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The hidden world of never seen prototypes VOLUME ONE Dedicated to Hortensia Perez the woman who makes me smile every morning and laugh every night Edited by Mel Nichols SEVEN SPOKE PUBLISHING

CONTENTS FOREWORD Patrick le Qu ment 8 FOREWORD Richard Parry Jones 11 INTRODUCTION Steve Saxty 14 GHIA The Secret Weapon Behind Ford s Prototype Cars 16 A TIME OF CHANGE Ford s Hush hush Battle Plan Revealed 24 AVO 36 CAPRI Jet powered All wheel Drive And Immortal 50 ESCORT MKII The Icon That Arrived From The Future 66 FIESTA Hundreds Of Designs Dozens Of Never seen Concepts 90 GRANADA Stunning Coupes To Rival BMW And Mercedes 118 ESCORT MKIII The Hidden Planet Of Unseen Escorts 136 SIERRA Genius Moments And Head spinning Wildcards 162 SCORPIO Futuristic Ideas For A Fresh Take On Luxury Cars 188 PERFORMANCE A New Direction For Future Fords 194 RS1700T The Life And Death Of Ford s Unicorn 206 HIDDEN GEMS A Thrilling Coupe And Startling Kammback 234 RESETTING RS Three Unique Cars And A Twin Turbo XR4i 252 CONFIDENTIAL Designing The Best Selling RS Of All time 284 PREVIEW The Secret Fords Revealed In Volume Two 302 INDEX Find Your Secret Ford 303

025 FORD S SECRET BATTLE PLAN TAKES SHAPE The man at the top wants Ford to think big create a small car for the world That s not easy and he appoints his lieutenant to do it paving the way to radical new Fords Henry 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 clich 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

Courtesy Dave Ginn 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

037 ADVANCED VEHICLES AND SHATTERED DREAMS Ford s Competitions Department always had more latitude than other divisions It was the only one that could get away with not counting every last penny cent or pfennig In the mid to late 60s the Cortina Escort and then the Capri accounted for the bulk of UK Ford sales and nearly all the profit So to try to shatter Ford s somewhat dowdy reputation Competitions took the three models racing to demonstrate Ford s durability and inject glamour The FWD Taunus was the Cortina s German equivalent It wasn t the sportiest car but the Rallye Sport version was

Stuart Turner former Ford Director of Motorsport

051 THE CAR THEY COULDN T KILL There s so much excitement about Capri convertibles jet powered and AWD It s time to settle down and design the second generation coupe by cutting a hole in the back Ghia s design loses out to two others even though Henry Ford II is appalled by them Lightning really did strike twice for Lee Iacocca His 1964 Mustang was a huge success and when the 1969 Capri was launched Ford hit the jackpot again after it became an instant winner on both sides of the Atlantic The coupes successfully built Ford s image and the company burnished it in motorsport through AVO s BDA engined and AWD Capri prototypes The designers were even more enthusiastic dreaming up Capri convertibles wide arched racers and as impossible as it sounds a gas turbine Capri JET Flights of fantasy by AVO and Design were fine but by 1970 the hard work of planning the second generation Capri began

Author s Note This section is a fraction shorter than the others that follow absolutely not due to any lack of interest on the author s part The Cars You Always Promised Yourself the earlier sister book to this one

067 FROM THE FUTURE A NEW ESCORT It s time to design a new Escort And this time it includes an elegant Escort Coupe created by Ford s most talented designers A second generation RS2000 transforms the Escort into something futuristic and iconic In early 1965 John Fallis Dunton s chief exterior designer led a team that created the original Escort Its sculpted body was a blend of voluptuous American style with perfect volumes and compact proportions Late in the programme his team added a novel dog bone shaped grille It flowed back into a pair of slim front wings along the barrel sided doors into a curvaceous rear conveying a look of power and strength Small windows were cut into the body reminiscent of a ship s portholes this was a taut muscular little car with a lot of charm The first generation Escort sold well but it didn t generate anywhere near the profit of Ford s larger models That modest contribution to FoE s income led to some dallying about the timing and direction of its replacement provisionally scheduled for late 1973 But the timing was slipping and it would be a geriatric seven years old by the time its successor was launched in late 74 early 75

The Escort RS2000 was a work of genius by designer Tom Scott He created his clay model in late 1974 and it s still remembered fondly by retired Ford designers today it really was that special This is one of the

091 A SMALL CAR FOR A BIG WORLD Joe Oros was one of the heavy hitters in the world of Ford a corporate VP an officer of a company where rank and grade were paramount As one of Ford s top 100 or so executives he didn t travel business class he flew on the company s own airline Fordair or one of its corporate jets Moving in this rarefied atmosphere meant that each privileged executive knew the others strengths and more importantly their weaknesses But despite his exalted rank Oros found himself a little side lined in 1970 Henry Ford II was keen on a B car a smaller sister for the C segment Escort and had asked for a study That October Jim Donaldson Manager of Advanced Studies flew from Detroit to Dunton to present his case for a new small car and show what his concept looked like

These are two early B car sketches by Boyke Boyer from 1971 Typical of the sketches done at the advanced pre programme stage they are little more than doodles that might eventually crystallize From there a scale model might be formed that could lead to the creation of a full sized clay and ultimately a see through resin model It s a technique still used today

119 THE SALOONS THAT WENT UNDERCOVER In the 1970s the two door Granada becomes an endless source of fascination for Ford s designers who conceive a high end car that rivals the appearance of a Maserati and a BMW style sports coupe After Joe Oros s return to Detroit Jack Telnack oversaw the start of the next two programmes the new 76 Taunus Cortina TC2 and the 77 Granada Eva Although neither would set enthusiasts pulses racing the TC2 and Eva were crisply designed highly profitable cars that pleased customers In early 1973 the TC2 Taunus Cortina programme got into gear It was a work of product planning genius after the madness of the 1970 original s two different RHD LHD bodies The Taunus wagon had a far cleaner if somewhat plainer shape than the ritzy looking Cortina estate and was selected as the basis of the reskin

Get into a conversation with car designers and they will quickly start talking about volumes for example it s great in places but the volumes and proportions are all wrong Volumes and proportions are the relationship of the basic three boxes that make up the shape of a car Sounds easy but it isn t get the nose too long and it looks odd and if the carryover structure underneath is too tall the tail looks clumsy and so on But not on this Bavarian style Granada coupe

137 THE HIDDEN PLANET OF UNSEEN ESCORTS The next Escort prototypes hit the road disguised as Fiesta estates It s a world car led by global big thinkers their never seen big ideas include an Escort based Capri RS a novel saloon and a radical two seater Perhaps half of Ford s senior leadership could be called car enthusiasts Phil Caldwell certainly wasn t one of them Despite that the 53 year old teetotal former US Navy lieutenant had been promoted in 1973 to run Ford International overseeing Ford of Europe along with Asia and South America Although he would climb to the very top of Ford few senior executives appreciated the Harvard MBA man s overly analytical and worryingly dispassionate way of thinking In 1975 FoE began to plan for the third generation Escort just a year after Volkswagen s front wheel drive hatchback Golf redefined the C segment The vast majority of small car customers began to appreciate the greater space and agility of FWD only a tiny number of enthusiasts preferred the handling of RWD Now that the FWD Fiesta was nearly ready it was obvious that the older RWD booted Escort based on a mid 60s design would soon be regarded by customers as a relic

Erika the third generation Escort was designed from the outset to be a world car Although the North American version looked vaguely similar to the European Erika it shared only a common little more than a one plus one commuter car rather than a performance coupe Europe had no need Ford design cues with the stance of a mid engined two seater

163 HIGH STAKES SIERRA This is a second generation Sierra prototype built in 1980 It replaced an earlier mule based on a Taunus estate used to test the basic layout of component systems this one is far more representative of the production car Under the bonnet are the space saving inner wings of the production car and a rough analogue of its front end Unlike the crude bumpers of one uses items designed to fool spy photographers into thinking that it s a more normal production car than it was Snaps of such cars were worth a fortune to scoop photographers like Hans pictures to motoring magazines or competitors With Linda axed Ford s designers need a hit It ll be a battle of conservative son of Cortina proposals versus an array from Ghia and a head spinning wildcard The designers had a lot of work to do In early 1977 after abandoning Project Linda they found themselves creating an interim facelift of the Taunus Cortina while starting afresh on a completely new replacement for it Oh and they had to finish off the Erika Escort too The stopgap car Project Teresa was little more than an update to the 76 Taunus Cortina with deeper side glass and Erika style features a quick spruce up to extend the aging car s life The bigger issue now was given the delay what to do with the all new Taunus Cortina What should a vehicle like this be for the decade ahead What should it look like what sort of powertrains should it have Time was ticking

189 SCORPIO S TALE WITH A STING The designers are excited It s time to create a new flagship Ford DE1 Scorpio Youngster Pinky Lai s futuristic ideas are fused with the those of Klaus Kapitza s The result is a fresh take on luxury cars The 1970s were good to Ford s Granada The 77 Eva redesign positioned it well the Ghia model with its Essex designed interior had some thought nearly all the dignity and class of a Mercedes The old car had received an extended lease of life thanks to Project Gloria a quick update that added a brasher more American feel to the 82 model Gloria gave the Product Development Group the breathing space to complete the Sierra and now in early 81 start work on the all new Granada

195 PERFORMANCE ARTISTS Bobcat Eva Carla Erika and Toni run headlong into a decade of dramatic design and redesign The XR brand takes off Ford partners up with Aston Martin s engineers as the power of performance cars begins to soar The cars born as Fiesta Granada Capri Escort and Sierra lived an average of 11 years Maybe it was their design or perhaps the era but Bobcat Eva Carla Erika and Toni comfortably outlived today s equivalents These children of the 70s would be facelifted fettled and freshened inside and out across the decade ahead by Uwe Bahnsen s design team Buyers thirst for performance vehicles with more extrovert style demanded they change with the times Bodies designed with quiet good taste that hid low tech engineering was the old way The new era of Ford s finest performance artists was about to begin

Uwe Bahnsen Ford of Europe s Design VP sits on the bonnet of and smiles He has reason to relax this shot was taken in 1982 just been redesigned Now Bahnsen s team was about to embark on a ahead The engineers stepped up their game too as buyers demanded genuine high sporty looks A golden era of

207 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF FORD S UNICORN Motorsport s 230bhp BDA engined RWD Fiesta sparks an audacious plan convert the new Escort to RWD with triple the XR3 s power The prototypes are stunners and handle brilliantly but time isn t on their side Compared to other winning rally teams such as Lancia and Fiat Ford s Motorsport outfit at Boreham was tiny Its workshop had just eight bays engine dyno cells a paint shop and a few modest offices It was far smaller than a typical Ford dealer s But Boreham was a big hitter thanks to the vast experience of its engineers and mechanics and their ability to plug into Britain s gargantuan network of motorsport suppliers Under the management of Peter Ashcroft this modestly sized team had won the 1979 World Rally Championship WRC with the Group 4 RWD Escort Mark II Then dramatically Motorsport announced a two year withdrawal from the Championship to develop its next generation

Courtesy John Wheeler

235 HIDDEN GEMS AND ROUGH DIAMONDS A never seen futuristic small coupe luxury convertibles and a roadster Ghia tries for the fourth time to design a new Capri and an Escort for eight years ahead Ford was hurting In 1982 the global economy was in poor shape and Ford s North American division losses reached a massive 1 1 billion It was propped up in part by the 613 million contribution of Bob Lutz s International division that included Europe The one bright spot was the stunningly profitable British market a glittering gem in Ford s tarnished crown There British fleet sales generated huge revenue and a vast aftersales profit while the brand s shine was polished by SVE s first two cars

Project P229 was a Ford study for an advanced looking small coupe based on the Mazda 323 The project was led by Design Manager Thomas Plath who recalls A group of us moved out to Hiroshima and started on the detailed feasibility work with body engineers from Ford and Mazda Designer Pinky Lai s idea was to taper the greenhouse in plan view to give space for two winglets that grew out of the rear quarter panel Today with thermoplastic body parts that wouldn t be a problem as you can see on BMW i8 But 40 years ago it was a nightmare for body engineers and for the lead designer as well

253 RESETTING RS RED ALERT AT THE BLUE OVAL It s time for three special RS cars to replace a series of struggling prototypes A twinturbo V6 Sierra won t cut it so wind tunnel work transforms an XR4i A new Escort RS starts pounding the N rburgring and the most exotic RS of all is born Ford s motorsport programme was in trouble The negative reaction to the Sierra in late 1982 led to soul searching fingerpointing and inevitably some wallet tightening Ford s PR people put on a brave face but budgets and strategies were under the microscope Walter Hayes Ford of Britain s former public relations boss and by now a Ford board member in Detroit reached out to Stuart Turner Hayes had heard rumblings that things were not going well in motorsport and asked Stuart to take a look After AVO s closure Turner was enjoying working in PR but agreed to look at what Ford Motorsport was doing in Germany and Britain

285 STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL Ford s Cycle Plan sets out a 10 year strategy for refreshing and replacing every model First up is the Escort with a specialist 4x4 version Sierra is dragged back into the studio and the best selling RS is born The Cycle Plan typed not computer generated on a single sheet of paper and with hand drawn ellipses around key dates was marked STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL It was nothing fancy to look at but it meant everything It governed everybody and every action for the next 10 years Not surprisingly copies were few and far between shared by the product planners only with those who needed to know If you were one of the chosen you saw Ford s product range far into the future The Manufacturing people used it to plan where the factories would be built in 10 years time PR and Marketing needed it to schedule model launches two years away

302 Secret Fords NEXT THE SECRET FORDS WE LL UNCOVER IN VOLUME TWO We are now at the end of a period in which a group of designers and engineers all at the very top of their game created Ford s icons We ve witnessed cars such as the Fiesta and Sierra being born plus a head spinning array of previously unseen unicorns It s been quite a journey hasn t it But the story is far from over Secret Fords Volume Two will examine a period of greater drama as Ford redesigns its cars and itself for the 1990s and beyond We will kick off with the designers who have become familiar here as they create their last car before they start to go their separate ways A fresh generation of designers will step up to create a plethora of new secret vehicles for us to gaze at in wonder and amazement Ford itself becomes more global and more ambitious It wants to take on Porsche Corvette and yes for the first time even Ferrari when Special Vehicle Operations the American arm of SVE looks at creating a high end coupe version of the Sierra Cosworth But to beat the best from Germany and Italy SVO set its sights on an Italdesign body featuring a mid engined AWD layout Designed in Italy with British chassis engineering and assembled in France using hightech Yamaha and V8 engines it s a Ford supercar that could have been one of the greats The Sierra X programme kicks off an extreme makeover that includes a two door Sapphire A new Cosworth arrives with the first mule masquerading as a Mark III Escort but there are many more unseen Escort Cosworths coming too Ford considers every option a speedster a coupe and dune buggy are sketched up There s even a plan to reskin it as an Aston Martin The mid 90s arrive and the market fragments suddenly everyone rushes to design niche cars Ghia strips down an RS2000 4x4 for a shockingly fresh take on the soon to expand 4x4 activity market long before blander SUVs roamed the earth New Edge arrives a radical design language that threatens to reshape the way cars look The designers apply it to a new Escort codenamed CE99 but there s uncertainty about it and dramatically it s scrapped late in the day and the team starts afresh with a new Focus The latest Ford product chief bursts on the scene and begins planning for the 2000s He challenges the need for Prodrive s AWD Cosworthengined Focus and instead directs a skunk works team to design a FWD RS version He s not done though he orders up a 2004 Capri and the designers create a Fiesta RS but they are not to be These are the next generation of Secret Fords that await us in Volume Two Each car and the people behind them have amazing stories to tell Richard Parry Jones returns to share the details of how he transformed Ford s vehicles in the 90s while Patrick le Qu ment looks back to the Fiesta he loved but left unfinished The RS designers of the Escort Cosworth and Focus RS divulge their first hand stories and share never seen before photos of what might have been Volume One covered Ford s Time Of Change In Volume Two the competition is racing up a gear and it s a Time Of Focus and Refocus I ll see you there