The history of the present company goes back to 1928, when a Sydney engineering company called Coote and Jorgensen Limited was established. The company's first site was in Camperdown but in 1936 they moved to larger premises in Alexandria. By this time the company was a medium sized engineering operation producing manufacturing machinery such as wire drawing machines and industrial power transmissions. Jorgensen's great ambition was to become involved in the automotive industry and in the early post war years the company began to make car replacement parts.

The company was growing so rapidly that in the late 1940s, Coote and Jorgensen started building a plant on the present site in Fairfield. This came into operation in 1952.
Five years later, the Borg-Warner Corporation of the United States made a successful takeover bid for Coote and Jorgensen and subsequently, the company, then known as Borg-Warner (Australia) Limited, continued producing more automotive and industrial products. The first rear axle assemblies for Ford Australia, were supplied for the Zephyr, Consul and later, the Customline range.

In 1963, the company unveiled two generic rear axle assemblies, the Model 70 and 78, which, with modifications, would suit a wide range of Australian made cars. This common industry design concept was pioneered by and remains the cornerstone of the company's operations in the automotive field to this day.
The first 3 speed manual transmissions were designed in 1964 and introduced by Ford and Chrysler the following year. Also in 1964, the first order for automatic transmissions was received when Ford signed a contract for the newly developed Model 35.
In 1967 a new factory was established in South Africa to service that local automotive market. Axle design and manufacturing skills were transferred from the Fairfield site.
In 1971 a new transmission plant began to manufacture components and assemble the Borg - Warner automatic in Albury, New South Wales. Again production equipment and skills were transferred from Fairfield.
The company became part of the BTR organisation in 1987. Initially registered as BTR Engineering (Australia) Limited and later traded as BTR Automotive.
On July 1, 2000 the Fairfield, South African and Indonesian facilities became part of the Spicer Light Axle Division. This division is part of the worldwide Dana Corporation which is headquartered in Toledo, USA. The Albury transmission operation was not part of this change and remained BTR Automotive.
Spicer Axle Australia Pty Ltd at Fairfield is focussed on the design, manufacture and assembly of automotive axle products. More than 6.5 million axle assemblies have been delivered to customers both locally in Australia and overseas.