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Ford recently announced a restructuring in Europe and a new plan to co-operate with Volkswagen.
Cost-cutting and platform-sharing seem to be on the agenda - not a surprise with the enormous costs of developing new electric vehicles hoving into firm view.
But could Ford also look to its past for help in reinventing its future? We posed the question to Steve Saxty, former Ford manager and the author of a new book about Ford, “The Cars You Always Promised Yourself”. He gave us a guide to what he deems the Blue Oval's ‘Hidden Heroes”. These are not the obvious RS cars and Capris but vehicles that demonstrated how Ford would quickly dive into a market or create a new one; it’s a fascinating story - and may well contains some pointers for Ford's future:
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Ford Escort Twin Cam (1968)
This Escort was every bit as unusual and special as the famous Lotus Cortina that sired the fondly-remembered Cosworths, RS, XR and ST performance Fords. Ford’s Boreham team miniaturized the American muscle-car template, shoehorning the Lotus twin-cam engine into a car that was 136kg lighter than the larger Cortina – saving the weight of a male driver and female passenger.
The first prototype was banged about with a hammer during the course of a weekend to make the Lotus engine fit. This was a time before the first Rallye Sport cars were made and exterior changes were minimal. Bigger wheels, split front bumpers and a black-painted grille were all that set it apart from lesser Escorts.
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Ford Escort Twin Cam - interior
The Escort Twin Cam, inevitably nicknamed ‘Twink’ was Ford’s Mini Cooper, agile fast and, with its screaming 1.6-litre engine, a capable rally-winner. It set the template for the many fast Fords that followed, even if it was less strident than the later bestriped and bewinged RS cars. It was Ford at its best; agile, willing to try something new and quick at bringing it to a new market niche. It’s a trait that most of these ‘hidden heroes’ share in my selection.
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Ford Cortina Crusader (1982)
The Cortina Crusader was a bit too successful. Ford’s designers had gone back one final time to facelift the Mk4 Cortina, a car loathed by car enthusiasts but loved by conservative customers. The 1980 Cortina, sold as “A Car Above Comparison” was more than the typical makeover with a subtle redesign that gave it deeper windows and higher seats and a new roof.
A more modern grille, bigger taillights, paint and bumpers completed the designer’s polishing up to tide it over before the Sierra. It was never going to appeal to magazine road testers but it sold well – however the end was in sight. The Crusader went further, offering a colour-coded grille, and two-tone paint.
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Ford Cortina Crusader - interior
The Cortina Crusader was the Cortina’s last gasp and intended to be little more than a limited edition to clear stock before the Sierra launched. The luxurious Ghia interior was thrown in for free. The result was a far more appealing car than Ford predicted and buyers began snapping them up, unfortunately in preference to the new Sierra intended to replace it.
This was a rare case of a car company being too generous; the Cortina Crusader had an almost magnetic attraction to existing buyers who shunned the radical Sierra. It was too good for its maker’s own good.
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Ford Granada 2.8 Injection (1981)
Ford’s marketing department was the best in the business in the ‘80s with clever-sounding names like RS2000 and Ghia X Executive but this was one was done after the naming committee had gone home. Simply named ‘Granada 2.8 Injection’, just like the legendary Capri 2.8i – but few recall it as fondly.
However, it certainly looked the part; like a giant Escort XR3 for bahnstorming Ford bosses with macho black spoilers front and rear while the Ghia’s glitzy chrome was swapped for black and a large pair of front spotlights were added for further swagger.
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Ford Granada 2.8 Injection Estate (1981)
Inside the GL interior was swapped for a pair of expensive-looking Recaros but that was it; the plastic steering wheel and the fake wood of the regular car remained in place. It didn’t drive any differently to a regular Granada either but it looked dramatic and for a short while that was enough.
Ford managers loved this car; years after it stopped production two ultra-rare estate versions were kept at its UK HQ at Warley in Essex. Another car that proved Ford design and marketing could whisk up something interesting with little engineering investment. Ford still keeps this immaculate Granada 2.8 Injection Estate at its collection in Cologne.
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Ford Escort Ghia (1981)
This car wasn’t intended to appeal to car enthusiasts, and it didn’t. Instead it was designed for people like my mum who liked something more luxurious and classier than a repmobile Ford. The design team was lauded for the XR3 with its Porsche-style ‘telephone dial’ wheels and sophisticated aero kit.
But their talents went further than making sporty-looking cars and the Escort Ghia had a very distinct personality. Lots of subtle touches made it work so well. Delicate strips of chrome, filigrees of thin grey stripes on the doors and an interior very different from the lesser models below set it apart.
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Ford Escort Ghia (1981) – interior
The interior of the XR3 was remembered for its dramatic strobe-effect seat material designed by famous French designer Patrick le Quément. But the Ghia was equally distinctive inside with velour expensively stitched into intricate ribbed shapes on the seats. Although the small strips of wood trim set into the door were made of plastic they looked far more realistic than the garish fake wood used on many ‘90s cars. Cleverly using two-tone colours allowed the dashboard to look a little different and classy too.
If you were to go back in time to a 1981 Sainsbury’s car park and look in the distance at a Crystal Green Escort Ghia you would see how very different it was to a humble 1.3-litre Escort Estate in Terracotta or a Sunburst Red XR3. That was design at its best, making different models of one car with a distinctly different character. My mum was happy and so were thousands of others with a Ghia that truly felt a cut above the rest.
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Ford Fiesta Supersport (1980)
The Golf GTi defined the new era of hot hatches but Ford had the just tepid Fiesta 1300S and the upcoming Escort XR3. The legendary Bob Lutz, then-Ford of Europe boss, couldn’t wait. The result was this visually warmed-over Fiesta 1300S, quite literally a super Sport.
Although another marketing and design-led car the Fiesta Supersport did feature a few mechanical modifications. The iconic four-spoke wheels from the Ford RS Accessories range were added along with a set of black plastic wheelarches and a rear spoiler. Ford’s designers were masters of stripes and they reached new heights on this car to make the wheelarches look wider and tougher.
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Ford Fiesta Supersport (1980)
Times were changing though and buyers expected unusual and sporty cars to be engineered to go as well as they looked. Late in the program it was realized that the car needed a new boot pressing to accommodate the wider spare wheel, a little thing that required a lot of work to do quickly.
It led to Lutz realising that the company needed a team, like Lockheed’s famous ‘skunk works’, that could quickly engineer more advanced and exciting cars that were more than the sum of stripes and good marketing. Ford’s new Special Vehicle Engineering (SVE) team was the answer, producing their iconic Capri Injection and Sierra Cosworth models.
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Ford Tickford Capri (1983)
But SVE had a hand in many other interesting cars that filled niches for luxury and performance. Probably the strangest was this one, a car I owned back in the day at Dunton when everyone else was moving on from Capris. It was the love child of former F1 driver and Autocar journalist, the late John Miles and Aston Martin’s owner Victor Gauntlett (1942-2003).
Together, they persuaded Ford’s Bob Lutz that Aston Martin could develop the Capri Injection into “an 8/10ths Vantage” and they almost succeeded. Special Vehicle Engineering signed off on a car with more power than a Cosworth and a faster 0-60mph time than a Lotus Esprit. It was more Aston than Ford.
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Ford Tickford Capri (1983) - interior
Tickford rebuilt each car by hand, modifying almost everything – engine, brakes, suspension, gearbox and body. But few could look past the extrovert bodykit to see the Aston-like interior or the mechanical upgrades under the skin, regarding it as customised Capri rather than a fully type-approved new car.
All that work came a high price - £60,000 in today’s money - and just 94 cars were sold. It might have been a commercial failure but it led to Ford and Aston’s management becoming acquainted, resulting in the larger company buying a stake in Aston in 1987 and taking full control in 1994.
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Ford Sierra Ghia 4x4 Estate (1987)
Ford's SVE didn’t create only performance cars but also filled niches too. The best one was possibly the Sierra Ghia 4x4 Estate. Ford had stopped selling the Granada Estate and by the mid-‘80s there was a huge hole to fill in their range.
Ford’s product planners had been caught on the hop and this was their solution: combine the body of the luxurious Ghia estate and the running gear of the high-performance four-wheel drive XR4x4 and bingo, Ford had again a credible and unique car to serve the hunting, shooting and fishing set.
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Ford Sierra Ghia 4x4 Estate (1987)
For a brief time, Ford had a car that created its own segment, the subtle high-speed estate car. Ford managers like me rushed to get such an understated vehicle and so did several police forces who replaced the seven-spoke RS wheels with plain items and cheekily stuck 1.6L badges on the back.
There was little on the road that could carry as many traffic cones as a Sierra Ghia 4x4 Estate in all weathers and Ford’s Motorsport team found it perfect as a high-speed support vehicle for rally cars. There was one even smaller and more glamorous niche: carrying medical equipment needed for organ transplants at high speed.
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Ford Puma 1.7 (1997)
Ford was, and probably still is, at its best when design engineering and marketing groups work together (to coin the Sierra tagline) in perfect harmony. New big boss Jac Nasser realised buyers wanted something stylish and fun at a low price. In a moment of genius, he enlisted Special Vehicle Engineering to realise his vision.
British designer Chris Svenson created something remarkably fresh that looked far classier than Vauxhall’s Tigra. Chief engineer Richard Parry-Jones built a prototype mule based on a Fiesta and all agreed that the concept, combined with Svenson’s striking-looking shape, had potential.
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Ford Puma 1.7 (1997) - in San Francisco
Designer Ian Callum evolved the design to look edgier, stronger and even more distinctive while Parry-Jones championed for the car to have 50% more power than a Fiesta. He made his case and won – the Puma 1.7-litre had a unique engine; the block was made in Spain, shipped to Yamaha in Japan for modifying and then on to Cologne for installation.
The result was a car whose engine fizzed with excitement and Ford soon found that customers rewarded the company when its design and engineering was this brave. And the marketing? Who could forget the Steve McQueen ad that managed to convey everything special about the little coupe in ninety seconds. The Puma was a combination of fresh design and clever engineering that quickly became a sales hit. The later Racing Puma variant (pictured) has since overshadowed the standard model, but the 1.7 was special enough.
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Ford Mondeo ST220 (2003)
Like the old XR cars of the ‘80s and ‘90s the ST range served as understudy to the niche, hardcore RS models. SVE had developed an ST200 Mondeo of the previous genreation saloon, many came in a blingy bright Imperial Blue, or silver plus a few in white that the police (of course) snapped up. The all-new Mondeo Mk2 came with a barnstormer ST220 V6 with many, but thankfully not all, in the same bright blue and boasting 223bhp.
But the world had changed by the mid-2000s and BMW’s 3 Series and diesel engines were selling in large numbers. The oil-burner and badge were combined in the 318d; more than enough to give Ford a fright and the thirsty V6 Mondeo became an anachronism after company car taxes were changed.
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Mondeo ST TDCi (2004)
Ford’s response was a brave one. Take the ST220 and install a 2.2 litre Duratorq diesel engine with 153bhp and a mighty 295lb ft of torque. The result was a sleeper hit that few expected – well unless it was painted bright blue. Not only was it 19mpg more economical than the V6 ST220 but it matched the lethargic BMW 318d on price and beat the far more expensive 320d on performance.
This was a quick-witted solution that, for a while, gave Ford and blue oval buyers a credible alternative to BMW after the market had shifted.
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Mustang V8
Ford had tried to sell the Mustang in Europe several times in the past before it became a full-time mainstream model. The V8 Mustang found a niche market in the early ‘70s in Holland, France and Germany but spendthrift Brits were more in love with their homegrown alternative, the Capri.
Ford of Britain was on a roll in the late ‘70s and some genius in Marketing looked at the favourable exchange rate: the all-American Mustang entered the Ford Cars brochure for the first time. But a left-hand drive V8 was a non-starter and UK sales stopped within months.
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Mustang V8 (2016), again
Ford took it more seriously in 2016 when the first Mustangs in decades headed to Europe: this time it bore a family resemblance to European Fords and came with right-hand drive. The assumption was that buyers would choose the four-cylinder car 3-to-1, just like they had with the Capri decades before. But no, the V8 comfortably outsold the smaller-engined Mustang.
The Mustang V8 had been hiding in plain sight all along: all it needed was to be smaller, more economical and available with the wheel on the right to find its niche in a market of Teutonically perfect German coupes. Ford reinvented itself in the ‘60s with the GT40, RS cars and Mustang and the three of them remain part of the company’s DNA today along with these hidden heroes that, sometimes quietly, slipped in and out of the market to keep buyers happy.
Ford is resurrecting its Mach 1 nameplate - first used as a Mustang performance package in 1968 - to be used on a new all-electric crossover, complete with Mustang-inspired looks, due on the road in 2020. Back to the future, indeed.
By Steve Saxty
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The Cars You Always Promised Yourself
The Cars You Always Promised Yourself (left) is written by Steve Saxty. It’s a large 10-inch square full-colour book of more than 300 pages and contains hundreds of images, most of which have never been seen before. The central ‘character’ is the Ford coupé and the more interesting RS, XR and RS derivatives that evolve, Dr Who-like over the decades from Mustang to Capri to Sierra three-door to Probe, Puma, Cougar and the current Focus RS, GT and Mustang trio. However, the book isn’t just for diehard Ford fans – there's plenty for anyone who has an interest in cars from the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s to enjoy. It was recently made ‘Book of the Month’ by our colleagues at Classic & Sports Car magazine.
The author, Steve Saxty (pictured) is a former Ford product designer who went on to work in senior sales and marketing roles at Mazda, Porsche and Jaguar. He used his contacts and first-hand experience to allow him to write about design and marketing from an insider’s perspective. The Cars You Always Promised Yourself is available direct from the publisher at the price of £44.95. The book is available to buy online direct from the publisher here.
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