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This 1971 sketch by Dunton designer John Pritchard has the word Bee Car on the grille. Henry Ford II wanted a small B-segment car but nobody could agree a clear vision for it. Pritchard’s rendering is attractive enough, but it has such a transatlantic feel that it looks a lot like the American Pinto. It would take some prodding from Detroit to ensure the new small car had a more European feel.Courtesy Dave Ginn

025Henry Ford II was worried. He had restructured the giant company that bore his name but, by 1970, the results were mixed. Car sales in North America were OK but the recently created Ford of Europe (FoE) was a concern. The British market, so long the jewel, was beginning to hurt as inflation soared. Buyers were struggling to afford new cars. The Escort, launched in 1968, was Ford’s cheapest car but key decisions about its replacement were running late. The next model due was the Granada, a large American-style saloon for Europe – but was that what Europeans wanted? Each year, the market for smaller cars increased but Ford had nothing to offer.The Ford at the top of Ford was popularly known as HFII, an easy way to differentiate him from his grandfather. He was an extremely capable executive, defying the cliché that sons and grandsons cannot take over the business. But to run a company of 450,000 people on five continents he needed very capable lieutenants. In 1972, HFII was 55 and he wanted younger managers to take over when he retired in the next five or 10 years. FORD’S SECRETBATTLE PLAN TAKES SHAPEThe man at the top wants Ford to think big– create a small car for the world. That’s noteasy and he appoints his lieutenant to do it,paving the way to radical new Fords.

026 Secret FordsHenry Ford II, known variously as HFII or Hank the Deuce, was somewhat reverentially called simply Mister Ford by many senior execs. His father, Edsel, died unexpectedly in May 1943 and so his elderly and ailing grandfather, Henry, assumed control once more. But the company was in such poor shape that Edsel’s death, with little-or-no grooming for a role that was expected to have been his father’s for many years. would hold for 24 years. He quickly set about rebuilding the company’s German factories that had been devasted during World War II and hired a set of managers with the experience he lacked. Known as the Whizz Kids, they brought a new level of statistical control to the company. HFII grew into his role, becoming a globally minded boss happy in the company of royalty and politicians around the world. That made him occasionally suspicious of the born-and bred Detroit managers under him. Despite such a global outlook he was relatively conservative in his own design tastes, but secure enough to listen to good counsel. Although having been at the top meant he was also good with people. Many employees regarded Ford as a family business and Henry engendered that spirit when Henry saved Ford during the ’40s and ran it for nearly twice as long as his namesake grandfather. In 1956, he took the company public in the largest issue of stock ever made, although the Ford family led to some highs and lows. Henry sanctioned the ill-fated Edsel brand in the late-’50s and an unsuccessful attempt to buy Ferrari in the ’60s. And there was the disastrous end to his relationship with Ford President Lee Iacocca in the ’70s. His successes included Total Performance, a realignment of Ford around sporting cars, and the gunshot wedding between the fractious Ford of Germany and Ford of Britain. He appointed various presidents to work alongside him before retiring and There have been many powerful executives at Ford, but none lasted as long, or oversaw such change as successfully, as Henry Ford II.HENRY FORD II

027SECRET BATTLE PLANThey needed to be as internationally minded as him and not slaves to the Detroit mindset of making cheap big cars.Henry’s concern was justified. He had spread his talent thinly across the world and the cracks were beginning to show. John Andrews had been appointed to set up Ford of Europe but unfortunately leukaemia forced him to hand over quickly to Ford of Britain’s Managing Director, American Stan Gillen, in June 1967. There was potential salvation in 1970 with the slightly risky appointment of Lee Iacocca as global president. Brash and sharp-tongued – the opposite of HFII – he was regarded by many as little more than the swaggering sales guy who had made his name with the Mustang. Although there was far more to him than that, he was unproven and untested outside Detroit. The American executives were new in their roles and being stretched. One bright spot was the rise of several British managers who had kick-started their careers when they transformed FoB a few years before.RIDE LIKE THE WINDThe winds of change started blowing through Ford’s British operation in the late 1960s. British car buyers had regarded Fords as mundane and, whisper it, a little rust-prone. But a few key players began moving into new roles at FoB, conceiving cars and creating innovative processes that would transform the company. Terence Beckett had come up with The LHD Taunus and the RHD Cortina Mark III were identical under the skin but but it also demanded a coupe too. This type of needless complexity – selling a second coupe alongside the Capri – was something that Ford of Europe needed to stop. Henry Ford II’s new team had to merge the strong-willed British and German businesses, ensuring they acted as one.

028 Secret Fordsthe idea of product planning, helping conceive the Cortina, Escort and Capri and was then rewarded with promotion to run FoB marketing. Alex Trotman, his sidekick, took over his previous role and then moved to Detroit in late 1969. Beckett would go on to run FoB and Trotman eventually became global CEO. That was all in the future: they made their reputations by bringing discipline to Ford’s designers and engineers in Britain, then Europe. Flights of fantasy were no longer tolerated in the new order, nor was building whatever a market or individual fancied. No more Taunus in LHD Europe and a completely dierent Cortina in RHD Britain. Trotman and Beckett understood vehicle engineering and production, but they were also a dierent breed of ’car men’ who embraced equally the value of marketing and good styling. Now, a new model would only be permitted if it suited specific customer needs and met defined profit objectives. Launched in early 1968, the original Escort was the first car developed for sale across all European markets after HFII pushed for Ford of Germany and Britain to merge into one. The British-styled car reflected the designers’ taste for miniaturized American-style cars that distinguished them from the staid look of Austin, Rover and the rest. Empowered by Trotman’s research team, they conceived an Escort coupe that could have taken on the Austin Mini as a small, trendy car for the Swinging Sixties. Many sketches and renderings were created at the Aveley location in Essex – the car looked exciting, at least on paper. These Taunus sketches by were created to colour options on the LHD Taunus Coupe. He would have hastily traced the red original and then applied colour to the facsimiles that followed. Today’s car designers don’t use tracing paper, they click their mouses.Courtesy Car Design Archives

029SECRET BATTLE PLANDUNTONDEARBORNMERKENICHLOMMELIn the 1960s, Ford had 10 UK engineering and design centres dotted around Essex and Birmingham. This clunky arrangement ended in 1967 when the dedicated R&D centre opened in Dunton, Essex. The facility housed a purpose-built ‘styling’ building for designers, and the adjacent main engineering block had a miniature test track out front. Headcount reached 4000 by the mid-’90s when Ford added a tech centre to handle the complexity of modern vehicle electronics. Because Dunton duplicated Ford’s German facilities, many wondered about its fate as Ford adjusted to a smaller market share. Instead, there was an Ford is based in Dearborn, a few miles west of downtown Detroit. It is a sprawling collection of factories including Ford’s global HQ, the Product Development Centre and, within it, the various Design studios. Surrounding them are a spider’s web of research labs, a test track and numerous suppliers – from seat manufacturers to ad agencies. In 2017, Ford began a 10-year refurbishment of the 70-year-old Dearborn site by consolidating many The abandoned Detroit Central Station was purchased a year later to create Corktown, a campus of high-tech Ford workers. Dearborn, like Ford itself, will be resizing and reshaping itself during the 2020s.Located just 5km from Ford’s main Cologne Dunton. Since the early-’70s, Merkenich has focused on exterior design while Dunton has overseen Colour & Trim, Commercial and Special Vehicles. The Design facility, just outside the main entrance, contains a vast showroom for viewing new designs, complete, in the early days, with turntables. The adjacent courtyard is smaller than people looking at pictures of design studies an easy way of spotting where the photos were taken.The Lommel Proving Ground, 100km north-east of Brussels, Belgium, opened in 1965. It has 50km of varying tracks, extended in 2008 to 80km. Engineers use its hills, with gradients ranging from 10 to 30 per cent, to test anything from transmissions to handbrakes. A high-speed loop with banking allows a relatively safe environment for assessing everything from durability to crosswind stability. The fabled Circuit 7 is a handling track that incorporates a set of vicious curves intended to allow the most skilled test drivers to hone cars while keeping their licenses safe. Stories about Circuit 7 have acquired almost mythical status, making it the place where prototypes’, and drivers’, reputations are made or broken. FORD LOCATIONS

030 Secret FordsCar designers love to sketch their dreams, on paper or onscreen. But there’s nothing like seeing the real thing and that’s where the modellers come in – they’re the unsung heroes of car design. They are the artists who shape the clay, or carve bright studio lights. Then there are wind tunnel models, the miniature ugly sisters born under a dimmer bulb, far from the glamorous lights of the design studio. Unpainted, functional: to research aerodynamic performance. As wind speeds ramp up in the tunnel, engineers torture them with smoke, smother them with an models like this, their wood and plastic clothed in the wind tunnel. But not these lucky survivors, even if their liberation took a while. For decades, they sat quietly in their packing crates at the Merkenich design centre until they were handed over to the Cologne factory’s museum in 2017. Keen Ford archaeologists will spot that, at some unknown OLD MODEL ARMY Whoever painted these wind tunnel models knew their cars. Each one is painted in the correct colour for the year. Yes, you really could buy a Signal Green Granada estate. Later models like the XR4 are the real oldies are carved crate – or sneak out in one’s hand luggage.

031SECRET BATTLE PLANUnfortunately, when they were translated into full-sized clays – and then highly realistic fibreglass see-through models – the results were less impressive. The Escort was a tiny car, 88mm shorter than a modern Fiesta, and simply too cramped and staid to be a stylish 2+2 with enough space for four. It was a car that Ford of Britain wanted and needed, but it would have to wait. Instead, the British were overruled by their boss Stan Gillen. He had seen the success of Iacocca’s Mustang a few years before; he ordered the British designers to stop work on the Escort 2+2 and take over refining the American-designed Capri instead. The larger 2+2 was a car created to be sold around the world and not just one market. It was a sign of what was to come, but there were other fights ahead and many more failed attempts to make an Escort coupe.The Escort saloon was launched in 1968, at the same time that Mustang designer Joe Oros was dispatched to head up European design, but that hadn’t gone smoothly. The British and German designers had been forced to use the same RWD platform but still managed to create Cortina and Taunus variants with unique bodies for each market. The result was a Cortina and Taunus that, at first glance, looked the same but used 90 per cent different panels. Ford of Germany also managed to get their own Taunus Coupe – their own competitor in the Capri market. These battles of will were costly when there was no consensus. The British engineers, now installed in their new location at Dunton, had very point, each was painted in the correct colours for their year: a Jupiter Red Escort, the Glacier Blue Sierra, someone clearly thought their bright hues made for attractive, if oversized, table weights. Then they were , until the author took some and quite likely the only time, they make a striking collection. Even the coldest heart warms when holding the world’s oldest Escort or wheeling a Visually arresting together but even more fascinating individually, each is a frozen-in-time snapshot of an unreleased car that can be picked up and enjoyed. The interchangeable spoilers of the Sierra, the Capri RS2800’s striking bodykit, the wonder of the Fiesta with its original, never-released grille. Whoever painted these models, and then salted them away, created more than a giant toy collection. That visionary soul preserved a scaled-down little piece of history. This Granada Coupe, like many of Ford’s surviving wind tunnel followed. This is the moment it was freed from its entombment 

032 Secret FordsHenry Ford II loved being in Europe, especially the UK. He kept two exclusive properties there: an apartment in Eaton Square, Belgravia, and a 16th-century mansion called Turville Grange, in Berkshire. As a titan of industry, Henry’s wealth meant he could drive around in whatever he liked, but sometimes he craved anonymity. He would potter around on a moped when he fancied or, for longer commutes, use a Bentley. Between these extremes came various Ford models that the local dealer delivered to the mansion.They were nothing special – except for three cars. In 1978 HFII asked his trusted advisor and fellow board member, Walter Hayes, for “something special, a bit unusual”. Very, very few people at Ford had the clout or connections to have a unique car made for their own use but this was Henry Ford. His first “something special” was a one-off RS2000 painted in Roman Bronze with a unique cream leather interior, deep pile carpets and automatic transmission. Its blend of discreet luxury appealed to him enough to request another one-off, this time a Capri Injection with metallic paint, leather and auto. And then a third, a silver XR4i with leather and auto. Henry knew what he liked. Unlike so many alleged and, best of all, still exist.FORD’S UNIQUE FORDSdifferent views from their counterparts in Merkenich, just down the road from the Cologne factory. The Essex men were wedded to RWD while the Cologne crew had made the previous Taunus FWD. It had been expensive to make and when the 1970 Taunus/Cortina, moved over to RWD, it looked like the die was cast for all future product. The British engineers felt that they had a particular talent for packaging a vehicle, offsetting the major benefit of FWD – better space utilization. The downside of FWD was that it required many all-new component systems like transmission, chassis and body. Making a car smaller than the Escort wouldn’t be easy but the biggest concern was whether such a small car would be profitable, especially if it was FWD.LET’S GET SERIOUSStudies had been going on for years. Could the engineers strip down the C-segment Escort into something suitable for the B-segment below? Could the designers just make it look smaller, if they simply chopped a piece out from the middle or maybe cut something off at the back? Every time they went down this path, nobody could find a way to make such a car cheap or remotely attractive enough. The subject wasn’t going away. If the smaller B-Car was ever going to happen then HFII and Iacocca were going to have to give the Europeans a prod by kicking things off in America.RS2000 badging – it was the perfect vehicle for HFII to dash around Berkshire streets or park in Belgravia. Automatic transmission and leather trim were unavailable on regular versions of the three cars Henry had built – but that was no problem when your last name was Ford.Courtesy Mark Wills/Tom Beck

033SECRET BATTLE PLANThe third car built especially for Henry was this Sierra XR4i. It was last seen Courtesy Ian BradburyCourtesy Allen Patch /XR Owners Club

034 Secret FordsJim Donaldson in Detroit was responsible for Advanced Studies. He set up another B-car task force, making a determined eort to see what it was like if they packaged a car smaller than the Escort. It wasn’t a looker, just a rough concept and it was FWD. In October 1970, the Scot presented it to HFII and Lee Iacocca alongside a few quick sketches drawn by stylist Trevor Erskine. This was a test for Lee, chairing his first meeting outside North America in his new role as President. Mr Mustang needed to review the facts about the European small car market. On that rainy day in Dunton, the facts were clear. Ford of Europe was really Ford of Britain-plus-Germany. Ford’s market share in Britain was a monstrous 27 per cent, while in France and Italy it hovered around an anaemic five per cent. The reason was obvious: these markets were full of small cars and their domestic manufacturers each had a range of them. Unfortunately, Ford had nothing. Spain imposed a massive 30 per cent tax on imported goods and, there, Ford sold fewer than 600 cars a year. Ford of Europe didn’t work if it only operated in two of the five major markets. about ‘sketches’ and ‘renderings’ – here’s drawing at the top is a sketch, nothing more than a quick outline of what was in the designer’s head. Underneath is rendering; it’s not just a coloured-in sketch but a vibrant illustration that expresses the heart and soul of a new vehicle. Courtesy Dave Ginn

035Each year Ford’s European market share was projected to shrink as the small-car B-segment grew. So Iacocca didn’t dither that day. He signed o another study but this one was dierent. With HFII’s agreement, he sanctioned an advanced pre-programme, two steps short of committing to a full programme. Henry was a willing supporter. He was a large man but was always keen on small cars. His travels had taught him that parking an Escort in Epsom was very dierent from mooring a Mercury in Detroit. Lee realized that this was a test of Henry’s making that he had to pass; Henry wanted a small car for sale around the globe and, if Lee, succeeded, then the Top Job should ultimately be his.VIVA ESPAÑAThere were two problems with the B-car, several product-specific and one structural. FoE wasn’t wild on the idea of a car smaller than the low-profit Escort at a time when high inflation would likely dampen sales, plus the two engineering groups were divided on FWD vs RWD. The other was possibly a bigger issue: Ford was short of capacity in Europe and an additional carline would require a supplementary factory, most likely in Spain if Ford were to avoid the 30 per cent local import taxes. Spain represented a potential 100,000 sales and so, at the end of 1970, Iacocca assigned Dick Holmes, who led new business opportunities, to begin examining if it would be possible to set up a factory there. Like the emergent B-car, the Capri had been born in Detroit the same way; early costings and styling studies were conducted in Dearborn. The reason why Ford’s smallest car started its life in Michigan might only be clear to an insider: HFII wanted his B-car to be global and he didn’t trust the Europeans not to kill it on the grounds of cost or manufacturing feasibility. The Europeans were thinking short-term and knew the economy wasn’t looking good. Although they might one day need a smaller, cheaper car, they were focussing on the more immediate need of replacing the Escort and the hugely successful Capri. The two cars were transforming Ford’s reputation thanks to advanced RS versions that attracted younger and wealthier buyers.Conception and reality. Compare this full-sized model of the Escort coupe to the rendering opposite. The vibrancy of the designer’s slinky car doesn’t translate well into full-sized 3D form. The original Escort, designed in the mid-‘60s, was a tight package. There was no spare fat to be trimmed on a car far smaller than today’s Fiesta. Ford would try many times to make an Escort coupe and this is just to see the light of day.Courtesy Dave Ginn