Kwik Fit, the car maintenance business built up by Sir Tom Farmer, has been put up for sale by Ford as part of a restructuring move designed to release more than $1bn in cash for the cash-strapped motor company.

The proposed sell off was announced last night only days after Ford disclosed that it was slashing 35,000 jobs worldwide and selling off assets and after suffering the worst year in its history. Most of losses will be in North America.

Ford directors have called in investment bankers Goldman Sachs to evaluate the sale "or partial disposition" of Kwik Fit and two peripheral US businesses involved in accident repair and recycling.

The company, the world's second largest motor manu facturer, insisted last night that the announcement did not presage a break-up of the Kwik Fit business which it acquired less than three years ago for $1.6bn.

"This is a good company with a good future ahead of it," said a UK spokesman for Ford. "We are not in the market to break it up but we are not necessarily selling it in its entirety. We might retain a minority shareholding."

Kwik Fit ranks as Europe's biggest motor maintenance and light repair operation specialising in the replacement of exhausts and other car parts.It employs more than 11,500 people at 2,400 service centres in the UK and abroad.

At the company's Edinburgh offices last night, Sir Tom Farmer, who has remained chairman of the business since the Ford takeover, was unavailable to comment about the proposed change of ownership.

Also up for sale in the Ford clear out are two American companies, Collision Team of America, which runs a 32-outlet chain of collision repair centres in Indiana, Texas, Illinois and Florida, and GreenLeaf LLC, which operates 31 automotive recycling centres in the US and Canada.

Ford Motor Company's president and chief operating officer, Sir Nick Scheele, said the the group was concentrating its efforts and attention on its core business.