Sam Toy, who died on March 24 aged 84, was chairman and managing director of the Ford Motor Co in Britain from 1980 to 1986.

It was a difficult period for the British motor industry. Toy succeeded Sir Terence Beckett on the latter's appointment as director-general of the CBI, and Beckett's six-year tenure at Ford had been turbulent: in 1978 there had been a nine-week strike by 57,000 workers at its Halewood and Dagenham plants, costing the company £200 million in lost sales.

Meanwhile, foreign manufacturers were making inroads into the British market and two domestic competitors, British Leyland and Chrysler (UK), were kept afloat only by injections of taxpayers' money.

But thanks to the Fiesta and Escort ranges and the continuing success of the Cortina, Ford remained financially strong, and increased its British market share to almost one third.

Toy took over just as Ford launched a new Escort, which had cost £1,250 million to develop. It was hoped that the new model would guarantee continuing success in Europe and increase Ford's share of the depressed United States market

But the car was being built at the Halewood plant on Merseyside, and output was at only 65 per cent of its target; efficiency and productivity were twice as good at the company's German plant, the new chairman complained. Industrial disputes at the factory slowed production, and Toy threatened that unless matters improved the Escort could be the last all-new car to be launched at the site. In 1981 Toy warned that Nissan's plan to build a car plant in Britain could be "catastrophic" for Britain's motor industry - "if we can't meet [the Japanese] and beat them we're dead". That year Ford of Britain saw a sharp fall in profits, but was still the most profitable part of the group, and it had to loan hundreds of millions of pounds to help bail out its ailing United States parent company. The following year this figure reached £961 million - higher American interest rates meant that it was cheaper to borrow from the British company, which funded the loans from retained profits and reserves.

Meanwhile Toy upgraded and improved the Granada saloon and estate; launched the Sierra ("the car of the future") and the four-door Orion saloon; and oversaw the continuing success of the Escort. He resisted EEC proposals to harmonise car prices throughout Europe, and supported the government's Youth Training Scheme, offering jobs to teenagers at Ford plants and dealerships throughout the country. When the last Cortina was produced on July 22 1982 (it was, in fact, the 4,350,941st) Toy proudly drove it off the production line at Dagenham Having cut the workforce between 1980 and 1983 by 21,000, Toy continued to plead for improved competitiveness. "What on earth is patriotic about consciously building inferior products, thereby handing our competitor countries the British market on a plate?" he asked a London conference of motor industry chiefs in 1983.

By the following year, however, price discounting due to an ongoing price war and rising costs in a highly competitive market led to an operating loss of £14 million, the first time the British company had been in the red since 1971.

On retiring from Ford in 1986, Toy became president of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, of which he had been vice-president since 1982.

Sam Toy was born at Mabe, Cornwall, on August 21 1923, one of seven children of a builder. From Falmouth Grammar School he went up to Selwyn College, Cambridge, to read geography, but the war interrupted his studies, and he joined the RAF, undergoing his pilot training in Arizona. Between 1942 and 1948 he served as a pilot and flying instructor, reaching the rank of flight lieutenant. He then returned to Cambridge - transferring to Fitzwilliam College - to complete his degree before joining the Ford Motor Co as one of its first graduate trainees, remaining with the firm for the rest of his career. Within three years he was head of export vehicle and tractor supply, and he was to become one of the company's most skilled marketing specialists. After a spell as manager of British Ford sales in the United States, in 1969 he was appointed director of sales. He joined the board in 1974.

In retirement Toy lived at Liss, in Hampshire. His interests included golf and salmon fishing, and he and his third wife enjoyed holidays at their cottage on the shores of Loch Ness. From 1988 to 1996 he was an active chairman of UK 2000 Scotland, and he was appointed OBE in 1994 for services to the environment. He was chairman of Norman Cordiner, Inverness, from 1991 to 1996. Toy was an honorary fellow of Fitzwilliam, and successfully raised money (an activity he referred to as "beating the bushes") to help complete the building of the college's quad and new theatre.

Sam Toy married first, in 1944, Jean Balls, with whom he had a son. He married secondly, in 1950, Joan Franklin Rook, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. He is survived by his children and by his third wife, Janetta McMorrow, whom he married in 1984.