The founder, Gordon Morton McGregor, convinced a group of investors to invest in Henry Ford's new automobile, which was being produced across the river in Detroit, Michigan.

[2] The company had gained all Ford patent rights and selling privileges to all parts of the British Empire, except Great Britain and Ireland.

[7] By 1989, during a peak in the environmental movement, the Ford Motor Company of Canada (particularly its Oakville plant) was listed among the "dirty dozen" polluters in Ontario: "Ford broke lots of rules with the 13.8 million litres of waste it pumped into Lake Ontario every day until a few months ago, when it began a two-stage cleaning process.

Ford also had on-and-off problems with the amounts of phosphorus (the chemical largely responsible for nearly killing Lake Erie decades ago) and phenols it discharged.

That year also saw the compulsory acquisition by Ford Motor Company of the last of the shares held by minority shareholders, which had been originally proposed in 1995.

The province cancelled the generating station in October 2010 and both Ford and TransCanada withdrew their planned appeals to the Ontario Municipal Board the following January.