About City Ford

City Ford´s head office in Crown Street, Sydney has been connected with Ford vehicle sales and service for more than 60 years. The building is situated just off William Street, which used to be famous as Sydney´s street of motor car businesses, in the way that Macquarie Street is still famous as Sydney´s street of doctors.

Originally it was called the Hastings Deering Building. Hastings Deering were the city´s Ford agents before the Second World War, and Harold Hastings wanted a new modern corporate headquarters. He hired the Glasgow-trained architect Samuel Lipson to design it for the island site. 220 feet by 120 feet, between Riley Street and Crown Street, Kennedy Street and Sutton Street.

Howie Moffat and Company started construction work there in 1936, and the building was officially opened on 31st March, 1938, the year when people were celebrating 150 years since Sydney´s foundation. It was specially designed for servicing Ford cars, and the total cost, including equipment was about £125,000.

The new Hastings Deering Building pioneered a number of design and structural innovations in Sydney. The elevations were simple horizontal bands of wall and glazing, and the corners were rounded columns set back from the external walls. That made the building one of the purest expressions of the latest trends in European "International Style" architecture of the 1930´s that could be seen in Sydney.

Ford cars came and went by way of banked spiral ramps leading up from the street, making the best use of the limited space on the site. This system of ramps was patented worldwide in the names of Samuel Lipson and Hastings Deering Ltd. The engineer, R.E. Macmillan, also pushed the limits of existing reinforced concrete theory with large flat floor slabs supported by mushroom-headed columns. Speeds of 25 were made possible by careful banking and grading (for safety speeds of 10 only were permitted).

This was the first occasion where there was complete integration of the motor car and architecture in Sydney. "With no attempt at the grandiose" one critic wrote in April, 1938, "this building may be regarded as an excellent example of modern commercial architecture. Straight forward, Efficient - functional, if you like - it is admirably suited for its purpose".

Many of the Art Deco features are still in place in the building. The original switchboard is still there, along with the Lamson Paragon Pneumatic Station System which is a predecessor of today´s LAN system. This complicated network of copper tubes (or pressure pipes) goes up and down through the building, as a quick easy means of passing messages between the floors.
Hastings Deering was not the oldest Ford dealership in Australia at that time, but it was the largest. During the Second World War, the building was taken over by the government, and the main showroom was fitted out as a machine shop. Every floor except the sixth floor was given over to war production, with machinery turning out shell cases and other munitions. The sixth floor was used as a store for Hastings Deering´s equipment and fittings, including two brand new Ford cars, a 1939 Ford Coupe and a rare 1939 Lincoln Zephyr V.12 (its leather fittings were all eaten by rats during that period)
After the war Hastings Deering reopened as a Ford dealership. Harold Hastings went to England to visit the British Ford company at Dagenham. New cars were not easy to source in Australia then, and he wanted to arrange to import new Fords from England.

However, Ford Australia had other ideas and took away the New South Wales distribution rights from Hastings Deering, leaving it as a metropolitan dealership. Harold Hastings had ordered 500 Ford Pilot sedans from England and Ford Australia bought those from him and arranged to get more cars from England themselves.

In the Forties and Fifties, Hasting Deering expanded, with new branches at Lidcombe, Ryde, Yagoona, Lindfield and Camperdown. There was even a Hastings Deering pavilion at the Sydney Showground. By the late Fifties, the company was the largest dealership in the Commonwealth.

After the deaths of Harold Hastings and his wife, the Business was left to some of the employees, under the terms of a very complicated will. In the Sixties, the directors sold the Hasting Deering to Westfield as a site for development. But the building was put under the Heritage Act, because it had been the first building built in the Southern Hemisphere with mushroom column pillars holding up the floors. Union pressure stopped it being demolished, and Westfield sold it back to Ford.

Then it went back to being a Ford dealership again. Hastings Deering carried on there until 1969, when the property changed hands. Wright Ford took over the car dealership, and they operated there until March 1974.

City Ford a New Era
Mr Nick Politis took over Wright Ford in March 1974, and he renamed the dealership City Ford. By 1980, the building was again the home of Australia´s leading Ford dealership.

During the last ten years, the building has been extensively modernised. The latest improvement has been the installation of Ford Service 2000 quick service bays. Trained technicians use the latest equipment to give customers the highest level of service available.