the tires?
Very nice! It does look the same to other Model As with the exception of the right hand drive. Probably some minor differences I would imagine. For example Canadian built ones used superior Robertson screws over slotted ones.
The reason they were essentially identical to US Model As is because these were assembled from parts shipped from Detroit. This was not a manufacturing “factory” but an assembly plant whose key parts had all been shipped there. There may have been some minor locally sourced parts but not in significant amounts.
There’s a Youtube video of the Yokahama assembly line:
Did they make any “JDM” model A’s with the flathead v8? Probably not neccisary if all these cars did was putter around in dense city traffic their whole lives. Would have made a hell of a lot of difference if you were going city to city over the mountains. But I dont know if there even was a city to city road network back then
Ford didn’t make any Model As with the V8. That came along in 1932 and replaced the Model A, along with the four cylinder Model B. FWIW, the Model A had a very good power-to-weight ratio for its time and was quite a lively performer.
Thanks, my knowledge on prewar cars is lacking a bit. I thought the “32 Ford” as hot rodders call it was still called the model A by Ford
Ford called the V-8 car the Model 18 in 1932. I don’t think anyone outside the factory called it that, but that was its official designation.
Nice ;
In the 1960’s & 1970’s quite a few right hand drive “A” Model Fords were imported from Argentina where really nice ones were dirt cheap .
-Nate
Interesting. Imported into Japan?
The Soviets also built Model A’s, at the GAZ factory with Ford’s assistance.
Everybody made Model A’s it seems. I was wondering what the text says but my phone translate tells me it says Keio University.
Nice piece as usual.
In addition to the countries you mentioned that had Ford assembly plants in 1931, there was also one in SIngapore.
This was set up in 1926, the first car plant in the country. It ceased operations in 1981 or thereabouts when the government there removed the no import duty rule for locally assembled vehicles.