Motorcraft is the premier supplier parts for Ford, Lincoln and Mercury vehicles. The Ford Motor Company launched this auto parts division in 1972 to provide replacement parts and original equipment parts. This brand replaced Autolite as Ford's official parts brand. The Electric Autolite Co was acquired by Ford in 1960 and is still a brand name in use today, but is currently owned by UCI-FRAM AutoBrands. Motorcraft was originally launched in the 1950s with very little success, and was discontinued when Ford purchased the Autolite trade name. Ford was forced to sell Autolite in 1972 by the Federal Trade Commission because the government had concluded that Ford Motor Co had violated antitrust laws.
Today parts are designed and engineered to fit for installation on Lincoln, Mercury, and Ford vehicles. Some parts, such as Motorcraft's extensive list of oil filter applications, fit a wide variety of makes/models not built by Ford Motor Company.
Motorcraft products are sold through Ford and Lincoln-Mercury dealerships, as well as select auto parts stores.
Motorcraft is also a provider of technical resources for both, their dealership network as well as independent service providers through www.motorcraftservice.com.
The factory Ford Motor Company vehicle diagnostic scan tool is the Integrated Diagnostic Software (Ford IDS Software (Motorcraft)). IDS is a flexible diagnostic tool that utilizes standard computing platforms to work with Ford's VCM (Motorcraft), VCM-II (Rotunda) and VMM devices.
