About Former Ford Factory

ABOUT THIS HISTORIC SITE

The Ford Motor Company which was first established in Singapore at Anson Road in 1926, moved to its new state-of-the-art factory located at Upper Bukit Timah Road in October 1941. The Art Deco factory became Ford’s first motorcar assembly plant in Southeast Asia. In 1941, the British Army repurposed the newly finished Ford assembly plant in Singapore for wartime operations, but their stay was short-lived when the Japanese Army captured Bukit Timah on 12 February 1942.

On 13 February 1942, the factory was seized by Japanese forces and turned into the temporary headquarters of Lieutenant-General Tomoyuki Yamashita, the Japanese Commander of the 25th Army. Two days later on 15 February 1942, Lieutenant-General A. E. Percival, the British General Officer Commanding (Malaya), met Lieutenant-General Yamashita in the Boardroom of the Ford Factory, where the British surrendered unconditionally to the Japanese, effectively sealing the fate of Singapore for the next three and a half years.

Shortly after the fall of Singapore, the factory was designated as a ‘butai’ or Japanese facility and was taken over by Nissan to assemble military vehicles for the Japanese war efforts. The British army then occupied the factory at the end of war in 1945 and it was only returned to the Ford Motor Company in 1947 where it resumed operations until 1980, when it was shut down. On 15 February 2006, the remaining portions of the factory was gazetted as a national monument.

The Former Ford Factory was restored by the National Archives of Singapore and currently houses a permanent World War II exhibition on the war and its legacies.