(EXPANDED FROM 10/8/2021)
A late-1960s Ford promotional film offers a fascinating glimpse into the car and truck designs being worked on at the time. Perhaps more than intended, The Design Makers — Inside Ford Design, powerfully illustrates why Detroit was failing to stay competitive against foreign automakers. Yet the comment threads at Hemmings (Strohl, 2013) and Dean’s Garage (Smith, 2013) did not meaningfully deal with the 800-pound gorilla in the room.
For the sake of historical honesty I think we need to acknowledge that gorilla. Doing so doesn’t mean any of the designers in the film should be mocked.
After all, the biggest source of the problem was mostly off camera — “Grosse Pointe myopians.” That’s the pejorative term journalist Brock Yates (1983) gave to the executives of Ford and other American automakers because they failed to recognize, let alone adapt to, dramatic changes sweeping through society.
Why? Because becoming an American auto executive was like entering a cloistered “priesthood,” an observer told Yates (1983, p. 80):
“‘The farther they advance, the more monastic they become. They simply have no concept of the real world.’ The observer went on to note that the automobiles of industry executives were ‘built to their lifestyles, and they have no comprehension of why people in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Scarsdale, or Fairfield County, Connecticut, want Mercedes, BMW’s, and Hondas instead of Buicks and LeBarons.'”
It is thus not surprising that the Ford film painted the picture of an automaker too fixated on excessively large, over-styled and under-engineered cars that did not meet the practical needs of a growing proportion of the buying public.
Styling: The tail that wagged the dog
It makes sense that a film apparently intended to inspire young men (yes, men, as discussed here) to become car designers would emphasize the central importance of styling to the development of an automobile. And, to its credit, the film pointed out how design proposals went through many changes — or are even rejected — because of a range of other considerations.
But at least in the discussion about passenger cars, stylistic flights of fancy were given prevalence over engineering innovations and practical considerations. A case in point is footage about proposals for what would end up becoming the 1970 Thunderbird.
The lead designer is shown critiquing a proposal as looking too much like an economy car:
“Our customer, he wants the drama in his automobile and I don’t think we’re catching it here (see above illustration). I think we’re catching it in some of the others — especially this one looks very masculine (below illustration); a man will part with his money for that because he’s different. . . .”
Another designer agreed, arguing that “the Thunderbird should be a real pacesetter, a controversial-looking design, especially on the front end.”
The production T-Bird ended up with significant similarities to the sketches shown, most notably with its a pronounced “eagle beak” (Wikipedia, 2023). Ford was clearly trying to compete with General Motors over who could offer the longest hood.
Also see ‘1958-76 Thunderbird: The rise and fall of the Ford that shook up GM’
One could argue that the Thunderbird’s redesign was at least somewhat successful. In 1970 the T-Bird regained its sales leadership in the luxury coupe class from the Buick Riviera. In 1971 production fell substantially but the T-Bird still outsold the Riviera and Olds Toronado despite the General Motors’ twins receiving completely new bodies (go here for further discussion).
Nevertheless, the Thunderbird was an evolutionary dead end. As a case in point, it may well be the most egregious example of why the federal government felt compelled to institute bumper crashworthiness standards. The T-Bird’s front design offered ridiculously little protection from even parking-lot dings.
That’s why it struck me as odd how Dean’s Garage commentator Allen Omes (2013) to complain about regulations that resulted in “huge bumpers and extra overhang to most everything.”
Perhaps the best all-purpose response comes from Yates. In his classic book, The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry, he concluded:
“All of the government interference could have been avoided if the industry had demonstrated some social responsibility during the 1960s. . . . Bad automobiles came before bad laws. To be sure, federal bureaucrats have since swung the regulation pendulum too far, but that too was an inevitable response to Detroit’s witless excesses” (1983, p. 254).
Whatever happened to practical cars?
It’s important to remember that this was a public relations film. Out of all of Ford’s products, why did they decide to spend quality time on the Thunderbird? And why focus on the front end? This is the company that Henry Ford built. More than any other American automaker, for many years Ford was primarily associated with basic, practical transportation. Why was that legacy so underplayed in this film?
Also see ‘1962 Ford: Harbinger of stylish trucks rots in the woods’
Part of the answer may reside in the biggest intended audience, which I suspect was students considering their career options. However, if that’s the case why not focus more on “youthful” cars such as the Mustang rather than the Thunderbird? Perhaps the latter better represented the focus of Ford’s styling strategy as it entered the 1970s.
Toward the end of the film a concept car was shown that could have been turned into a Mustang. Even so, this was presented as an advanced design that paid little attention to the practical aspects of packaging and engineering. It was a stylistic flight of fancy that only served to highlight Ford’s low prioritization of functional innovation.
Not your own man: the politics of ‘Bunkie’s beak’
The film has a certain dissonance. It makes reference to being “your own man” as a car designer, yet it also notes the importance of working well in teams. The latter is discussed in murky enough terms that you have to draw upon outside information to understand the political subtext.
The Thunderbird discussion does not acknowledge a high-level management feud going on at Ford in the late-1960s. General Motors executive Semon “Bunkie” Knudsen was brought in to assume the presidency of the Ford Motor Company in February of 1968. That set up a rivalry with Lee Iacocca, who headed the Ford Division.
Also see ‘Lee Iacocca got lucky with the 1964-66 Ford Mustang’
According to David Halberstam’s book, The Reckoning, Knudsen and Iacocca fought constantly about styling — and the designers “were caught in the crossfire” (1986, p. 379). Collectible Automobile writers Jim and Cheryl Ferrell stated that tensions became so great that design chief Eugene Bordinat “began preparing different clay models for each to see, and neither saw the clay models prepared for the other” (2014, p. 82).
Knudsen was a big advocate of front ends with dramatic protrusions. A handful of Ford products thus ended up with beak-like grilles, such as the 1971-72 big Ford, the 1970-71 Mercury Montego/Cyclone and the 1971-73 Mercury Cougar. However, the most dramatic beak of all was grafted onto the 1970-71 T-Bird.
Cobravenom71 (2004), a commentator at Mustangsandmore.com, stated that Knudsen “forced the T-Bird to be a virtual clone of the [1969] Pontiac Grand Prix, with a carbon-copy long pointed beak at the tip of the hood. This became known as ‘Bunkie’s beak.’ This car got zero support from Ford lifers.”
The film does not show any beakless design proposals, such as one posted at freewebs.com (2013; scroll down to 1969). The website states that the pictured design was vetoed by Knudsen.
Jim and Cheryl Ferrell went as far as to say that Knudsen “unilaterally changed” the front of the Thunderbird without getting the approval of Ford CEO Henry Ford II (2014, p. 82). If this was indeed the case, it would make sense if the film was released prior to Knudsen’s firing on Sept. 11, 1969 (Wikipedia, 2023). Otherwise, why would Ford trumpet a design that was so controversial within the company?
Also see ‘How did Bunkie Knudsen influence the 1972 Ford Thunderbird?‘
Ford products largely lost their beaks in subsequent years. Even so, the company became an increasingly aggressive participant in the bigger, glitzier and more powerful arms race. The new-for-1972 Thunderbird may have adopted a bland, broughamy look, but this generation was the largest and heaviest in the history of that nameplate (auto editors of Consumer Guide, 2013).
Part of the problem was the advent of federally-mandated, 5-mph bumpers. But even without them, the Thunderbird’s footprint was similar to the full-sized LTD. Ford’s bloated personal coupe was only put on a diet after CAFE fuel economy standards were approved in 1975. Within five years the T-Bird’s weight would fall back to levels last seen when it was still a two-seater in 1955-57.
Prior to the CAFE standards, it really didn’t matter who was in charge at Ford because the groupthink was so pronounced. In the late-60s and early-70s the Big Four made only token efforts to offer efficient and functionally innovative cars. This void was filled by foreign automakers, whose share of the market soared from under 5 percent of passenger cars and trucks in 1962 to more than 13 percent in 1970 — and then to more than 28 percent in 1987 (Wards Auto, 2017).
Yates argued that a key factor in the ascendancy of foreign brands was the “suspicion among buyers that Detroit was incapable of building anything but chromed land arks” (1983, p. 115). Ford’s promotional film made little effort to dispel that suspicion among prospective car designers.
Yes, but stylistic creativity was still king!
A goodly number of commentators at Hemmings and Dean’s Garage viewed the film as a nostalgic trip back to the golden days of automotive design.
For example, in a Hemmings comment Jim (2013) noted that this “was back in the days when ascetics (sic) dictated the design. . . . Today they are all styled by wind tunnel drag coefficient, so everything foreign or domestic, looks identical.” The example he gave was the angle of a windshield, which he presumably believed had greater variability back then.
Sure, aerodynamics now play a much bigger role in a car’s design. But back in the 1960s there were also styling constraints. They just happened to be dictated more by the corporate bean counters and catsup oracles than evil government regulators.
Yates argued that Detroit’s design conformity was partially a result of corporate centralization schemes such as shared platforms. “Now, a flawed roofline or a badly raked hood could wreck the sales of not just a single car division, but an entire Corporation” (1983, p. 193).
If you were designing a mid-sized Chevrolet you were stuck with exactly the same windshield used by Pontiac, Buick and Oldsmobile. By the same token, groupthink was strong enough that there usually wasn’t a huge amount of variation between American automakers. The windshield of a 1968 Chevelle didn’t have a much different rake or shape than that of a Ford Fairlane or Plymouth Satellite.
Indeed, the overall shapes of late-60s, mid-sized cars could hardly be described as wildly creative. No one deviated from upright front ends with huge grilles and quad headlights. Exterior dimensions of a Chevelle, Fairlane or Satellite four-door sedan were almost identical. General Motors’ introduction of a shortened wheelbase for two-door body styles was arguably the most significant design innovation from that time period.
Also see ‘Declassified 1970s documents spark debate among auto historians‘
Fear of trying something out of the norm was palpable. This was in contrast with the automotive landscape of Europe, where dramatically different design approaches were being explored in Germany, France, England and Sweden.
A rich diversity of approaches could even be seen within nations. For example, Swedish automakers Saab and Volvo took sharply divergent paths in the design of their cars (go here for further discussion).
The ‘good old days’ were good in one respect
I would suggest that, when it comes to design conformity, the late-60s and early-70s weren’t much different than today — with one exception. National differences in car design have largely disappeared. Here is where I think Jim is on to something: Most contemporary designs — foreign or domestic — look pretty darn similar.
I’d argue that this has more to do with industry consolidation and globalization than safety and environmental regulations. Consider Ford’s global product development system, which has been primarily designed to save money and create a unified global branding. This would have never worked back in the 1960s, when Ford’s American design studios embraced very different principles than its European arm.
A diversity of design approaches could be considered bad if you define corporate efficiency narrowly, but it nevertheless saved the American auto industry from itself. At one point or another each of the Big Three’s European operations gave their Detroit-based arm the expertise needed to develop smaller, more efficient and technically advanced cars.
The most important change needed to happen at the top. Yates argued that Ford didn’t shift away from “long hoods, low rooflines, high noses and gobs of brightwork” until design chief Eugene Bordinet retired in 1980 (1983, p. 177). It took his successor, John Telnack, to make a clean break with the past by championing the 1983 T-Bird, 1984 Tempo and 1986 Taurus.
Telnack was understandably skeptical when he was first given the go-ahead to make Fords look more innovative, according to Halberstam (1986, pp. 646-47):
“The Ford shop, Telnack thought, was filled with gifted young men who were as capable as any designers in the world of jumping into the future but whose ideas generally failed to go beyond sketches or, on occasion, clay. Instead, they were forced to imitate the boxy, hard-edged cars of GM, which were neither attractive nor aerodynamically sensible. He liked to recall a remark made by Alex Tremulis — an early innovator at Ford who favored a softer look — who had once asked a conference of designers, ‘When are all of you going to stop this torture of innocent sheet metal?'”
That question comes to mind when viewing the tortured Thunderbird design proposals in this film. As a mental exercise, imagine what that film would have been like if Ford had already transcended Grosse Pointe myopia in the late-1960s rather than waiting until its back was against the wall in the early-80s.
NOTES:
This story was originally posted on June 29, 2013, updated on May 1, 2020, and expanded on Oct. 8, 2021 and April 28, 2023. The film does not display a title and release date, but YouTube labels it The Design Makers — Inside Ford Design. My guess is that the film includes footage from 1968 and was released prior to 1970 model introductions. Production figures for individual models were calculated from Gunnell (2002). Specifications were from the auto editors of Consumer Guide (2006), Automobile Catalog (2021) and Classic Car Database (2021).
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Auto editors of Consumer Guide; 2006. Encyclopedia of American Cars. Publications International, Lincolnwood, IL.
- ——; 2013. “How the Ford Thunderbird Works.” howstuffworks.com. Accessed June 25.
- Automobile Catalog; 2021. “Full detailed specifications listing and photo gallery.” Accessed Oct. 8.
- Classic Car Database; 2021. “Search for specifications.” Accessed Oct. 8.
- cobravenom71; 2004. “Interesting info on 71-73s.” Mustangsandmore.com. Posted April 6 (link no longer active).
- Ferrell, Jim and Cheryl; 2014. “Eugene Bordinat Jr.: Durable Design Executive.” Collectible Automobile. October: 76-83.
- Freewebs.com; 2013. “Thunderbirds Through The Years.” Accessed June 26.
- Gunnell, John; 2002. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised 4th Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Halberstam, David; 1986. The Reckoning. William Morrow & Co., New York, NY.
- Jim; 2013. Commentator in “A challenge that belongs to many men: Inside the Ford Design studios in the late 1960s.” Hemmings. Posted June 6.
- Omes, Allen; 2013. Commentator in “The Design Makers — Inside Ford Design.” Dean’s Garage. Posted July 1.
- Smith, Gary; 2013. “The Design Makers — Inside Ford Design.” Dean’s Garage. Posted June 27.
- Strohl, Daniel; 2013. “A challenge that belongs to many men: Inside the Ford Design studios in the late 1960s.” Hemmings. Posted June 6.
- Wards Auto; 2017. “U.S. Vehicle Market Share by Company, 1961-2016.” Posted Feb. 6 (page no longer accessible).
- Wikipedia, 2023. “Semon Knudsen.” Page last modified April 15.
- Yates, Brock; 1983. The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry. Empire Books, New York, NY.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- autohistorypreservationsociety.org: Volvo 122S (1966)
- oldcarbrochures.org: Chevrolet Chevelle (1968); Ford Cortina (1971); Ford Fairlane (1969); Ford Pinto (1971); Ford Thunderbird (1970; 1972, 1982, 1985); Mercury Montego/Cyclone (1970); Plymouth Satellite (1969); Pontiac Grand Prix (1969)
Design equals styling, which exists to serve marketing. In other words it has to sell cars. That is always the bottom line. This was never more evident than during the time of the yearly model change and the very short product design cycles of the late 1950’s through early 1970s. Cars had become fashion items and the U.S. was affluent enough to want to change their wardrobe every couple of years. Buyers did not want to look out of touch and old fashioned, and they weren’t planning on keeping their cars for too long anyway, they didn’t last that long back then. So your bat winged ’59 Chevy would be gone from your driveway soon enough.
As cars have become more expensive, more buyers hold onto them longer, especially with longer financing. Luckily the original lifespan of the average automobile has lengthened to well over 100,000 miles, some even reaching twice that mileage with average care. Because of this, the average buyer doesn’t welcome extreme design. You don’t want your five year old car to look outlandish or totally out of style. Governmental mandates and requirements have also had their effect on corralling the designers more extreme flights of fantasy.
Back in the 1990’s I bought a ’71 Riviera boat tail. Why? Because it was a monument to the insanity of styling based design. How had the original Riv, an elegant design, which had received worldwide acclaim, morphed into this thing?
As the bearded gentleman explained about the Thunderbird, it’s only goal was to make an impressive statement about what the owner thought about himself. Nothing about function, performance, practicality, or quality. It had become just a fancy blunderbuss to shoot down the highway.
The area of automotive design has quieted down quite a bit in the last thirty years. It’s all been minivans, SUVs, trucks, and purposeful sedans. Younger readers never saw the results of this fashion-based design cluttering our highways, a mix of ’50s, ’60’s and’70’s excesses. This school of thought produced a few winners, but many, if not most from this period are best forgotten.
Excellent comments.
I would argue that Ford Model T is a bad example of “the philosophy that form should follow function”. At least the late model shown which has that sleek, but impractical “torpedo” look so popular in 1920s – the body sharply tapering towards the front of the car without any regard towards interior roominess. While it is indeed remarkably free from the excesses of styling, space utilization is still horrendous – the chassis at the running boards is almost twice as wide as the front seat; and even the backseat is not all that much wider.
The original 1908 version probably would’ve been a better example: the front seat is as wide as the backseat, and the body layout is much more boxy. There are even better examples, though.
It may be helpful to know that unless I can find an image from an advertisement (such as at Old Car Brochures) or Wikipedia, the photos I use are limited to those I take. The Model T photo I posted is the only one I currently possess.
I’m not knowledgeable enough of cars built from 1900-1920s to debate the fine points of styling. However, I do think that my general point is valid. The Model T’s popularity was grounded in its low price and go-anywhere, do-anything practicality. My understanding is that Ford didn’t even have a styling department during the Model T’s tenure.
As the long-term owner of a Mark 3 Cortina, I was intrigued by your photo-caption comment that it was ‘not intended as an entry-level small car’. Certainly Ford in Europe, the UK and Australia had the Escort as a smaller car, but the basic Cortina was pretty basic. Stark, even. Pushrod engine, manual trans, bench seat, under-dash handbrake, even a column shift on some UK versions I believe.
But there was quite a range of models, and a sizeable option list. My 1974 L sedan had the stark interior, but an optional 2000 (Pinto) engine, floor-shift automatic, radio, and reclining buckets. I could have had an XL or XLE (Australia) with fancier interior and more tinsel; in the UK there was a GXL and a GT. In short, a wider model range than the Pinto, and responding to competition from other European small-car builders. None of this ‘penalizing the buyer for choosing a small car’ nonsense.
My sense is that in the U.S. the Cortina was placed in the same “subcompact” category as a Volkswagen Beetle, but it was still a notch up in size and price. For example, in 1970 the Cortina was a good 10 inches longer than a base Beetle and its base two-door sedan was priced only a bit higher, but the Cortina’s Deluxe four-door sedan and wagon went for more than a base Maverick.
I am not as knowledgeable about pricing strategies in other countries, but here in the U.S. in the early-70s you could usually get strippo models in everything from subcompacts to full-sized cars from the low-priced brands. A base mid-sized Ford may have had a few more bells and whistles than a base Maverick (e.g., a glove box), but it was still rather stark.