company set up a small garage in a two-storey shop house on Anson Road. The garage carried out wheel-fitting and touching up for Model T units between 1926 and 1929. In January 1930, Ford Malaya moved operations to a warehouse in Prince Edward Road, where they carried out more sophisticated semi-knock down (SKD) assembly. The new plant assembled SKD kits which were imported from Ford Canada and Ford England. Ford's market share in British Malaya peaked at 80% in 1939. In April 1941, Ford Malaya moved operations to their all-new assembly plant in Bukit Timah, Singapore. The 1941 Ford Malaya factory became the first fully-fledged automobile assembly plant in Southeast Asia. Complete-knock down (CKD) body assembly commenced in October 1941. However, World War II broke out in Malaya just two months later, and Singapore fell to the invading Japanese Army in February 1942. The Ford Malaya plant became the venue where British General Percival formally surrendered to General Yamashita of Japan. During the occupation of Singapore, the Japanese used the Ford plant to assemble Nissan and Toyota trucks for the military. Following Japan's surrender in 1945, the British army reacquired the plant and returned it to Ford Malaya in 1946, and production recommenced in April 1947. Between 1926 and 1965, Ford Malaya stood as the sole automobile assembler in Singapore. Throughout its history, Ford Malaya would export its produce to British Malaya (later West Malaysia), British Borneo (later East Malaysia and Brunei), Siam (later Thailand), the Dutch East Indies (later Indonesia), Burma, India and Pakistan. Ford Malaya had imported SKD and CKD kits from the United States, Canada, Britain, Germany and Australia respectively. Ford Malaya produced over 150,000 automobiles over the decades, and finally closed down in 1980. The government of Singapore would later gazette the old Ford factory as a national monument in February 2006. Attempts by General Motors In the mid-1920s, General Motors (GM) of America had also expressed intentions to establish a regional hub in British Malaya. In mid-1926, GM approached the British administration in Singapore and requested permission to build an assembly plant in the affluent Tanjong Katong area. However, the local British authorities denied GM's application on grounds that it would 'spoil the amenities of the Katong residential area'. In light of the situation, GM decided to set up their regional assembly plant in the Dutch East Indies instead. In late 1926, a General Motors