When Henry Ford in 1903 set up the car company that bears his name, his was one of 143 auto companies that had been set up in the previous three years. Some 64 of those folded in the following 12 months.

So carmaking was at the same stage as Silicon Valley during the dot.com beginnings. There was a 'big idea' floating around, but only a few would really strike it rich.

Even then, the son of a famine immigrant from Ballinascarty in County Cork had already struck out twice in the embryo auto industry. He wasn't a good business risk. But as well as becoming a motor business icon, Ol' Henry is also an object lesson in what setting up any business is all about: 'if at first you don't succeed ...' and all that.

He DID succeed. Because Henry had a dream. He wanted to find a way to bring down the cost of motoring so that anyone could do it. He had this theory ... if you can source something cheaper you can sell something cheaper and you'll find that you've an awful lot more customers snapping up your bargains.

In 1903, cars were made by lots of groups of workers building individual vehicle from the chassis to the rag top. It was an inefficient process, very labour intensive, making the end product to a price that only the privileged could afford.

And it was a full 10 years later before Henry Ford's production engineers finally got to the idea that moving the cars along an assembly line, where workers could add on bits as the vehicle passed by, was the way to go. 'Move the product, not the people'.

The result can easily be demonstrated: when the famous Model T ended production in 1927 it had been sold as low as $260 ... 15 million cars and 19 years EARLIER the first one had cost its owner $850.

And the world was on wheels ...

The rest is what makes a hundred years of history. But it might have just been an American history if Ol' Henry hadn't made it a point from the company's earliest days that his cars were built on this side of the Atlantic too. He set up his first car factory outside the US in Manchester in 1911, another one in Bordeaux, France, in 1916. And in Cork, Ireland in 1917 he set up a Fordson tractor factory that eventually became a car factory which lasted until a decade after we entered the EU. It closed in 1984.

The Ford badge was also adorning factories in Berlin - later moved to Cologne - in Istanbul in Turkey, in Belgium ... and nearly in Livorno in Italy, but the founders of FIAT got Mussolini to block that one. In Britain, the main building operations were moved to Dagenham in 1931.

During WW II, Ford trucks and engines were being produced for both sides in the conflict, though for some strange reason the Axis ones didn't seem to work as well. Not least, the story goes, because workers in the occupied countries such as Belgium switched sub-standard components for the full quality ones. There is a yarn that Rommell decreed that only captured British trucks should be used in desert reconnaisance because the German ones got stuck in the sand too often!

Through the subsequent decades, the rise and rise of the motor car as ever more essential brought Ford nameplates from the 50s through the 90s that are milestones in many of our own lives on this side of the Atlantic. Prefect. Consul. Zephyr. Cortina. Fiesta. Escort. Granada. All the way to to today's Focus and Mondeo.

From over the sea that Henry Ford's father sailed to escape from a famine-depleted country there are also car names which have resonance for us all. Beginning with the ubiquitous 'Tin Lizzie', the Model T, and more familiar to us who grew up as youngsters aspiring to the American Dream are Thunderbird, Mustang, GT40 and Lincoln Continental.

Along the road travelled by Ford there were as many ups and downs for the company as there are on the Rathangan to Edenderry Road. Rivalries between the German and the British parts of the blue oval empire, the need to face up against against the Japanese invasion of the global car market. And here at home, the trauma for an unbelieving Cork workforce when the assembly plant run by the local company closed down.

That Irish company has a couple of unique attributes. It was the last Ford lines to roll out a Model T before the model ended its life in 1927. It survived the World War II years by making wooden clogs and screwdrivers, and having its workers harvest turf to sell at the factory. And it is still, today, the only Ford company that bears the full name of the founder: Henry Ford and Son Ltd.

We look back with a certain nostalgia for Ol' Henry, but we perhaps shouldn't forget that he wasn't always a very nice man. There are stories of him being violently anti-Semetic, for instance. There are solid accounts of his sanctioning brutal treatment of workers signing up to the United Auto Workers Union.

But none of us are more than human, even those of us who are dreamers and visionaries, and particularly the ones who make their visions come true. We're all subject to the same kind of imperfections. This is not to condone them, or excuse them, but if Henry Ford hadn't been the kind of man he was, would we all be on wheels today?

Ford Motor Company today also owns Volvo, Jaguar, Land Rover, and Aston Martin, and has a controlling interest in Mazda. It is in global size almost neck and neck with General Motors. And as we celebrate this centenary with its own particular Irish connection, it is ironic that the world automotive industry is back to the same state of flux in which it began. Even Ford has its financial problems. In 100 years' time, will there still be a Ford in our lives?

My guess? Well, if there is still such thing as a car ... then there will be a Ford badge somewhere.