In a comment thread we have been debating Ford design in the 1970s (go here). That sparked me to think in greater depth about how that automaker’s styling chops were a real step down from the previous decade.
During the 1960s Ford came out with some stellar designs such as the 1961-63 Lincoln Continental, the 1965-66 Mustang and the 1967-68 Mercury Cougar.
Even some of the automaker’s more controversial cars, such as the 1967-71 Thunderbird four-door landau, at least displayed an unusual measure of creativity. Compare that to the 1970s, when almost every Ford passenger car designed in the U.S. was eventually given a rather generic brougham look.
I get that this styling trend had become quite popular, but Ford pushed it further than General Motors, Chrysler or American Motors. For example, although many GM models displayed neo-classical styling themes, designers were much more inventive in their specific treatments of fascias and side sheetmetal sculpting. Thus, they didn’t tend to have a paint-by-numbers look.
Who needs designers when the cars all look the same?
In contrast, by mid-decade the Ford lineup had a striking level of design conformity. For example, the 1975 Ford Granada’s styling might as well have been ripped from the pages of an auto insurance ad, with their images of cars that were purposely made to look anonymous. The Granada sported an upright grille, jutting front fenders, a lower-body crease and a boxy roofline.
Those were the same basic styling cues one would find on a Ford Elite or an LTD. And while the lower-priced Maverick and Pinto didn’t have a radiator grille, their Mercury siblings did.
How could Lincoln possibly top all that? One could argue that for a while the Continental didn’t. For example, in 1975 you could get a pretty fancy brougham look with a lower-priced Ford LTD or a Mercury Marquis.
To be fair, the Lincoln’s top-end Mark IV did have a Rolls Royce-style chrome housing around its radiator grille and a fake spare tire hump. However, that hardly deviated from the brougham look.
Even the Mustang II did not escape from being at least partially broughamized. The car’s fascia looked pretty much like a Pinto with a radiator grille slapped on it . . . which was kind of like the Mercury Bobcat.
The Mustang II’s generic fascia was quite a step down from the car’s styling in the 1960s. The early Mustang’s swept-back front-ends were among the most distinctive in the U.S. auto industry.
Who was responsible for this descent into conformity?
One might most logically blame Ford design head Eugene Bordinat for this sorry state of affairs. The automaker’s U.S. cars did not begin to adopt a more aerodynamic look until after he retired in 1980.
According to David Halberstam (1983), Bordinat’s replacement — John Telnack — was initially unsure of whether upper management would let him make a clean break with the past.
Also see ‘Late-1960s Ford car design film shows US automakers losing it’
I would not be surprised if Ford design in the 1970s was heavily influenced by then-company president Lee Iacocca. He seemed to be infatuated with the brougham look — to the degree that the Chrysler lineup took on a similar appearance once he moved over to head that company.
Whoever was responsible, it amounted to a lost decade for the Ford Motor Company.
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.
- 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.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- fordheritagevault.com: Ford Granada (1975); Ford LTD (1975); Ford Mustang II (1974); Ford Thunderbird (1975); Lincoln Continental (1975); Mercury Bobcat (1977); Mercury Marquis (1977)
Interestingly, one could argue that under Uwe Bahnsen, Ford Europe during the same period developed into a style leader. Where Bob Lutz played the Iaccoca role.
I wouldnt call it a lost decade, or a design chernobyl. Ford started the 1970’s in a great fashion. The 1970 Thunderbird was sporty and aircraft inspired. The standard Ford and Merc were well done. The brand-new Lincoln was bigger bolder, but not in a late 1950’s fashion. The Mustang arguably rose to its highest.
The new bumper standards wreaked havoc with some of the designs – we all remember.
The 1972 mid size overhaul was a mixed bag. The extended midsizers – Tbird and Mark IV’- only the Mark was entirely succesful. Maybe thats why Elite came out – to save the Tbirds’ bacon – even though itself was a modified Merc Montego.
On balance GM was much less succesful than Ford in its luxury personal cars – while its standard midsizers would change the entire industry.
“Iacocca’s influence was all over the Ford cars – esp the large ones. Taste and restraint – often left him.
I wonder if Henry Ford II’s influence might have played a role as well during that era?
It could be interesting to wonder what if Ford have chosen one of George Walker’s protege Joe Oros and Elwood Engel as head of Ford styling instead of Gene Bordinat?
An interesting what if. My first question would be to what extent either of them would have separated from the Walker creators of building camel designs to appease various executives?
At the same time one can look at the Continental, bullet Bird, and the full size and see that there could have been hope for great work to emerge. But, another question would be the extent of HFIi’s risk aversion; any different with non-Bordinat leadership?
Let’s imagine if it was Elwood Engel who was chosen instead of Bordinat as head of design at Ford. The 1965 full-size Ford would probably have the same look except the 2-door hardtop who would probably have the roofline and C-pillar of the 1965 full-size Plymouth. Engel would have probably have more time and budget to refine the “Fuselage” look if he was head of design of Ford instead of Chrysler.
If Engel was head of Ford design instead of Bordinat, would Bordinat have gone to Chrysler, GM or even AMC?
From my point of view, all car styling during the 70s was awful. Huge bumpers made that bad styling even worse. I thought 60s cars looked way better.
Steve… my friend… my trusted co-pilot in matters of chrome, carburetors, and questionable factory decisions… I say this with all due respect and a straight face I can only barely maintain: you didn’t just miss the mark, you fired clean past the target, over the berm, and into a parked Pinto nobody will admit they owned.
Because the truth is, the 1970s weren’t just good to Dearborn. They were Dearborn at its most audacious, its most theatrical, its most willing to look a tightening fuel crisis dead in the eye and respond with opera windows and a half-acre of vinyl roof.
Let’s begin where all great American reinventions start… with a comeback story nobody saw coming and everybody eventually had an opinion about: the Ford Mustang II.
Now sure, history likes to squint at it. But in its moment? It was exactly the right car at exactly the right time. Downsized, reimagined, and just nostalgic enough to remind folks of better days without asking them to keep paying for them at the pump. Gone was the Falcon DNA. In its place, Pinto bones dressed up for a night out. Plastic bumpers where chrome once strutted. A design that whispered “1965” while quietly acknowledging it was living in 1974. That wasn’t compromise. That was strategy. That was survival with a showroom shine.
Then came the one-two punch that proved Ford could turn déjà vu into a business model: the Ford Granada and its slightly more perfumed sibling, the Mercury Monarch.
What you had, at the core, was a Maverick. And beneath that, a Falcon. Layers of history stacked like a well-worn set of shop manuals. But Ford didn’t just recycle it, they reframed it. Trimmed it, tailored it, and told America with a straight face that this was their answer to a Mercedes-Benz. And you know what? People bought it. Happily. Because it felt right. The size was right. The timing was right. The ads were confident enough to make you believe you’d just parked Stuttgart engineering next to your split-level ranch.
And of course, if you follow that thread long enough, it leads you straight to the inevitable conclusion: the Lincoln Versailles. Because when Ford sees a good idea, it doesn’t just stop… it puts a padded roof on it and charges extra.
Now, the Mercury Cougar. Let’s talk about that long, strange trip. The ‘67? Sharp as a tack. European influence, hidden headlights, a gentleman’s hot rod. But by the late ‘70s? That cat had grown comfortable. Expanded its horizons. Found itself. And in 1977, when someone in a Dearborn conference room said, “What if… wagon?”—that wasn’t a misstep. That was enlightenment. Woodgrain along the flanks like a suburban badge of honor. A rolling den of comfort. It didn’t abandon its roots… it planted them in a cul-de-sac and invited the neighbors over.
And then… the summit. The velvet-roped, chandelier-lit pinnacle of it all: Lincoln Continental.
This wasn’t just a car. This was a statement made in opera windows, fender skirts, and a grille that borrowed liberally from Rolls-Royce and dared anyone to object. Partial vinyl roof? Of course. Why commit to the whole thing when you can curate the experience? Every inch of it said luxury, whether you asked for it or not. And that was before you opened the door and stepped into a cabin that felt less like transportation and more like a well-funded decision.
And finally… the closer. The one that ties it all together with the confidence of a banker approving his own loan: the Ford Fairmont.
Now here’s where lesser minds see simplicity. Straight lines. Clean surfaces. A geometry lesson on wheels. But look closer. This was discipline. This was Ford saying, “We can do more with less… and make you like it.” No excess curves. No unnecessary flourish. Just form, function, and a quiet kind of confidence that didn’t need to shout. If the Lincoln was a tuxedo, the Fairmont was a perfectly pressed white shirt. And sometimes, that’s the sharper look.
So yes, Steve… imports made their move. They chipped away, earned their foothold, and built their case. But let’s not pretend they walked into an empty room.
They walked into a decade where Ford was building everything from the clean-lined pragmatism of the Fairmont to the unapologetic theater of Lincoln’s finest… and doing it with a straight face and a full showroom.
And that, my friend, is not a decade to dismiss.
That’s a decade to admire… preferably from behind the wheel, elbow on the armrest, AM radio humming something just a little bit better than it ought to be.
Captain My Captain
CaptainMyCaptain.blog
Well, one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor. . . .
I think a very strong argument for the height of Ford Design’s talent being the bullet Bird and the Continental lays at the competition politics to be George Walker’s successor. Two stunning designs.
After that their successful designs were, at best, only sporadic during Bordinat’s leadership. That did change significantly until Telnack returned from Ford of Europe and was set to ascend. Bordinat has publicly stated he had no desire to be the Detroit design leader. Certainly by the late 1960s and during the 1970s Ford of Europe’s Design operation was doing far better work. One can easily speculate that the distance from Dearborn was a major contributor to their better design. This is no way a reflection upon the individual talent that were in the Design studios, this was a management and internal politics issue.
As for the Mustang II – a cobbled together design with 2 separate languages bashed together in the door skin. A great case of leaving it to the clay modelers to try sorting it out.
The Lincoln Versailles – Ford’s cheap ass attempt to create a Seville competitor that demonstrated just how cynical Ford management really was.
Ford Fairmont – no subtlety. It would be interesting to see the design development to find out how many poor choices management made to counteract what the Design studio really wanted to do.
As told by a Ford senior design manager to me – Ford manageme4nt believed that swapping nose and tail caps plus some different body side moldings would fool the public into not recognizing the underlying model similarities.
@Captain My Captain: I can’t tell if your commentary is tongue in cheek or not. Regardless I agree with a lot of it. I understand the cynicism behind the designs of seventies Fords as well as their limitations. Regardless I find a lot to like. I don’t find that many of them stand the test of time in tbe sense of becoming classics. They were very much of their time and wben it comes to the seventies, “You had to be there.”
Well now, Hondadriver, you’ve gone and wandered into my favorite stretch of intellectual backroad—the kind where the pavement gets a little questionable and you’re never quite sure if the next curve leads to brilliance or a cattle guard that’ll rattle your fillings loose.
The best satire, as far as I’ve ever been concerned, is the kind that sits there on the page with its arms crossed, giving you that half-smirk, daring you to decide whether it’s telling the truth or just pulling your leg. The kind that could pass for gospel at the Lucky Lady Lounge until somebody like Rusty leans back, squints at it, and says, “Now hold on just a minute…”
Now as for Detroit—let’s not dance around it—I’ve long held the heretical position that after 1960, the Motor City mostly stopped designing automobiles and started assembling arguments. Loud ones. Chrome-plated ones. Occasionally padded with vinyl roofs and opera windows like a man trying to dress up regret for Sunday service. There were exceptions, sure—but about as rare as a polite conversation at the end of the bar after midnight.
That doesn’t mean the ’60s and ’70s didn’t give us anything worth talking about. Lord knows they did. But let’s not kid ourselves into thinking the curators over at the Metropolitan Museum of Art are pacing the floor waiting for a ’76 Granada to roll in under a spotlight while somebody whispers “Behold… the pinnacle of human expression.” That ain’t happening. Not now, not after three bourbons, not ever.
And truth be told, the folks building those cars back then wouldn’t have lost a wink of sleep over it. They weren’t sculpting for eternity—they were hustling for the next quarter. The automobile business has always been less Michelangelo, more blackjack dealer. Keep the cards moving, keep the players happy, and for heaven’s sake don’t let anyone look too closely at what’s under the felt.
Which is exactly why Ford, in those years, deserves a slow nod and maybe a fresh cup of coffee.
Because while GM had the war chest, Ford had something far more dangerous: necessity and a man named Lee Iacocca who could sell sand in the desert and make you feel like you got a deal on it.
Turning the Falcon into the Mustang? That wasn’t just clever—it was borderline larceny with a press release. They took economy-car bones, dressed them in long hood, short deck ambition, and suddenly every kid from Fort Stockton to Fresno thought they were one good decision away from being somebody. Even GM, with all its divisions and dollars, never quite managed to bottle that lightning again.
Then came the Maverick—same basic stew, reheated and served like it was a brand-new recipe. And folks lined up with their forks out. The Granada? Lord help us, they convinced people it had a whiff of Stuttgart about it. A Mercedes for the man who’d never seen Germany and didn’t plan to start now. Admirable in a way that makes you shake your head and check your wallet.
And when they took the Torino, sharpened up the edges, put a crown on it like a prom queen, and christened it the 1977 Thunderbird? Son, that thing sold like cold beer in August. They couldn’t build them fast enough, and not a soul in the showroom was asking about design purity. They were asking about monthly payments and whether it came in white with a red interior.
Every bit of it—every Falcon-to-Mustang, Maverick, Granada, Versailles, Thunderbird shuffle—was sleight of hand. Not deception, exactly. More like a magician working a crowd that wanted to believe. And Lee Iacocca? He was the headliner, pulling rabbits out of platforms that had already been declared dead.
Now, did it always work? No sir. The Versailles proved that even the best card player eventually shows his hand. But that’s the thing about lines—you don’t know where they are until you step over them and hear the room go quiet.
From a pure design standpoint, the Mustang is the only one of that bunch that still gets invited to polite conversation fifty years later. The rest? They’re more like old acquaintances you recognize across the room but don’t quite remember inviting.
But that doesn’t cheapen what Ford pulled off. Not one bit. They shaped the market with what they had, stretched a dollar until it squeaked, and came out looking like heroes more often than not. In a business built on excess, they made thrift look like strategy.
Now whether Cougars, Fairmonts, and Granadas qualify as “good design”… well, that’s a question best argued over bad coffee and better memories. Because for those of us who lived through it, those cars aren’t just sheet metal—they’re signposts. They sit right there alongside Charlie’s Angels hair, Richard Nixon insisting he wasn’t a crook, and disco balls spinning like poor decisions made under colored lights.
And maybe that’s the whole point.
Because in the end, it’s rarely about the car itself. It’s about where it took you. Who was sitting next to you. What you thought your life was going to be when you turned the key and pointed the hood ornament toward something bigger than Fort Stockton ever promised you.
The opera windows and vinyl tops? That’s just frosting.
The story’s the cake. 🍰
Captain My Captain
CaptainMyCaptain.blog
“The best satire, as far as I’ve ever been concerned, is the kind that sits there on the page with its arms crossed, giving you that half-smirk, daring you to decide whether it’s telling the truth or just pulling your leg.”
I have mixed feelings about that. I would agree that a piece that leaves me feeling unsure about whether it is pulling my leg reflects artful writing. I don’t know anything about your background, but you certainly have advanced literary skills. At the same time, from a psychological standpoint fucking with people’s minds isn’t the nicest thing to do. That’s why I try to be more blatant in my satire . . . although some folks can still confuse it as serious.
Indeed, one of the most interesting aspects of publishing Indie Auto has been the gap that I have sometimes perceived between what I was trying to do and how some readers were perceiving it. That may partly reflect my need to improve the quality of my writing, but it may also reflect the kind of people who read auto history blogs. Not typically very high brow.
I appreciate that—and I know exactly the gap you’re talking about. I’ve run into it myself more than a few times.
I’d probably push back just a touch on the idea that it’s about not wanting to “mess with” the reader. At its best, satire isn’t about playing games—it’s about trusting the reader to meet you halfway. The trick, like you said, is figuring out where halfway actually is.
And I might give the audience a little more credit, too. Most folks reading auto history enjoy a good laugh about as much as they enjoy the cars. This is a crowd where more than a few people once drove home in a Pacer, parked it out front, and defended it over supper like it was a Cadillac.
That said, there’s room for all of it. Subtle, overt, somewhere in between—it’s a big tent hobby. Different voices, different approaches, same basic fascination with the machinery and the stories around it.
End of the day, we’re all standing along the same fence line watching the same rodeo—just calling it from different angles.
One of the odd things about comment threads is that they tend to encourage terse communiques. Complex thoughts almost inevitably become simpler.
As a case in point, I can offer generalizations about Indie Auto’s readership while recognizing that it can have quite a range of sensibilities (and apparent intelligence levels). That’s even after the blog has been around long enough so that a certain amount of readership self sorting naturally occurs.
Perhaps the most obvious example of that are the people who get highly offended by pretty much any criticism of their favorite brands (or designers, or. . .). They tend to pound out an indignant comment and move on to more hospitable grounds.
And then there are those who kind of like at least some of the content but get irritated to varying degrees with something or another. Perhaps the most popular criticism has been our “political” content, which can apparently be bothersome to those who want an escape from all that. Alas, steering clear of politics goes against my basic approach, so these readers need to decide whether to look past the content they don’t like in order to get to the content they do like. The tension can be ongoing.
My point: There is what one might guess is the “silent majority” and then there are the ones who speak up. Who does one pay the most attention to?
You might be interested to know that Indie Auto’s satirical content tends to get relatively few page views. While I’m not striving to hit the top of the pop charts, it also doesn’t strike me as being a good use of my limited time to spend many hours on a piece of writing or graphics that goes down without a ripple. So lately I have tended to do fewer satirical pieces unless I can crank them out quickly . . . which doesn’t tend to generate sophisticated art.
I think you’re right that all of us who are publishers or writers will make our own unique judgments about how to navigate these waters. My sensibility has evolved over time — in a way a coevolution has occurred. There are times when I shift my direction because I think a commentator has the better argument. There are other times when I keep on doing what I’m doing . . . because this is my art, and expressing it is what motivates me to keep publishing Indie Auto rather than working on 101 other things that clutter the final chapter of my life.
Steve, you didn’t just point at the rabbit hole—you held the flashlight and said, “After you.” So here we go, boots first.
In the three years I’ve been running the CaptainMyCaptain.blog, I’ve noticed a few things that don’t show up on any dashboard chart but tell the story just the same. Depending on the post, maybe one out of seventy-five—on a good day, one out of fifty—folks will leave a comment. At first blush, that feels light. But then again, I’ve made a long-term arrangement with the written word that most people wisely avoided. The rest? They read, they nod, they come back the next morning like clockwork. That tells me more than a comment section ever could. They’re entertained. They just don’t feel the need to holler about it from the porch.
Now contributions… that’s where it gets interesting. Maybe one out of a hundred ever tosses something in the jar. That’s less a statistic and more a small-town parable. It’s like swinging into Grounds for Divorce every morning, letting Lucinda top off a mug of Folgers she’s been nursing through that old Bunn-O-Matic since before sunrise, soaking up the whole experience—and then drifting out the door like the wind picked up your tab.
I respect a man who asks for the senior discount. I’ve been known to lean on it myself when the knees start talking. But never dropping a dime in the jar while somebody’s keeping the lights on and the stories coming? That’s a little sideways. Not illegal, mind you—but it lives in the same neighborhood as sneaking three high school buddies into the drive-in in the back of my dad’s ’69 Pontiac Catalina. Officer Phil didn’t appreciate the innovation, and my folks appreciated it even less when he called to share the news.
As for politics in the blog… I’m not sure how you sidestep it anymore without stepping into traffic. It’s stitched into just about everything now, like vinyl roofs on late-’70s sedans—whether you ordered it or not, there it is. Pastor Peterson over at the Almost United Methodist Church of Fort Stockton put it better than I could: “Rather than build a wall, we should build a giant mirror to reflect on what we’ve become.” If we angle it right, maybe we can pull double duty and run a little solar through it too. Gas brushing up against four dollars a gallon tends to focus the mind.
We’re living in a time where information is stacked to the ceiling, but wisdom’s hiding somewhere behind the breaker panel. And humor? That’s become a specialty item. Which is why I’ve always had a soft spot for your satirical ads. They don’t just land—they sneak up on you sideways and leave you smiling in spite of yourself. Maybe that’s professional courtesy. Maybe it’s memory. I grew up in an era where late-night television thought nothing of staging something as ridiculous as a rabbi performing a circumcision in the back of a Mercury Marquis and calling it comedy. Folks laughed, nobody filed a report, and the world kept turning.
Which, I suppose, brings us right back where we started—full circle, parked under a flickering streetlight somewhere in the 1970s. And I’ll say it plain: I’ve always had a fondness for the Mercury Marquis. It carried itself like a man who owned two suits and knew exactly when to wear each one. All the practicality of a Ford LTD, none of the peacock strut of a Lincoln. Respectable without being loud. Comfortable without asking permission. If you were building a case for Ford getting it right in the Disco Era, you could do a whole lot worse than pointing at a Marquis and saying, “There. That one knew what it was doing.”
One of my uncles was a Ford man. For years he bought a series of top-end Fords before moving up to a 1966 Mercury Park Lane and then to a 1970 Marquis Brougham. I’d say the latter was my favorite of his cars.
Interestingly, the next car he bought was a 1974 Volvo 240. That struck me as a surprising turn for a guy of fairly conservative habits. Perhaps the first oil crisis made him more conscious of gas mileage. And perhaps he was intrigued by Volvo’s safety schtick. That car certainly fit inside his small, mid-50s garage better than the Marquis. And it had more things for a teenager to fiddle around with in the interior. But the Volvo sure didn’t have the grandeur of that Marquis.
This is one of the most interesting and fascinating comment threads I’ve read in a very long time. You’re a brilliant writer.
All the above aside, it’s actually simpler… Lido and HFII just didn’t like risk, and it did sorta work for a while (see CMC above). Lee even carried on with the broughamified K cars, until sales by 1990 finally forced Chrysler to move forward into the present with new cab forward design. Continually repeating the same schtick works for a while… until it doesn’t.
One can also attribute the change to having Bob Lutz promoting design and Tom Gale taking over as head of Design from Delarossa; major upgrade.
That directly resulted in Chrysler taking over as the Detroit industry leader of Design.
A few more questions from an intriuging age. The 1970 – 71 Thunderbird. Was the 4 door model the same sheetmetal as the 1969 version ? Was the Landau roofline the same as the ’69 ? Was that blinded rear aspect a copy of the 1940’s Continental ?
The 1975 Lincoln. Were the fenders and front door a carry over from 1970 ~ 1973?
The 1977 LTD II and Cougar Wagons carried over the 1976 sheetmetal. They were stunning vehicles at that time?
Was this more proof of magician Iacocca laughing at his own brilliance ?
The blind rear quarter roof goes all the way back to the early 1930s with the Victoria body style. Even today the Victoria style Classics are valued at a premium.
My sense is that the 1970-71 Landau roofline was carried over from 1967-69 and that at least the front doors of the 1975 Lincoln were carried over from the 1970-74 models. The front fenders look like they were a repeat from 1974, at which point they had been modestly changed to fit beefier bumpers.
Regarding Iacocca, I would imagine that he thought of himself as utterly brilliant.
The Maverick and the 2 door Pinto are the only 1970’s Fords I dislike (I like the Pinto wagon). The rest of them all look good to me. Ford did have difficulty making its engines comply with emission control standards of the time.
I knew the design leader for the Mzverick. I remember 2 items he complained about as compromises he suffered because of cost.
The rear window was to be much larger.
The grill corner caps should gave been cast like other Fords but instead were stamped. This resulted in less detail.
I owned a Maverick and found that back window was awfully small. Indeed, so small that I once backed into something that damaged the rear end (the biggest accident that I’ve ever been in).