[Bill Murray]

Hi guys:

David is the Historian, something I can never aspire to but must be content with the title, "enthustiac amateur collector of things automotive". I do not have the discipline to qualify as an historian.

However, a few nuggets to fill in David's more structured contributions.

Ford Motor Company:

The photos I have collected indicate that Ford had, as we all know, a major assembly presence in Britain, France & Germany.
A somewhat smaller presence in Belgium, Holland and a few other countries.

One problem that comes up when trying to ID vehicles from the three major assembly/manufacturing countries is that there was firstly a mixture of locally produced and imported vehicles.

Britain, France and Germany all had locally produced variants that differed markedly from the same year US derived vehicles.

Additionally, the European companies often used different model designations than what we were used to in the US. We tend to ID Fords by model year and series (Standard/Deluxe etc.) rather than by the numerical system used in Europe.

Thirdly, Ford seems to have had a policy of continuing to supply the dies for earlier years sheet metal to Europe beyond the ending of manufacture in the US. This continued for many years in other parts of the world after WWII and was not confined to Ford.

In the rest of Europe, Scandinavia, the Baltic States and I suppose Africa and Asia, it seems that Ford either sent fully built up vehicles or kits that were in the main modelled on the then current US pattern.

All of the above can make for certain difficulties in ascertaining exactly what model/year Ford we are looking at.

Regarding RHD variants of US type Fords, as far as I know, all were sourced from Canada.

General Motors:

GM took, as we all know, a slightly different approach in that they purchased Vauxhall/Bedford and Opel as a way to penetrate the British and German markets. At the same time, they operated a pretty large parallel export business shipping complete vehicles, kits and chassis of various stages of completion to not only the UK and Germany but to pretty near any other country as well.

Generally speaking, most people on the various history forums tend to ID GM vehicles strictly by make and year, ie 1937 Chevrolet or 1939 Buick etc. A heck of a lot easier as GM seems to have kept strictly to the current model year and did not have variants with different sheet metal on offer on the export markets.
Sorry, Australia would be one exception as they had a wide range of GM (and Ford) products that were exclusive to that market.

As far as I can understand, RHD GM product all came from Canada more or less regardless of final destination.

Chrysler:

I have no solid information that Chrysler had any manufacturing or assembly operations of any consequence outside of the US prior to 1939.

They certainly did do a lot of export activities and were present to one degree or another in pretty much every country in the world.

I can only assume that they sent out the same variety of CBU, chassis and kit variety of vehicles as GM and Ford did.

Other makes:

The export market prior to 1939 was vital for a number of lesser US producers. I do not have an exact figure, but I would bet that the then "Big Three" had 90% plus of the US home market.

So, we see makes like Reo, Stewart, Studebaker, International Harvester and perhaps 25 other lesser light manufacturers depending heavily on the export market, particularly in countries that were not high priority markets for GM, Ford and Chrysler.

This is perhaps why we see these vehicles represented in countries like Norway, Estonia, Latvia, etc.

Well, guys, that is probably enough on the subject for this time.
Let us just say that there is sufficient materiel available today, tomorrow and in the long term future to keep us busy trying to properly identify all of the thousands of photos that I hope we will see in the coming years.

Bill