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015OPENING CLOSED DOORSgroup that reinvented, perhaps by accident, the course of car design with the Sierra. These designers went on to glittering careers at Renault, BMW and Porsche, yet they still look back with enormous pride at their work for Ford. Many – it feels like nearly all – of Ford’s ’70s and ’80s designers have contributed ﬁrst-hand to this book – such is their passion today for the work they did all those decades ago. Above all, I must thank Patrick le Quément, the boss of the Merkenich studio during the Sierra era. His encyclopaedic memory, friendship and enthusiastic reconnection with his former colleagues has allowed me to capture for you the work of one of the most gifted – yet never-recognized – automotive design teams of all time. There is another side to the story too: the work of Ghia that was kept hidden away in Italy, unseen even by other Ford designers. To see the Kammback Capri or Escort two-seater is to look in wonder, even 40 years on. Like many of the cars in this book, it’s fair to say that they didn’t deserve to go forward, but it’s impossible not to wonder. Ghia created hundreds of cars that were kept behind closed doors, so it’s an honour to reveal some of them here, and I thank so many kind people at Ford for this privilege.I’m delighted that Mel Nichols, my editor has, once again ensured that this new book is, I hope, as easy to read as the last. Designer Adrian Morris is also back to make the words and amazing images appear vibrant on the page. There’s also a wider cast of – what seems like hundreds – whom I have, hopefully, thanked in the Acknowledgements. We’ve heard the vivid recollections of Richard Parry-Jones and Patrick le Quément in their magniﬁcent forewords. They are two of the many powerful and inﬂuential people we will see in action during the story ahead, along with their amazing cars. Now, I’ll drop back into the role of your near-silent narrator and join you again at the end. These unseen vehicles are the Secret Fords. They have waited decades in dusty archives to tell you their story. INTRODUCTIONEveryone loves a secret – and this book is full of them. I’m sure that the first thing you’ll do is to flick through the pictures to pick out the real head-spinners. Don’t worry, I would too! But before you do, could I ask you for a few moments to discover the background to what, I think, is a unique book. I wrote my last book, The Cars You Always Promised Yourself, because I had always wanted to read a book like that; one that took you first-hand behind the scenes alongside Ford’s leaders as they created their most iconic cars. Too many car books rehash press pictures or focus almost exclusively on the technical tale. I felt that to understand how your car – or your memories of one – fitted into the story, you needed to know how it was conceived, engineered, marketed and, above all, designed. Readers soon told me that they loved discovering the unseen design sketches, work-in-progress clay models, freakish prototypes, one-off cancelled cars and… did I have any more? Oh, and next time, could I also cover cars like the Fiesta, Escort and Focus in detail, and tell the design story of the RS models too?So this is the book you asked for. The goodwill of Ford, and the engagement of its former employees, left me inundated with new stories and hundreds of never-seen pictures of automotive unicorns. With so much new material I chose to split it into two volumes, allowing the images to talk as much – or even more – than the words. The ﬁrst half of the book covers the ’70s when the Fiesta, Capri, Escort, Taunus/Cortina, Sierra and Granada were conceived and designed. Then, we move into the ’80s, when Ford’s design team reinvigorated its aging creations, while a dynamic range of new RS models added spice to the mix. The design story of each car allows us to examine them in context – alongside previously unseen alternatives. To look for the ﬁrst time at designs considered and discarded, to understand the cancelled cars and glorious one-os, provides a vivid glimpse inside Ford’s most creative minds.Creativity is at the heart of this tale, from the product planners who conceived the cars, to the engineers who made them happen and – above all – the designers who created their iconic look and style. Together, they conspired to make so many extraordinary vehicles that have never seen the light of day until now. I cannot overstate the extraordinary talent of the Ford Design team that was led – through most of this book –by Uwe Bahnsen. This was a It is a privilege to tell the untold stories of Ford’s  in this unique book. THE AUTHORSteve grew up in Essex, a few miles from Ford’s Dunton R&D centre, and became enthralled by the prototypes  with cars and a career that started as a Product Designer at Ford. He moved to roadster and followed that with a stint running UK sales for Porsche. He joined a management consultancy before setting up his own practice, Automotive Answers. Saxty’s industry prominence led to his hiring by the FutureBrand consultancy in 2000 to run its global the US, he was asked by Jaguar’s CEO to move to the UK as Global Brand Communications Director running Jaguar’s advertising. Back in the US he was later appointed to run global brand strategy across Nissan’s marketing on Ford in 2018 – The Cars You Always Promised Yourself.

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I am humbled that so many of Ford’s former designers enthusiastically shared their stories and wonderful examples of their art, for they are the stars of this story. Thank you Mark Finney, Gert Hohenester, Pavel Hušek, Harm Lagaay, Luc Landuyt, Thomas Plath, Tom Scott, Simon Spearman, Jack Telnack, Al Thorley and Tony Catignani (who kindly drew my name in the RS-logo style for the cover). This book is testament to you, Uwe Bahnsen, and your colleagues’ outstanding work at Dunton and Merkenich. Ford Motor Company has been incredibly supportive – and trusting – of my desire to create this unusual book. Oliver Rowe and Ralph Caba of Ford Public Aairs in Britain and Germany helped open doors. Wolfgang Wagner and Nick Zea-Smith ensured I made best use of my time in Cologne, which included a discussion with the current design team at the invitation of Amko Leenarts, Director, Design, Ford of Europe. Thanks to Peter Sutton for his extraordinary commitment to unearthing many of the more unusual images, and the Ford Archive for its astonishing support for this project.It’s not all design. Ford’s engineers and executives also made these cars happen – or not – and I must thank John Coletti, Brian Gush, Bob Lutz, Ron Muccioli, Tom Smart and Stuart Turner. Of course, once more, SVE’s Geoff Fox and Rod Mansfield have been just a phone call away in sharing their stories and offering encouragement. Geoff’s SVE museum should be open to the public one day. Peter Hitchins did his father proud in scanning John’s images of SVE’s test cars, while John Bull of SVE and Ronald Wellmann of Karmann provided a fascinating load of material. John Wheeler’s breath-taking commitment to helping unpick the tale of RS1700T has resulted in a unique story of the ultimate unicorn, all supported by Paul Moulson’s kind access to his archive and deep knowledge of the car. I am delighted to weave in the value of Tickford to Ford’s engineering efforts and my thanks go to Damian Harty, Dave Eddlestone, Derek Wise and especially Dave Boulton, along with Tickford Owners Club chairman, Shaun Skinner. The support of the car clubs has – as before – been amazing. Allen Patch of the XROC continues to be a friend to me and the writing of my books. Paul Bury, RS Owners Club chairman, has led me to a wealth of help and knowledge from within the RSOC. I must register my appreciation for the help I’ve had from Jason Dale, Justin Smith, Kate Evans and the various RS model registrars. As the years pass, these clubs are more vital than ever.Social media continues to help the modern author when a fact needs cross-checking at a moment’s notice, or an image veriﬁed. There are too many out there on Facebook to thank individually, but I’d like to single out Edd Owers for photographing his wheel collection. Terry Walsh and David Pretyman deserve praise for ensuring I got the Australian bits right. Dave at DMB Graphics kindly supplied many of the logos that Ford rightly entrusts him to preserve. This is a long list and I’m sure to have missed someone – if so, please do call me out on Facebook where I shall apologize profusely.Peter Flood and his team at Express & Global dived in to take care of distributing the book, while Dai at Gomer looked after the printing – these kind people and their companies are vital; thank you. My crack team of editor Mel Nichols, designer Adrian Morris and, of course, my wife – and free-of-charge line editor – Hortensia Perez, keep coming back for more. This is your book as much as mine. Finally, I’d like to thank Patrick le Quément and Richard Parry-Jones for their fascinating forewords telling us what it was like to design and engineer these special cars. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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THE STYLE COUNCIL BY PATRICK LE QUÉMENTFOREWORDI joined Ford Design in the ancient time of 1968, just when this book starts its story. Back then, Ford was at the pinnacle of UK car design. British Leyland poached many of its designers. But Ford had such a reputation, and such reserves of skills within its worldwide organisation, that it replenished the department in no time. First came the rookies like me, a bunch of young people just thrilled to be hired into Ford. Then came a reserve force of fresh American talent from the Dearborn Design centre for a year or two. They were all graduates of the Pasadena ArtCenter College of Design in California and brought with them sulphurous talents as red-hot renderers of fully-ﬁnished vibrant sketches. Back then there were no comparable automobile design courses in Europe; the Royal College of Art only opened its renowned Transportation Design course in 1969. British and European automobile design studios were often staed by industrial designers, some of whom had started out as technical draftsmen.The idea of a Brit going and working in a European company like BMW or Mercedes – or, worse still, Renault or Fiat – was almost unimaginable, in the same way that there were few foreign designers working in Britain. However, later on quite a few Brits moved to the US via the UK subsidiaries of GM, Ford and Chrysler when it was discovered that some Americans spoke a similar language. I was always a bit of an exception since I am a mongrel: my mother was a Lancashire girl who married an ocer in the French Foreign Legion. He died in a freak car accident when I was 11 years old and so she sent me to school in the UK where I learned to speak like a native, although my comedically French surname was a minor giveaway. When I arrived at Dunton as a beginner I was placed in the interior design studio where I worked on themes for the ﬁrst Granada dashboard. But my work was deemed to be way too advanced and management preferred a much nicer design developed by Trevor Creed with whom I had studied at the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design. I then moved on to work on the very early preprogramme for what, years later, became Project Brenda, the Escort Mark II. Very soon, Trevor and I had been identiﬁed as ‘high-potential employees’ and were selected to compete against each other in an irresistible gladiatorial combat – to reskin the ﬁrst Capri. The winner would be rewarded with a transfer to the far more glamorous temple of Exterior Design across the corridor. The battle was joined, the jury came, they saw, and the verdict passed down upon us. I packed up my drawing kit of crayons, markers, inks, pastels and the appropriately-named French curves. Welcome, they said, to the world of exterior design where the light shone all day, and everything was bigger and better.Ford had talent and passion in abundance at Dunton. The designers were so lively, so full of fun and totally committed to having a great life. They were paid handsomely for doing what they loved, drawing cars all day in the most prestigious design centre in the UK. Everyone had a consuming passion for cars, automobile styling and a sense of automotive history. Designers all share an incredible ease for drawing such a complex object as a car – for they draw like gods. From their earliest days, everyone drew everywhere, whether

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009THE STYLE COUNCIL BY PATRICK LE QUÉMENTin the margins of an exercise book or the walls of the school toilets. The obsession led to the best being able to eortlessly master a perspective, craft the impression of a shiny surface or deﬁne the shape of that ultimate GT by shading a body side or highlighting a crease. The best designers were not just brilliant at drawing, they had an innate feel for customer needs and a strong sense of teamwork. You may love cars, draw brilliantly, even be the most popular guy in the room, but it counts for nothing if you have no feel for the customer or the future.Places like Jaguar or Land Rover were looked upon as fuddy-duddy institutions back then. They were, to us, run by ageing engineers who had little respect for designers and sneeringly referred to us as ‘stylists’ possessed of sparrow-like intellects compared to their giant engineering minds. That was one of the most important dierences between Ford and the other companies that made it so irresistible: the Design department did not answer to Engineering. Instead, Ford Design reported in to the head of FoE’s Product Development Group, as equals, alongside Product Planning, Engineering and Financial control. It was the creativity of those teams that, when they worked together, and sometimes apart, led to the more unusual and interesting cars in the pages ahead. That’s not to say everything was perfectly coordinated in the early days of Ford of Europe. The 1970 Cortina and Taunus shared a common platform, but dierent, individual British and German body designs that illustrated each market’s taste. The somewhat voluptuous coke bottle-shaped Cortina sported a rather well-proportioned, graceful design. The Taunus, on the other hand, was a rather tough-looking thing that felt a bit sti and far less dynamic because its design included the infamous ‘Knudsen nose’. This protruding snout was well-liked by a short-lived Ford FOREWORDI joined Ford Design in the ancient time of 1968, just when this book starts its story. Back then, Ford was at the pinnacle of UK car design. British Leyland poached many of its designers. But Ford had such a reputation, and such reserves of skills within its worldwide organisation, that it replenished the department in no time. First came the rookies like me, a bunch of young people just thrilled to be hired into Ford. Then came a reserve force of fresh American talent from the Dearborn Design centre for a year or two. They were all graduates of the Pasadena ArtCenter College of Design in California and brought with them sulphurous talents as red-hot renderers of fully-ﬁnished vibrant sketches. Back then there were no comparable automobile design courses in Europe; the Royal College of Art only opened its renowned Transportation Design course in 1969. British and European automobile design studios were often staed by industrial designers, some of whom had started out as technical draftsmen.The idea of a Brit going and working in a European company like BMW or Mercedes – or, worse still, Renault or Fiat – was almost unimaginable, in the same way that there were few foreign designers working in Britain. However, later on quite a few Brits moved to the US via the UK subsidiaries of GM, Ford and Chrysler when it was discovered that some Americans spoke a similar language. I was always a bit of an exception since I am a mongrel: my mother was a Lancashire girl who married an ocer in the French Foreign Legion. He died in a freak car accident when I was 11 years old and so she sent me to school in the UK where I learned to speak like a native, although my comedically French surname was a minor giveaway. When I arrived at Dunton as a beginner I was placed in the interior design studio where I worked on themes for the ﬁrst Granada dashboard. But my work was deemed to be way too advanced and management preferred a much nicer design developed by Trevor Creed with whom I had studied at the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design. I then moved on to work on the very early preprogramme for what, years later, became Project Brenda, the Escort Mark II. Very soon, Trevor and I had been identiﬁed as ‘high-potential employees’ and were selected to compete against each other in an irresistible gladiatorial combat – to reskin the ﬁrst Capri. The winner would be rewarded with a transfer to the far more glamorous temple of Exterior Design across the corridor. The battle was joined, the jury came, they saw, and the verdict passed down upon us. I packed up my drawing kit of crayons, markers, inks, pastels and the appropriately-named French curves. Welcome, they said, to the world of exterior design where the light shone all day, and everything was bigger and better.Ford had talent and passion in abundance at Dunton. The designers were so lively, so full of fun and totally committed to having a great life. They were paid handsomely for doing what they loved, drawing cars all day in the most prestigious design centre in the UK. Everyone had a consuming passion for cars, automobile styling and a sense of automotive history. Designers all share an incredible ease for drawing such a complex object as a car – for they draw like gods. From their earliest days, everyone drew everywhere, whether PATRICK LE QUÉMENTPatrick graduated from Birmingham’s Institute of Art and Design in 1966 and   ’76 Taunus/Cortina. In 1976, Quément Design Executive in charge of Truck and Advanced Exterior Design in the UK before returning him to Chief Exterior Designer. Dearborn, but having gained a preference for German food,    

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011010 Secret Fordspresident called Semon ‘Bunkie’ Knudsen – but only Bunkie liked his nose.Things really began to open up when Ford of Europe took shape in the late ’60s. Taking into account the national rivalry between the British and Germans, they could only have been led by an American. In reality, personnel from both British and German design centres did not know each other. However, apart from their cultural dierences, they had much in common without knowing it. Dunton and Merkenich studios shared identical development processes, tools and organisation thanks to the dierent generations of American design managers who had transferred their know-how across the Atlantic. The atmosphere in the two studios was quite dierent though. In the Merkenich studio you entered a world of silence; everything was aligned, nothing was to be found anywhere other than where it should be. Order was the word, discipline and hard work the mindset, plus… perhaps a certain rigidity. In Dunton there was noise: singing by the modellers, followed by intermittent bursts of laughter as one modelling team joyously exchanged profanities with another across the studio. Leaving for lunch was like an exuberant school outing. People were having a good time or complaining, or just as likely doing both at the same time. That spirit was also to be found in some of the designers’ work too, and one name springs to mind immediately: Jim Sketch-a-minute Hirons was renowned for his exceptional productivity both in Dunton and Merkenich. He would regularly ﬁll whole boards with the most improbable designs that tortured sheet metal beyond unimaginable metallurgical limits. He’d then colour in the whole lot using very, very bright hues.The German studio changed the most because of the international inﬂuence of the designers, who came from many countries. The British studio did not beneﬁt from such an inﬂux of foreigners because they preferred the far higher salaries oered by the German manufacturers. However, Dunton was much favoured by US Ford designers because the language similarity made their families’ integration much easier. As time passed, quite a few Merkenich-based designers were sent on assignment to Dunton which ultimately levelled things out a little.At the time, muscle cars were all the rage in the US and much-admired in the Dunton studio, while Merkenich was a little more classical and loved Italian design. Perhaps the more exuberant models like the Mustang, Camaro, Firebird, Pontiac GTO and AMC Javelin that so appealed to my Dunton colleagues were more in tune with the pop cultural revolution that dominated British youth. You would see muscle car posters pinned-up everywhere and the designers’ desks were strewn with US car magazines. That enthusiasm was reﬂected in the number of US muscle cars present in Dunton’s competitor evaluation ﬂeet. I particularly remember one since it resulted in unending taunts by fellow designers. One weekend I borrowed the recently delivered 1969 Pontiac GTO, the 389 cubic-inch version mated to a three-speed gearbox with 0-60mph in a no messin’ about 4.6 seconds. Since it was evening, it was dark; and since it was Britain, it was raining; and equally inevitable that there was a roundabout. I promptly wrapped the GTO around a lamppost, cutting its front clean o at the A pillar as we careened into it. Fortunately for my wife and I, the car happened to be the ﬁrst I had ever driven that had safety belts; no wonder journalist Steve Cropley once mispronounced my name as Luckyman. I stayed for a couple of years in Dunton, working on several programmes including the GT70, before being sent in 1971 to Merkenich where I took part in the mother of all battles, the Brenda programme and its countless models that were all designed under the close supervision of Ford of Europe’s new Design Vice President, Joe Oros. He was something of a legend and known as Mr Mustang – the very man who had led the design of the original pony car. It was said that his aura was such that his boss, Gene Bordinat, was delighted to send him to Europe, away from the limelight. He was a pleasant man; straightforward, but someone who relied mostly on the hunches that had served him so well on the Mustang programme. Nevertheless, he had diculty adapting to small European cars when US cars were big, very big. And so designers in both Dunton and Merkenich went through a long period where they participated in getting Joe accustomed to the downsized automobiles of li’l ol’ Europe.Despite all this, the reskinning of Brenda turned out to be a clean and rather pleasant design, as did later the Taunus/Cortina and Granada. However, the teams really shone when challenged with all-new projects like Fiesta, Erika Escort and, of course, the unforgettable Sierra, when for good or bad, accident or intent, we reinvented car design. That was a special time at Ford, and we designed some special cars together.on the Sierra’s shape.I was a 26-year-old planning analyst on the 1981 Escort and helped create the features list for the new XR3. My colleagues and I were the ideal customers: we were deﬁning our own company cars. Conceiving a vehicle is a unique feeling. The XR3 gave me a taste and I wanted more.I was a huge RS fan and adored the Escort Twin-Cam and RS1800. They were amazing. But although important for image, they were too specialised to sell in huge numbers. The Golf GTi made us think: “Yes, we can do something like that.” We conceived a car that could take 10 per cent of the Escort mix – 50,000 cars. So it had to be aordable. The Golf was technically good but perhaps too understated. The Capri had shown that if you get the styling right you can attract more extrovert buyers and charge a premium. Those four-hole wheels and the eye-grabbing spoiler were things you’d never see on a GTI-type car at the time. Bob Lutz, Ford of Europe’s boss, was the sponsor of the XR3 and pushed for things like better seats. Bob realized we had created something more powerful than anyone thought. When I then started on the Sierra I was appalled that it was RWD and couldn’t understand why Ford wanted to do this after the FWD Escort. Bob, being ex-BMW, was wedded to RWD and saw it as a dierentiator. I tried to show him the value in going FWD but failed. Bob and Uwe Bahnsen were very much in the Sierra driving seat. It was quite visionary and lasted well into its cycle. I did a little work on the XR4 and AWD versions, but, rightly, that was a Special Vehicle Engineering programme. Special Vehicle Engineering was kept a bit at arm’s length from us in Mainstream Engineering. As a rabid enthusiast, I tried to help, whereas some thought it was largely irrelevant. To me, although RS was low volume, it conferred a fairy-dust like magic on THE RIGHT CAR AT THE RIGHT TIME BY RICHARD PARRY-JONES

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012 Secret FordsFord cars. But the internal enthusiasm for the RS brand came and went with dierent management. Unfortunately, RS1700T wasn’t created when Walter Hayes – Ford’s legendary PR supremo – was conducting things. Walter found ecient ways of linking Motorsport success to brand and then sales. After him, there was nobody who could do that, so dierent factions emerged for and against RS and SVE. That’s the thing about conceiving a car; it needs a clear vision and a strong backer.I drove the RS1700T a few times. It was an interesting handful… The ﬁrst time, I took it home on a damp, cold night. After supper I went out to go for a spin – literally! On the way home, driving gently, I hadn’t noticed that the brakes were set up for gravel, but when I drove it in anger I spun it through 180 degrees on a narrow lane. Once my heart rate calmed down, I thought “Ah, I wonder if this has an adjustable brake balance wheel”, looked around, and there it was! A lot of the cars in this book never saw the light of day – often for good reason. The perception that you must be ﬁrst with a new vehicle concept needs challenging. Take the Escort Erika Hi-Cube minivan on Page 148. Maybe Ghia invented it too early; maybe not. If the market, or the technology, isn’t ready, or you don’t get the execution right, there’s a risk it won’t sell. It’s about having the right car, in the right place, at the right time – and that requires a lot of vision, and sometimes a little luck.I learned from the designers and marketers that the most important thing is the car buyer’s emotional reaction – that’s even more true today. The rational side has been resolved and it’s become more about emotional things like brand reputation and imagery – and, of course, design. A car’s design is your most powerful advertising tool; all other marketing is second order. Too many engineers think that the rational engineering solution is in conﬂict with the emotional elements and it’s not. A car has to drive like it looks and look like it drives – you can’t have something that looks super-sporty and drives like a slug. A car’s character is an equal marriage of appearance and function, something I always tried to consider when developing a new Ford.RICHARD PARRY-JONES CBE

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013012 Secret FordsFord cars. But the internal enthusiasm for the RS brand came and went with dierent management. Unfortunately, RS1700T wasn’t created when Walter Hayes – Ford’s legendary PR supremo – was conducting things. Walter found ecient ways of linking Motorsport success to brand and then sales. After him, there was nobody who could do that, so dierent factions emerged for and against RS and SVE. That’s the thing about conceiving a car; it needs a clear vision and a strong backer.I drove the RS1700T a few times. It was an interesting handful… The ﬁrst time, I took it home on a damp, cold night. After supper I went out to for a spin – literally! On the way home, driving gently, I hadn’t noticed that the brakes were set up for gravel, but when I drove it in anger I spun it through 180 degrees on a narrow lane. Once my heart rate calmed down, I thought “Ah, I wonder if this has an adjustable brake balance wheel”, looked around, and there it was! A lot of the cars in this book never saw the light of day – often for good reason. The perception that you must be ﬁrst with a new vehicle concept needs challenging. Take the Escort Erika Hi-Cube minivan on Page 148. Maybe Ghia invented it too early; maybe not. If the market, or the technology, isn’t ready, or you don’t get the execution right, there’s a risk it won’t sell. It’s about having the right car, in the right place, at the right time – and that requires a lot of vision, and sometimes a little luck.I learned from the designers and marketers that the most important thing is the car buyer’s emotional reaction – that’s even more true today. The rational side has been resolved and it’s become more about emotional things like brand reputation and imagery – and, of course, design. A car’s design is your most powerful advertising tool; all other marketing is second order. Too many engineers think that the rational engineering solution is in conﬂict with the emotional elements and it’s not. A car has to drive like it looks and look like it drives – you can’t have something that looks super-sporty and drives like a slug. A car’s character is an equal marriage of appearance and function, something I always tried to consider when developing a new Ford.RICHARD PARRY-JONES CBE  RENDERING AND SKETCHESBEFORE WE GET GOING...The Cars You Always Promised Yourself www.stevesaxty.com/heroes.MODELS PROTOTYPES AND MULES   ONE-OFFS RENDERINGS AND SKETCHES  

Opening

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