Fewer than 50 days from its maker’s 100th birthday, Ford Motor Company’s 100-millionth V8 engine rolled off the Essex Engine Plant’s manufacturing line on Tuesday, marking a milestone more than 70 years after Ford’s first mass-produced V8 was built in 1932.

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This week also marks the beginning of production of Ford’s new 5.4-litre, three-valve Triton V8 that will power the new 2004 F-150 pickup when it starts production this summer. The milestone 100-millionth V8 engine will be installed in the first F-150 built this year at the Norfolk (Virginia) assembly plant.


Company founder Henry Ford introduced the industry’s first affordable, mass-produced V8 engine in 1932. The engine featured an innovative “flathead” configuration – a side-valve engine made possible by industry-first engine block casting techniques developed by company engineers.


Ford produced approximately eight million of the original flathead V8s between 1932 and 1953. These included the original 85 hp version, an economy 60 hp version in 1936-37 and upgraded 90 hp, 95 hp and 100 hp engines.


Windsor has a long history of Ford engine production. Since 1932, Ford of Canada has produced 22.4 million V8 engines – most of them at the Windsor plant, sister of the Essex plant located a few miles away.

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Windsor is the source of about half of Ford’s V8s, as well as many V6 and V10 engines. The Romeo (Michigan) engine plant currently builds more than 40% of Ford’s V8 engines, nearly seven million since the plant was converted to make them in 1990, while another engine plant in Lima, Ohio, builds V8s for the Thunderbird and Lincoln LS.


Ford’s well-known Cleveland engine plants No. 1 and No. 2 built more than 28 million V8 engines between the late 1950s and 2000 – engines like the powerful Boss 302, the famed Cleveland 351 and the famous 5.0-litre Mustang engine, which ceased production in 2000.


The Dearborn engine and fuel tank plant, in the historic Rouge manufacturing complex, also produced millions of V8 engines from the 1950s to the 1970s, including the legendary 427 cubic inch motor.