Summary
In 1959–1960, Ford developed a subcompact car codenamed “Cardinal,” intended for both the U.S. and Europe. The U.S. version was canceled in 1962, but Ford of Germany put the Cardinal into production as the 1962–1966 Ford Taunus 12M (P4). It was the first production Ford with front-wheel drive (FWD). It was followed by a refined, restyled FWD car, codenamed “Prelate,” which became the 1967–1970 Ford 12M/15M (P6).
From Cardinal to Prelate: The 12M/15M P6
While the later Taunus 12M P4 was still plainly a Cardinal despite its detail improvements, the next-generation Taunus 12M/15M was a substantially different bird. Known internally as the P6 (the P5 being the 1965 17M/20M), it was developed under the codename Prälat (Prelate), another Catholic clerical rank.
Designed by Wes Dahlberg, the P6 looked much more modern, albeit in a rather generic mid-sixties manner, with squared-off lines that didn’t entirely hide some structural carryover from the P4. As before, there were two- and four-door sedans, a Kombiwagen, and a notchback coupe; an awkward-looking Rambler Tarpon-like fastback coupe was mercifully stillborn.
This full-size model of a proposed P6 fastback coupe was photographed in December 1964. Given its ungainly proportions and resemblance to the abortive Rambler Tarpon (which was enlarged to become the almost as clumsy-looking Rambler Marlin), it wa probably just as well that it wasn’t built in this form. The sign on the ground in this Ford-Werke styling photo (scanned from Rosellen’s Ford-Schritte) reads “23.12.64” (the date the photo was taken) and “cs382-3” (indicating that it was the third photo of the cs382 prototype). (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
The new models were a bit longer, lower, and wider than before, albeit on an unchanged wheelbase. Surprisingly, they were also quite aerodynamic, with drag coefficients of 0.38 or less — outstanding for this period.
The quickest way to distinguish a 12M version of the Ford P6 from the pricier 15M was the headlights: round for the 12M, rectangular for the 15M. The 12M also had a vertical grille texture where the 15M grille had horizontal slats. On both versions, track width increased by 3 inches (76 mm) front and rear (although overall width increased a mere 0.35 inches/9 mm), which made the P6 look considerably less gawky than its predecessor. Interior packaging was revised to improve rear legroom, although a new annoyance was that the doors didn’t open wide enough, making for awkward entry and exit. (Photo: “Ford Taunus P6 12m BW 2016-09-03 13-41-57.jpg” by Berthold Werner, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) license)
Under the skin, there were some extensive mechanical changes, including another new front suspension, new steering, improved “Flow-Away” ventilation, and a revised cooling system. The revised front suspension again had wide lower A-arms, but the transverse leaf spring was gone, replaced by MacPherson struts with coil springs, which avoided the need for further Fiat royalty payments. There were no anti-roll bars front or rear. Steering was now by rack and pinion, and less under-geared than before (with a ratio of 19:1 rather than 22:1), so it was more precise, but inevitably heavier. Teves front disc brakes remained standard.
The FWD engine/transaxle package of the Taunus P6 was similar to the Cardinal/P4, but the engine now had a conventional cooling fan and suspension was by MacPherson struts with coil springs rather than the previous transverse leaf spring. The lower wishbones were substantially similar to those of 1965–1966 12M P4 cars, which were no longer attached to the transaxle case. However, track width increased from 49 to 52 inches (1,245 to 1,321 mm) both front and rear. (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
The V-4 engine now had a conventional cooling system with an engine-driven cooling fan. The P4 system had worked reasonably well on the move, but it was marginal in slow-moving traffic in hot weather; there may also have been concerns about production commonization, since the V-4 was now much more widely used than it had been in 1962. Ford-Werke had been obliged to find other ways to utilize the excess capacity of the Cologne-Niehl engine plant, so the Taunus 17M now used the 1,498 cc (91.4 cu. in.) V-4 and a longer-stroke 1,699 cc (103.7 cu. in.) version in place of the old inline fours, while the 20M introduced the new V-6 version, initially in 1,998 cc (121.9 cu. in.) form. (The V-6 got off to a bad start, suffering early head gasket sealing problems, but it would prove to be an extremely important and long-lived Ford corporate engine.) Another important new application was the German version of the Ford Transit van, the first true cooperative program between Ford-Werke and Ford Ltd. In mid-1966, Ford-Werke also began supplying the 1.5-liter version to Saab AB for the Saab 95, 96, and Sonett V4.
In back, the 12M again had oval taillights, compared to the rectangular units on the 15M. The vents in the rear pillars are part of the new no-draft “Flow-Away” cabin ventilation system, shared with the 17M/20M and similar to the “Aeroflow” system on the Cortina. It was much less crude than the footwell vents in the early P4, although AMS testers still missed the latter’s greater air volume. Note the “FORD” lettering between the taillights, which replaced the original “TAUNUS” lettering for 1968. (Photo: “Ford Taunus P6 12m BW 2016-09-03 13-42-49.jpg” by Berthold Werner, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) license)
For the 12M P6, the base engine was bored out to 1,305 cc (79.6 cu. in.) — although Ford-Werke advertised it as 1,288 cc (78.6 cu. in.), its taxable displacement under new West German tax rules — and got a higher compression ratio, giving 50 PS DIN (36.8 kW; 63 hp SAE gross) and 68.7 lb-ft (95 N-m) of torque. The 1,498 cc (91.4 cu. in.) engine was again available in regular-fuel fuel form, now with 55 PS (40.5 kW; 75 hp SAE gross), or in high-compression TS form, again with 65 PS (47.8 kW; 80 hp SAE gross) and 84.6 lb-ft (117 N-m) of torque. A 12-volt electrical system was belatedly optional, although it wouldn’t become standard until September 1967. Since the restyling brought no significant increase in weight, performance was somewhat improved. Ford-Werke claimed the 12M 1300 could reach 62 mph (100 km/h) in 23 seconds and a top speed of 81 mph (130 km/h).
Aside from its distinct front and rear styling and larger engine, the extra DM 500 Ford-Werke charged for the 15M P6 over the 12M provided better equipment, including very useful “Vario-Air” rotary vents on the dashboard; on the 12M P6, these were replaced with plastic blanks, a deplorable economy measure Ford later repeated on baseline versions of the Fiesta. (Photo: “Ford Taunus 15M P6 Neustadt 01.JPG” by Charles01, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) license)
One significant and potentially confusing aspect of the P6 redesign was the return of the 15M designation, which bears some explanation. The previous Taunus 15M, offered between 1955 and 1958, had been relatively successful, but Ford-Werke dropped it in mid-1958 so it wouldn’t compete with the bigger Taunus 17M. This quickly proved to be a commercial miscalculation, but rather than revive the 15M as a distinct model, Ford-Werke made its engine optional on the 12M. The 12M P4 had continued that strategy, but for the P6, Ford-Werke decided to again differentiate the base and 1.5-liter models, giving the latter distinctive styling, more equipment, and a higher price to fill the gap between the 12M and the bigger 17M. A decade earlier, Ford-International officials had chided Ford Ltd. for this sort of thing, calling it “the dental school of product planning,” but it had paid off handsomely for Dagenham, and Cologne, whose financial performance remained checkered, was keen to follow suit.
This 15M P6 is a 1967 model, identifiable by the “TAUNUS” lettering between the rectangular taillights; for 1968, this was replaced with “FORD” lettering (although it was more widely spaced than on the 12M shown above). Note that the fuel filler has moved from the tail to the right rear fender, as on the P4 Kombi. (Photo: “Ford Taunus 15M P6 Neustadt 02.JPG” by Charles01, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) license)
The Last Days of FWD at Ford-Werke
In most respects, the P6 versions of the 12M and 15M were now competent but uninspired middle-class cars. They had few really glaring faults other than engine noise and annoyingly heavy brake effort — a brake servo became optional in February 1968 — but they also lacked any real defining virtues. The P6 still had good winter traction, but even with all the chassis and steering changes, it couldn’t match the road manners of FWD rivals of newer basic design. Lift-throttle oversteer was no longer a problem, but the heavier steering exaggerated the heavy understeer, so the car had to be muscled through fast turns, and firmer damping made the ride significantly less plush than before. Cabin space remained above-average for the class, but the P6’s new front bucket seats reduced the benefits of the flat floor, and the interior fittings and equipment retained some lingering reminders of the Cardinal’s pfennig-pinching crudity.
The P6 version of the 12M/15M had rack-and-pinion steering to go with the new MacPherson strut front suspension. As with late P4 cars, the engine/transaxle package was isolated from the suspension rather than combined as a “ponypak.” Note that the halfshafts still used conventional U-joints inboard rather than constant-velocity joints (which were used on the wheel end of each driveshaft). (Image: Ford Motor Company)
Where the P4 had made its best showing in 1.5-liter form, the 12M P6 was now more competitive than its pricier brother. The 1.3-liter engine gave the 12M adequate if uninspired performance, and its interior space and comfort offered some compensation for its cumbersome handling and lack of verve. The 15M was faster, but it was now somewhat overmatched against middle-class rivals. In a series of 1967 comparison tests, auto motor und sport ranked the 12M second among five lower-middle-class cars, but the 15M TS managed only fifth place in its segment, well behind the Fiat 125, Renault 16, Audi L, and Opel Olympia despite its lower price. AMS remarked that the 15M seemed dated, a bad sign for a car that had then been on sale only about 15 months.
The most attractive 12M/15M P6 body style was the coupe, whose roofline gave it a faint family resemblance to the 1965–1966 Fairlane and Galaxie two-door hardtops. Coupes were 2.8 inches (71 mm) longer than sedans, bringing overall length to 172.8 inches (4,389 mm). (Photo: “Ford Taunus 15M Coupé” by peterolthof, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0) license)
The P6’s arrival happened to coincide with a European recession and a sharp downturn in the new car market. Its impact wasn’t limited to Ford — Opel was also hit hard, as was Volkswagen — but the economic slump resulted in the first actual decrease in Ford-Werke annual production in nearly two decades. Posted profits for 1967 were about one-sixth the 1966 level, and sales of the 17M and 20M slipped so much that Ford-Werke had to shut down the assembly lines to give dealers more time to clear growing stockpiles. The new 12M and 15M were among the few bright spots in this grim commercial picture. Their sales weren’t really any better than the P4’s, but they were still in reasonable demand, which was more than could be said for the larger German Ford models.
With its squared-off styling, wider track, excellent aerodynamics, flow-through ventilation, rack-and-pinion steering, MacPherson strut suspension, and rectangular headlights (not legal in the U.S. at the time), the Ford 15M P6 was considerably more modern than the Cardinal-based P4, although the 15M still couldn’t match the ride and handling of the FWD Renault 16 or Audi F103. Note the individual front (“bucket”) seats, which were now standard. (Image: Ford Motor Company)
This might help to explain the curious expansion of the P6 range for the 1968 model year, which included the return of the 1,183 cc (72.2 cu. in.) engine, now with a higher compression ratio and 45 PS (33.1 kW; 57 hp SAE gross); new 12M 1300 S and 12M TS models with a premium-fuel version of the 1.3-liter engine, producing 53 PS (39.0 kW; 65 hp SAE gross); and a 1700 S version of the 15M TS, using the 1,699 cc (103.7 cu. in.) engine from the 17M, with 70 PS (51.5 kW; 85 hp SAE gross) and 99 lb-ft (137 N-m) of torque). Mid-year, the premium-fuel 1.5- and 1.7-liter engines also became optional on the regular 15M as well as the 15M TS, while the 1.7-liter and low-compression 1.5-liter engines became optionally available for the 12M, at least in West Germany and certain other markets. All these choices were in addition to the existing 12M 1300, 15M 1500, and 15M TS 1500 S models, suggesting a somewhat desperate attempt to cover all possible bases. All P6 engines now had the previously optional 12-volt electrical system, and from late 1967, a revised closed-deck cylinder block.
If the Ford 15M RS wasn’t especially fast — the high-compression 1,699 cc (103.7 cu. in.) V-4 in this 1969 coupe boasts only 75 PS (55.2 KW) and 95.6 lb-ft of torque (130 N-m) — it certainly looked the business, both inside and out. Though commonly associated with the coupe, the RS package was also available on 15M sedans. (Photo: “15mRSCoupé0769.jpg” by Alex WI, which was released into the public domain by the copyright holder)
Introduced midway through the 1968 model year was the most interesting P6 variant: the 15M RS, which had been shown at the IAA show in Frankfurt in September 1967 and went on sale in March 1968. Aimed at the Opel Kadett Rallye, it featured the high-compression 1700 S engine, firmer damping, styled 14-inch wheels, various exterior dress-up items, and a sporty interior treatment with floor shifter and full instrumentation. It was something of a paper tiger, with performance — 0–62 mph (0–100 km/h) in under 15 seconds, with a top speed of 95 to 98 mph (153 to 158 km/h) — that wasn’t in the same league as the Mk2 Cortina 1600GT or 1600E, much less the far more powerful Kadett Rallye 1.9. Nonetheless, the RS accounted for a good chunk of 15M sales.
Ford-Werke was by this time trying to downplay the Taunus name, which had disappeared from the bigger 17M and 20M/23M with the launch of the P7 in August 1967 and was deleted from the 12M and 15M a month later.
With the introduction of the Escort and Capri, any sporty aspirations of the Ford P6 were fading, much like the Taunus name, which is no longer to be found on this 1969 15M XL coupe. (Photo: “15m-P6.jpg” by Alex WI, which was released into the public domain by the copyright holder)
A last revision of the P6 line arrived in August 1968, bringing a new instrument panel with a round rather than ribbon speedometer and, for cars with the 1.5- or 1.7-liter engines, Löbro constant velocity joints rather than the original Rzeppa type. The TS was replaced with a more luxury-oriented XL model, and the 12M dropped both the 1200 and high-compression 1300 S engines.
The pruning of the smaller-engined models may have been intended to avoid competition with the newest German Ford: the Mk1 Escort. Like the Cardinal-based 12M P4, this was a somewhat reluctant inheritance; the new Escort was designed by Ford Ltd. as a replacement for the Anglia 105E, and had gone on sale in the UK earlier in the year. It finally gave Ford-Werke the modern, conventionally engineered RWD C-segment car they’d wanted for more than a decade, but the Mk1 Escort wasn’t a big hit in the Bundesrepublik — German buyers didn’t love the styling, and a basic Escort 1100 wasn’t dramatically cheaper than the bigger 12M 1300. Nonetheless, the Escort brought in a useful chunk of additional business that didn’t cannibalize sales of the bigger cars.
The distinctive “dogbone” grille of the Mk1 Ford Escort is fondly remembered in the UK, but it was not so beloved in Germany: Ford-Werke produced 848,388 of the European Mk1 from September 1968 to November 1974, compared to almost 1.3 million British cars in a slightly longer period. (Photo: “Ford Escort MkI 1100 1972.JPG” by Charles01, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) license)
Even more useful was the launch in January 1969 of the sporty Capri coupe, which not only sold very well, but was also a profitable and desirable image-booster, something previous Ford-Werke models had managed only fleetingly.
Although overshadowed, underwhelming, and by now the oldest models in the German Ford lineup, the 12M and 15M remained fairly consistent if not outstanding sellers through the end of the model run in July 1970.
As with the U.S. Ford Mustang, the Ford Capri was a sporty car in image, but not necessarily in performance; the cheaper four-cylinder models were not particularly quick. A German-built 1500 like this 1969 example initially offered 60 PS (44.1 kW) and 84 lb-ft (114 N-m) of torque and needed 19 seconds to reach 62 mph (100 km/h), with a top speed of 88 mph (142 km/h). However, it was good-looking, affordable, and very profitable. (Photo: “1969 Ford Capri 1500 XL” by peterolthof, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0) license)
A Unified European Ford Line
The arrival of the Escort was in many respects the shape of things to come for Ford-Werke. In the early summer of 1967, John Andrews, who had been promoted in 1965 to vice president of Ford’s European Automobile Group, proposed establishing a new European holding company to unify the management of Ford of England, Ford of Germany, and Ford’s other European subsidiaries.
From a product standpoint, the Mk1 Transit had already shown the way forward. It was not yet a truly unified design, since production logistics meant the English and German versions had different powertrains, but it was as close as Ford had come since the thirties, and it let Ford take advantage of the emerging economic alliances in Europe. (The original rationale was that Ford Ltd. could built the Transit for the European Free Trade Area, of which the UK was a member, while Ford-Werke would serve the European Economic Community.) With the European recession, such collaboration seemed like the most sensible course of action, particularly since total combined British and European automobile production would shortly exceed that of the U.S.
The early Mk1 Ford Transit used 60-degree V-4 engines of two distinct types: German-built models had the 1,699 cc (103.7 cu. in.) Taunus V-4, but British ones, like this 1968 example, had the unrelated 1,663 cc (101.4 cu. in.) Essex V-4. The Essex engines were less successful than their German counterparts (although the torquey V-6 versions have their partisans) and were phased out of European production in the early eighties because they were less amenable to emissions controls, although the Essex V-6 survived in some South African Ford models for a surprisingly long time. (Photo: “old Transit” by allen watkin, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) license)
The result was the creation of Ford of Europe, Inc., with Andrews as chairman and Robert Layton, who had succeeded Andrews as managing director of Ford-Werke in 1965, as vice chairman. It was headquartered in England, in part for tax reasons and in part because Ford Ltd. was still in a far better business position than Ford-Werke. The establishment of Ford of Europe did not actually change the ownership of the national subsidiaries, but it did bring about an extensive organizational restructuring. In practical terms, it also meant Ford-Werke products would be brought in line with the generally more successful English Ford offerings, filled out by models new to both Ford of England and Ford of Germany.
This consolidation left no place for the FWD cars. Commercially speaking, the P4 and P6 had been solid if not spectacular performers, selling around 100,000 units a year in West Germany, and the P6 had eventually banished most of the lingering Cardinal eccentricities. Ford-Werke could have continued to build on that foundation — FWD now even had some defenders in Cologne, which hadn’t been the case earlier in the decade — but the bottom line was that the P6 had sold 668,187 units in four years where the Mk2 Cortina had sold more than a million in the same period, again with lower costs and greater profit margins.
For 1971, therefore, the FWD 12M and 15M would be replaced with a new RWD car, again called Taunus, but obviously based on the Mk3 Cortina (and known internally as the Taunus TC, for “Taunus-Cortina”). The TC would be a conventional D-segment model, no longer feigning to straddle the C-segment, which was now the purview of the Escort; Ford of Germany wouldn’t have another FWD car until the arrival of the Mk1 Fiesta in 1976. It would take several more years for Ford to establish a truly unified European lineup, but by the early eighties, British and German Ford products were more alike than different. By then, Ford-Werke had also achieved a more dominant role in European Ford product development.
The Taunus TC was actually 2 inches (50 mm) shorter than the 12M/15M P6 sedans, on a 2-inch (51-mm) longer wheelbase, but it was 3.6 inches (92 mm) wider and looked much bigger. Four-cylinder models now used inline engines, the OHC “Pinto” series. This 1600L has the 1,593 cc (97.2 cu. in.) version, which Ford-Werke advertised in Germany as 1,576 cc, its taxable displacement under contemporary West German tax rules. (Photo: “1972 Ford Taunus 1600 L” by peterolthof, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0) license)
The early Subaru ff1 had a similar heater arrangement to the Taunus.
After testing the Ford-Köln V4, Saab requested and got certain changes to the engine, but I don’t know exactly what they were. Ford-Köln didn’t make these changes to engines destined for their own cars.
The only specific difference I’m aware of was that Saab specified softer valve springs; there may have been additional changes, but that’s the one of which I’m aware.
It’s noteworthy that the point where Ford agreed to supply the Taunus V-4 to Saab ended up coinciding with the European recession, which for a while brought sales of the bigger 17M and 20M to a more or less grinding halt. The 12M and 15M were still selling okay, but the downturn for the bigger cars meant the engine plant was running way under capacity, which is very, very expensive. My guess is that this made Ford more willing to accommodate Saab change requests than they might otherwise have been — Saab didn’t take a huge volume (about 35,000 units a year initially), but with Ford-Werke having to actually shut down some production lines while they tried to figure out how to clear unsold stocks, I assume every little bit helped.
I’ve been looking forward to this for some time; a most excellent detailed look at this oddball car.
A couple of points: You make no mention of the rather unusual styling origins of the Cardinal/12M. In my post on these cars, I found some pictures of the Ford Werke’s proposed NPX-C5, styling clays that very clearly are antecedents of the Cardinal/12M. It’s a bit surprising, given that the NPX-C5 was otherwise tossed overboard in favor of the cardinal, but its styling was very much adopted. Since you don’t allow images added to comments, I can’t show them, but they are in my post at Curbside Classic: https://i0.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Ford-Cardinal-flip-vert.jpg
The cancellation of the Cardinal in April of 1962 is significant in another way: by this time Iaccoca had clearly seen the surprising success of the sporty Corvair Monza, which of course led to the Mustang. Undoubtedly the Mustang was already quite far along at this time. The Monza was an extremely pivotal car, as it finally broke the mold that compact cars were all just for cheapskates; they could be immensely popular with the right styling, image, performance and higher trim. The Monza opened the pathway for small cars to be profitable, but they had to look stylish. The Cardinal clearly did not meet that criteria, although one wonders what if there had been a Monza-equivalent Cardinal coupe with a higher output engine, 4-speed and better trim. Maybe a temporary stopgap until the Mustang?
I spent a while on Thursday and Friday wrestling with the issue of the pictures you mention, and I ended up with the strong suspicion that the photos identified as the NPX-C5 are NOT actually that; I think they’re of a scale model of the Cardinal, and that the resulting “bitty” look led to their being conflated with the smaller German project. I asked Ford Archives if there were any surviving images of the NPX-C5, they apparently went back and forth with Köln (which is part of why there was such a delay), and they didn’t come up with anything. So, I think the reason that photo, and other photos of the same model (I’ve seen at least one other from a slightly different angle), look so much like the Cardinal is that it WAS the Cardinal, albeit at one-quarter or three-eighths scale. If so, the misidentification appears to have originated with Hanns-Peter Rosellen in his 1988 book Ford-Schritte; Rosellen’s account of the NPX-C5 and Cardinal/P4 projects is also marred by his very serious chronological error regarding the timing of Iacocca’s visit, so he was not batting 1,000 in this area. A related issue is that Köln appears to have used the “NPX” prefix generically, probably as an acronym for “Neue-Projekt-Experimental” or something like that; the suffix appears to identify the specific project, so simply saying “NPX” by itself isn’t sufficiently specific.
The Rosellen book, Ford-Schritte: der Wiederaufstieg der Ford-Werke Köln von 1945 bis 1970, is a frustrating thing in a number of respects. It was done with extensive cooperation from Ford-Werke, following up an earlier volume (which I haven’t read) that’s an apparently rather evasive history of Ford of Germany through 1945, so it’s full of behind-the-scenes insights, but it has some weird errors. Also, it was never published in English, and is very rare on this side of the Atlantic; I was able to read portions of it (unfortunately without the illustrations), but actually buying a physical copy would likely run to €90 to €100, plus probably half again that for shipping, even if a seller were willing to ship it internationally.
That’s a possible explanation but I see some problems with them. The model identified as NPX-5C is decidedly narrower than the Cardinal, and most importantly, very clearly lacks the front overhang that was essential with the FWD Cardinal. The difference between the length in the area in front of the front wheel opening and the front bumper is very obvious. And yet that longer front overhang is very much in evidence in the older full-size clay dated 9-15-59. That clay has the same basic proportions of the definitive Cardinal, with its heaviness and front overhang. The NPX-5C has none of those qualities; it looks like what I assumed it was: a light, narrow, front engine RWD car, very similar in size and proportions to others of its kind including the Kadett, although not quite as narrow looking.
The proportions of a FWD car with the engine in front of the front axle center are very distinctive and impossible to hide. The NPX-5C simply doesn’t have those.
I cannot fathom why Ford would have made a quite advanced clay like the 9-15-59 model before these models dubbed NPX-5C, since they very clearly do not conform to the Cardinal’s dimensions and proportions and FWD. And from where in Dearborn’s design language does that Cardinal styling come from? It looks like nothing Ford ever did in this mid-late ’50s period.
Admittedly these models dubbed NPX-5C don’t exactly look like anything Ford Werke had either, but they had very limited design capability back then and I can see them cooking this up as a concept design for their new RWD car. I simply cannot fathom Dearborn coming up with the Cardinal’s design, although it also surprises me that they would adopt the German concept (if that’s what they seemed to do, to me anyway).
The Cardinal is a somewhat mysterious oddball car all the way around. It really shouldn’t have ever existed given the typical patterns of the Big Three. But its styling is for me the biggest mystery of all. It looks absolutely nothing like a US Ford product, unless I’m missing something. And those models lack all the key proportions and dimensions of the Cardinal.
So I’m going to tick with my theory until I can see something more definitively to change my miny. It seems a bit odd that there’s zero visual evidence of Ford Weke’s NPX-5C project?
Ford-Werke didn’t really have much in the way of styling facilities at that point; the P2 and P3 17M were definitely styled in Dearborn, and during the time the NPX-C5 was developed, there was internal correspondence in the U.S. expressing serious doubts that Köln had the capability of designing a complete vehicle. John Najjar told Karl Ludvigsen that he, Gale Halderman, and Art Miller did the exterior and interior design for what became the Cardinal, and that the reason it looked sort of odd was that they were under orders to minimize the number of exterior panels to keep the tooling costs down, so the “design language” was secondary to cost considerations. I’m not necessarily persuaded by the apparent dimensions, insofar as the package size was such a moving target throughout 1959; the I-PF-4 was significantly enlarged at least three times, probably in width as well as in length and wheelbase, and it appears the original narrow-angle V-4 was very, very short, especially since it had no cooling fan.
This is an area where Rosellen’s chronological errors became a very serious problem. Rosellen says that Gutzeit presented the NPX-C5 prototype to the Ford-Werke board on December 12, 1959, and that John Andrews, Bob Layton, and their planning chief flew to Detroit soon after (“kurz darauf”) to show the proposal to Dearborn management. However, Rosellen then asserts that Iacocca flew to Germany in February 1960, and that it was the NPX-C5 prototype he saw and so hated. This makes no sense at all: Iacocca’s own account says he went to Germany after he became general manager of Ford Division (which was on November 9, 1960), and while it’s not terribly improbable that he might have seen whatever presentation Andrews and Layton brought with them, that would have been in Dearborn, not in Köln. Unfortunately, Rosellen’s narrative is founded on that premise, which undermines what would otherwise have been the clearest account of the German perspective on the whole thing. I am further hampered by not having a complete copy of Ford-Schritte (which would cost me at least €50 that I do not have to spare), but the fact that the photos of the purported NPX-C5 aren’t dated makes it that much harder to know where to fit them into the timeline. The photos of the full-size models taken in Dearborn have the enormous virtue of having the date on the sign in the photo.
So, my take is this: 1) According to Ludvigsen, John Najjar took responsibility for the Cardinal as it became, and I have no particular reason to doubt that. (It’s not like the two-seat Thunderbird, where many people had obvious incentive to take credit for it.) 2) Ford-Werke didn’t yet do styling development, and the most complete textual description I have of the NPX-C5 (which isn’t very extensive) focuses on its engineering features, suggesting that it was sort of a pet project for Gutzeit (“Gutzeits Liebling”), who was chief engineer, not a stylist. 3) There’s already been a fair amount of misinformation about the NPX-C5 (including the whole business about it allegedly having a rear engine), and I am reluctant to compound that by repeating an uncertain attribution of an undated photo of ambiguous provenance. I went back and forth on this at some length on Thursday and Friday, and while I do have a (slightly) higher resolution version of the purported NPX-C5 photo, I decided I just wasn’t sure enough about it.
As for the records, I’m not terribly surprised about that. The challenge for the corporate archivists is that there is a HUGE amount of material over a span of decades; some of it inevitably gets lost, some isn’t retained for various reasons, and some of it inevitably gets misfiled or misidentified. At the time Rosellen wrote his books in the mid-eighties, that photo of the scale model might well have been in the project files for the NPX-C5 and P4, but depending on how or whether it was labeled, identifying its original date and significance 25 years earlier may have come down to guesswork.
All good points but I simply cannot get past the stark reality that the so-called NPX-C5 models are missing the necessary front overhang as well as the width that the 1959 Cardinal clay already had and was essential to clear the engine. Scale models are based on drawings with accurate dimensions and hard points. There is simply no logic to why these scale models would be created after the ’59 clay without these essential cardinal elements. It simply makes no sense. And this is not just a matter of subjectivity; these NPX-5C models clearly do not conform to the Cardinal’s basic and essential hard points.
Why create a scale model that doesn’t conform to the program, as already laid down?
What they do represent in proportion, narrowness and lack of front overhang is a more compact conventional RWD car.
How’s this for a hypothesis? These models were made in Germany (it wouldn’t have taken much to do so) and when Ford mandated the Cardinal for Germany, they saw these and thought they looked better than their exceptionally dull clay from 1959. And so they decided to adopt and develop the design theme from these models. And FWIW, it might have been a sop to Cologne for having killed their program.
I want to believe your hypothesis, but the obvious issues with these models not conforming to the Cardinal program’s established hard points makes it impossible for me. I simply can’t get past that key issue. There’s a missing key logical step in your theory; why create models for a narrower, obviously RWD car?
Seems like we’ll just have to have different interpretations of what is available.
The thing is, the program hardpoints were a rapidly moving target. Even the NPX-C5 was enlarged quite a bit from its initial conception (overall length grew from 370 to 390 cm; I don’t know if it got wider as well). One of the reasons the whole project was such a mess, and a major reason why keeping the costs in line became so difficult, was that the goalposts kept shifting. Even after the I-PF-4 became the Cardinal and was handed off to Ford Division, the dimensions were enlarged again (according to Rosellen, in October 1960). So, when styling concepts like the 1959 HummingBird were designed, the package dimensions were NOT fixed, and questions like “What are the external dimensions of the engine and how much space do we need to allot for it?” had not been resolved. What you’re proposing is not impossible, but it’s too far into the realm of speculation for me to be comfortable presenting that as what happened.
I’m going to be obnoxious and throw out another issue: The so-called NPX-C5 models very clearly have a hood that slopes down to the front, ending well below the height of the fender tops. This would have been fine on a conventional RWD car with the engine set back in its usual position but absolutely would not have worked with that V4 and its air cleaner sitting out in front of the axle centerline. Yet the 1959 clay and all the obvious Cardinal clays have the high hood and extended front end to clear the engine. Again, it makes zero sense to create models that do not conform to the very obvious requirements of the program, as in the tall engine in front.
I’m going to say it one more time: the 1959 clay has all the key and necessary hardpoints in the front of the car to clear the engine, and looks very similar to the definitive Cardinal clays (and as built) including the bulging width below the beltline that makes the wheels look lost in their wheel wells. The so-called NPX-C5 models absolutely lack all these features. That’s a red flag for me. You’re suggesting a progression in the styling process that defies logic.
Even if those photos do represent the NPX-C5 as Köln wanted to build it — and I grant that its proportions are similar enough to the subsequent Opel Kadett A, a 1-liter RWD car developed with a similar design brief for the same market, to make that at least plausible — I don’t have (and was unable to find, despite my efforts) any conclusive evidence of: 1) when those photos were taken; 2) WHERE the photos were taken; and 3) whether the model depicted was designed in Köln or in Dearborn. Even granting the points you make about the width and the front end proportions, that does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that the design cues, like the beltline bead or the roofline, came from Ford-Werke. It’s possible that, for example, the scale model was created by Najjar’s office in late 1959-early 1960, after Andrews made his pitch for the NPX-C5 package, and represented an adaptation of the Cardinal design to suit the German-proposed RWD package rather than the other way around. I went through all of these arguments on Thursday and Friday, and it came down to what I felt I have reasonable evidence to support and what I don’t, a lot of which came down to the inability of Ford Archives to provide clarification and the frustratingly shaky reliability of Rosellen’s book in this area. (I can’t fathom how he made such a colossal error with regard to the timing of Iacocca’s trip to Germany; he’d clearly read Iacocca’s book, which he even quotes.)
I was wrong, the 17M P3 WAS designed in Köln by Dahlberg and Uwe Bahnsen. (I knew that they designed it, but I had been mistakenly assuming that it was in Dearborn rather than in Germany.)
There’s another point to add to my theory that these models were for the German NPX-5C and not the Cardinal: there’s a four door model. Given the very challenging need to keep the costs for the Cardinal below the Falcon, I cannot imagine that Dearborn was even contemplating an intrinsically more expensive four door sedan, yet I can certainly see why Cologne would, given the nature of the German market. And Ford Werke did create a 4-door 12M. But there’s nothing to suggest that Dearborn ever considered a 4-door sedan.
I came to exactly the opposite conclusion. The timing of the launch of the four-door (which arrived one year after the two-door sedan and about six months after the Kombi) to me strongly suggests that it was conceived in Dearborn before the Cardinal A cancellation. The German market at the time still had a fairly strong preference for two-door sedans: The Kadett A never offered a four-door version, nor did the outgoing RWD Taunus 12M, and while the 17M P2 did, it was fairly rare. My read is that the four-door was designed as an afterthought in the U.S. program. It’s clear the two-door sedan was the biggest priority both for the U.S. and for Germany, probably due in part to Dearborn’s fixation on minimizing wholesale price, but I find it more likely that Dearborn became uneasy about offering the U.S. Cardinal without a four-door sedan. If they had been able to get the cost of the basic two-door sedan where they wanted it, also offering a four-door version on top of that would likely not have been an issue. (The aggressive cost and weight reduction program for the Falcon also focused on the basic two-door version, but there was of course also a four-door sedan.) In any case, I don’t think it’s very likely that Ford-Werke came up with the four-door on their own. If anything, I think there’s some chance that Köln got it as a hand-me-down. Some U.S. production tooling was actually delivered to Louisville before the Cardinal A was cancelled, so it’s conceivable that Dearborn had already received some tooling for the four-door and offered it to Ford-Werke, since otherwise it was going to have to be stored or scrapped.
I see that as irrelevant because that four door model or clay very obviously is not an actual Cardinal for all the reasons already given.
I disagree insofar as I think where and when the model was photographed is quite relevant in establishing where it fits into the development timeline. It’s possible that your theory is correct; my point is that I do not have enough evidence to make me confident that the model is indeed the German NPX-C5, or, even if it is, that its exterior styling was done in Köln rather than Dearborn (as one does not necessarily presume the other).
As for the Monza, the 12M P4 coupe was at least a significant step in that direction. Styling is a subjective matter, of course, but I think the coupe at least qualified as “pleasant,” and it had better proportions than the sedan, which looked like a man wearing an off-the-rack suit a half-size too large. The TS package, which was standard on the coupe and optional on the sedan, had bucket seats and such — the second-to-last photo, the brochure image of the woman in the red-and-white interior — reflects the TS trim, which at least in photos compares well with the Corvair Monza. Additionally, while the sedan’s dorkiness index was perilously high, the Kombi won back some points for its sheer utility, which might have found a niche as a “captive import” along the lines of the U.S.-market Cortina or Opel Kadett.
At the end of page 1, I am as impressed as ever with the scholarship and writings of the great Aaron Severson. Thank you sir for your wonderful work.
So, the German Ford V4, the bank angle was chosen for its narrowness or because it would work well with a 60 degree V6, or both?
Both, plus greater growth potential. The 20-degree V-4 was narrower and lighter, and using a single common cylinder head made it cheaper as well, but there wouldn’t have been much room for further displacement increases, which would have limited its utility for other Ford products. I don’t know how early they decided to make the V-4 the standard German Ford engine, but that certainly became a consideration, since Ford-Werke were going to be building a big new engine plant with lots of capacity they would need to utilize.
You wrote under the picture of the Taunus TC: “This 1600L has the 1,593 cc (97.2 cu. in.) version, which for some unaccountable reason Ford-Werke advertised as 1,576 cc in Germany.” The 1,593 cc figure is the real displacement of the engine, but the 1,576 cc figure is the displacement according to the then German tax formula where bore and stroke were rounded down to half millimetres before calculation, pi/4 was rounded down to 0.78, and the result was rounded down to full cubic centimetres. You mention above the 12M P6 with 1,305 cc whose owner had to pay the tax for a car with less than 1,300 cc because the displacement was only 1,288 cc according to the tax formula.
Thank you so much for clarifying that! I had gathered that there was some kind of taxable displacement rule involved, but I couldn’t figure out what the actual mechanics were, and I had despaired of finding out. I changed that line in the text to “… which Ford-Werke advertised in West Germany as 1,576 cc, its taxable displacement under contemporary German tax rules.” I added a similar note in the main text about the 1,305 cc engine in the 12M 1300.
Minor typo on page 3: “Autobahn cruising still returned a respectable 25 mph (9.4 L/100 km); ”
Should be 25 mpg?
Oops, yes, that should be mpg. I’ve corrected the text.
Was the 60 hp figure for the OHC prototype design in NPX-C5 for the 1-litre or 1.2-litre and were larger units envisaged? Would have been interesting to compare it to Ford UK’s 1.0-1.6 Kent engine or even Glas’s similar 1.0-1.7-litre OHC.
Ford Germany should have probably sought earlier integration with Ford UK and had some form of Kadett-sized NPX-C5 developed from an Anglia-based car or shortened Cortina platform, preceding both the Escort as well as of all things the Hyundai Pony (that had some Mk2 Cortina mechanicals IIRC).
Basically similar to what occurred between Vauxhall and Opel with the Kadett and Viva but with the Mk1-Mk2 Cortina and a smaller Kadett/Anglia-sized pre-Escort model, yet with a degree of independence for Ford UK and Germany on their respective small-block fours though allowing for collaboration on a 60-degree V6.
The 20-degree (or 30-degree) V4 seems like it could have amounted to something as a 1.1-1.4 up to 1.5-1.77 engine, also question the apparent inability to develop a narrow-angle V6 as BMC from the mid-50s to early-60s were also developing a narrow-angle 1.1-2.0 V4 and related V6 design for both FWD & RWD applications.
Would it be correct to assume a hypothetical US-spec automatic would have also featured 2-speeds as on the Falcon if not later a 3-speed?
Besides Brazil if not the rest of South America, did Ford look at foisting the Cardinal / Taunus P4-P6 at other markets like South Africa and elsewhere outside of Europe (or even the Eastern Bloc & Soviets – the latter in context of what became the Lada)?
I anticipated that you would ask this question! The answer to the first is that the 60 PS figure was a test bed figure for the 1-liter engine. (I have not found any source with actual bore or stroke dimensions for either version.) This likely represented a higher state of tune than Ford-Werke would have contemplated for street use at that point. As for larger versions, I don’t know. It’s plausible, since it ultimately made more sense for Ford-Werke to have one engine family rather than two, but I don’t know what Jules Gutzeit may have specifically yproposed along those lines.
Well, Wilner Sundelson proposed in 1956–1957 that Ford of England should table the Anglia 105E in favor of a European Common Car in the Anglia class. Hennessy was not keen on that — he felt Ford Ltd. was finally on a roll in the UK, and what Sundelson was proposing meant pushing the Anglia replacement back to 1962–1963 — and Sundelson was not in a position to force the issue. (A big part of the rationale for establishing Ford of Europe was that Ford-International did not have the resources or authority to coordinate the British and German programs, and because they were in New York rather than Dearborn, they didn’t really have the ear of the U.S. board.)
Part of the problem was that at the time, the economics of joint production really didn’t favor things like common engine designs; it didn’t make sense for Ford of England to import engines from Germany or vice versa. (This is in contrast to the basic assumption of the Cardinal project, which was that Ford-U.S. could save enough money with cheaper German labor to offset the costs of international shipping and import duties.) That’s why the Transit ended up with the two different 60-degree engine families.
If, as I theorize in the sidebar, Bond’s description of the narrow-angle engine is a reasonable reflection of its final form, it was to be 1,506 cc and 1,768 cc. My tentative guess is that the latter was probably pretty much the practical limit for production, given the block dimensions. As for a V-6 version, it is of course possible to do a narrow-angle V-6, as Volkswagen did later, but it would have presented new complications in engine balance, firing order, etc., with which Ford had little to no experience. A 60-degree V-6 was more expedient, since adding two more cylinders to the block actually alleviated some of the V-4’s balance problems and allowed the deletion of the balance shaft. (One may note that BMC did not actually move forward with its narrow-angle vee engines!)
Mechanix Illustrated predicted that Ford would scale down the Falcon two-speed to fit, which I think is plausible, since both space and power consumption would have been central priorities. I haven’t seen any confirmation of that, but I think a two-speed was far more likely, yes.
I doubt it. The V-4 and FWD power pack would probably have been nonstarters for the Warsaw Pact countries (too complicated, too inherently expensive). If the Cardinal tooling had ended up in South America, I have a suspicion (which I must emphasize is just a surmise, not based on any evidence of tangible plans) that it might have ended up adapted for a FR powertrain à la Triumph Toledo. As far as I know, there were no plans to do that with the Taunus P4 or P6, although of course the tooling for the P4 and P6 was actually used, and presumably amortized, in production of over 1.3 million cars, whereas the Brazilian idea was driven by wanting to do something with the Cardinal A body tooling, which Ford Division had bought and then put in storage.
What could Ford have done to remedy the reputation of the 60-degree V4 engines that have seen infamously panned for sounding rough amongst other things?
Concerning BMC’s narrow-angle efforts, have read reasons for remaining stillborn ranging from being too much of a radical departure, cost of a new factory / tooling, being Leonard Lord’s overambitious pet project that was canned when Harriman took over, apparent inability for transverse FWD installation (only inline Triumph 1300-style), weight/baulk and Syd Enever disliking the exhaust note of the V4.
I doubt Ford Brazil would have converted the Cardinal to a FR layout, they had little problem taking on Willys Overland’s Renault 12-based Project M and producing it as the Corcel.
That is not to say there would be modifications along the way for a Brazilian built Cardinal although do not know how capable the Taunus V4 / Cologne V6 likely was in being converted to run on Ethanol, nor if the platform could have been adapted to take on inline-fours. At least it would have made the South American Maverick a possible recipient of the Cologne V6.
The problem with the Cardinal is that it was expensive (the quill shaft and CV joints, even only outboard, saw to that) and had little opportunity for commonality with other models not derived from it. It could not use an inline-four without abandoning FWD, although a new floorpan to accommodate a driveshaft tunnel for a propeller shaft and Hotchkiss drive might well have been cheaper than either setting up additional V-4 production or buying engines from Germany.
Probably nothing much. The Taunus and Essex V-4s had even firing intervals and a balance shaft to sort the primary imbalance. With a 60-degree bank angle, it was always going to sound a bit odd, and there was nothing to be done about the secondary imbalance except to soften the powertrain mounts (which also meant abandoning the misguided “ponypak” concept) and add more sound insulation so occupants wouldn’t feel it or hear it as much. It was just a weird layout for a four, sacrificing smoothness for packaging. (The Pinto inline-four that eventually replaced the V-4 wasn’t a notably smooth or quiet engine either, even if it was more orthodox.)
It can be said the Cardinal was an expensive blind alley. One that drifted away from being a mass-produced American Lancia Fulvia with Consul Corsair like styling (as seen on what was claimed to be a Cardinal sketch against what entered production), to being a project that undermined not only Ford Germany’s NPX-C5 but in some ways delayed a more organic integration of Ford’s UK and German divisions with the imposition to develop separate related V4/V6 engines.
Both European divisions (and later North America) did benefit from developing V6s, however the V4s were an unnecessary distraction and in Ford UK’s case held them back from exploring alternatives such as developing a production Crossflow AX Block type engine to cover the 1600/1700-2000cc range like the Pinto did (in place of the Essex V4) or an expedient inline-six from Crossflow AX Block type engine as a replacement for the 1951-1966 Consul 4-cylinder/Zephyr 6-cylinder.
Cars like Ford UK’s Consul Corsair and others could have probably merited more success had they not been lumbered with the V4s.
The 60-degree V4s just seem like something that would have been better suited for non-Western markets where it could have a long production life, which would have allowed Taunus and Essex V4s to possibly benefit from developments seen on the Cologne and Essex V6s.
As I understand it, the primary reason the Essex V-4 came to exist was to facilitate the UK version of the Mk1 Transit, which was an extremely successful, segment-dominating product. I would agree that Ford of England’s passenger car applications for the engine (like the V-4 Corsair) were awfully eccentric, but I very much doubt Ford Ltd. felt the Transit was “an unnecessary distraction,” and Ford-Werke didn’t either.
This is I think backwards. The assumption here is that integrating Ford of England and Ford of Germany was an organic trend that had to be artificially restrained when it was really more the other way around: As with GM divisions in the U.S., there were many organic factors (not least among them inertia) that made their continued separation and opposition seem natural and logical. For instance, any theoretical advantage of sharing the same engines tended to be overshadowed by the need for multiple engine production lines in different, geographically separated plants, with the added issue of import duties when the UK was not yet part of the EEC.
The point is that these decisions were driven much more by manufacturing logistics than by product choices, and hyperfocusing on the latter to the exclusion of the former will usually lead to specious conclusions.
This was probably true. The fundamental problem as I see it is that Dearborn ended up strong-arming Ford-Werke into applying the fifties English Ford strategy in reverse. Ford Ltd. had had fair success with the Popular strategy, continuing a stripped-down version of an outgoing model as a price leader alternative to the newer, redesigned model. (They had for a while expected to do that with the Anglia 105E as well.) Dearborn was so fixated on price minimization for the Cardinal that they essentially started from that point, and Ford-Werke then had to work backward to recreate a less-crude, less-stripped-down iteration of that. Inasmuch as the Cardinal was a technologically ambitious project, it was also at root a relatively costly D-segment (or C-D) car that Ford tried to position as a C-segment competitor through de-contenting.
It is the strong-arm tactics of Dearborn as well as its quick divestment and pawning off of the Cardinal to an unenthusiastic Ford Germany, along with its interference (including in regard to Ford UK) that one finds irritating in hindsight.
To make a better case for selling a Cardinal size car in North America, should they have instead looked to South America to help atomise costs (via an earlier expansion of Ford Brasil) instead of West Germany?
Or should Cardinal have instead been envisaged more of an Americas only less technically ambitious scaled-down Falcon meets Mk1/Mk2 Cortina & Consul Corsair, with an engine resembling a sort of Thriftpower Four (like a Ford analogue of the Chevy 153) meets big block Kent-based Crossflow (some 20 years before the Australians collaborated with Honda on developing an aluminium Crossflow-head)?
The Polish-built Ford Falcon influenced FSO Warszawa 210 prototype for example before it was abandoned in favour of an agreement with Fiat to built the Polski Fiat 125p, was planned to use a Falcon Six inspired 4/6-cylinder engine with the 4-cylinder option showing a simpler path Ford could have taken. The same goes for the Viva HB-derived 2nd gen Holden Torana’s use of SWB and LWB versions for its 4/6-cylinder engines as something a simpler Cardinal sized car could have emulated.
The usage of high-pressure die-cast aluminium (leaving aside cost) does raise an interesting question as to anticipated weight reduction over the existing cast iron block of the Taunus V4 / Cologne V6. Could the V6 have been light enough to be viewed as a better alternative for the Ro80 by owners seeking to replace their rotary engines and reluctant to use the V4?
Were there other ways the Cologne V6 could have evolved which would have potentially negated the need to develop the Vulcan V6 depending what the differences in size and weight were? The UK Essex V6 using aluminium block was seemingly out of the question as it was designed to sire an unproduced diesel variant.
I can’t see Ford-U.S. being especially keen about relying on South American production in the early sixties, due mainly to concerns about political stability. Argentina from the Peron era forward is a case in point; even before the Dirty War, different governments’ expectations of foreign businesses kept shifting, and even if there were changes foreign automakers found favorable, there was no guarantee that they would last. Ford also had a particular terror of nationalization. (Beyond the risk of losing a local subsidiary, they were concerned about what that would mean for the Ford brand.)
On the flip side, there wouldn’t have been a lot of upside. I think there’s a case to be made that the Cardinal project was Dearborn’s way of talking itself into making the investments in Ford-Werke that they’d really needed to make for a while. (This is essentially Steven Tolliday’s argument, although I don’t agree with all of his points.) Ford were missing out a lot of the growth in the German market, and they understood that if Ford-Werke wasn’t prepared to build its presence in the Common Market, they were going to be leaving even more money on the table. However, Ford finance people, and McNamara, were exceptionally conservative; even in the U.S., they had a reflexive tendency to foot-dragging on any kind of significant capital investment, and they were very risk-adverse. This led Dearborn to virtually starve Ford-Werke for over a decade: Cologne was shaky because it needed more resources, but for the most part it didn’t get those resources because it was shaky, which made it a risk. Through 1959, Dearborn’s better idea for increasing German capacity was to find another automaker for Ford-Werke to merge with, so Ford could get additional capacity through some kind of stock swap rather than having to put up a lot of cash.
With the Cardinal, Dearborn, and in particular McNamara, essentially came up with a U.S. program that would force the issue: It would have a new powertrain and a new type of powertrain that would require a new engine plant, which it made more financial sense to built in West Germany — not, strictly speaking, for the benefit of Ford-Werke, but for the benefit of Ford-U.S., to meet a pressing domestic need. To make the European part of the program pay, they needed more space to build it, which meant biting the bullet and finally building an additional Ford-Werke plant rather than waiting in vain for a merger partner. If the program had been different, if it had been something it would have only made sense to build in the U.S. (such as, as you suggest, a scaled-down Falcon with a four-cylinder version of the Falcon six), or if it had just been the RWD NPX-C5 Cologne wanted, there would have been no rationale for the rest, which the company ultimately needed more than they needed a cut-down Falcon.
I don’t know that anyone in Ford management necessarily articulated it that way — probably not — but that’s what it came down to: using anticipated or putative U.S. need to rationalize major improvements in European capacity. The way Dearborn handled it was extremely heavy-handed and in the short term made Andrews, Layton, and company very unhappy, but it got Ford-Werke the new engine plant and the factory in Genk, which they probably wouldn’t have gotten otherwise, at least not in anything like the same timeframe. Without those plants, they could still have produced their RWD P4, but probably at closer to the volume of the earlier 12M, which was usually mediocre. The FWD P4 sold more cars in four years than the earlier 12M and 15M had managed in ten, in large part because Ford-Werke now had the capacity to build that many. That the U.S. Cardinal was canceled ended up being a minor point, because by the time it was canceled, the new engine plant was about done and Ford-Werke had already bought the land in Genk, so the wheels were in motion for that expansion.
Like I said the other day, this whole weird mess, like a great many automotive topics, has to be understood in terms of production logistics rather than product engineering.
Ludvigsen’s account suggests that for the Taunus V-4, an aluminum block would have saved around 30 lb. I don’t know that they gave any serious consideration to aluminum heads, which would have saved a bit more. The iron 1.5-liter V-4 was 265–270 lb dry, which would suggest a dry weight of maybe 240 lb with just an aluminum block, perhaps 225 lb with aluminum heads.
I really don’t know, but obviously that wasn’t any kind of development objective for either Ford-Werke or NSU.
The need for the Vulcan V-6 had much more to do with — once again — production logistics than with engine design. With the introduction of the Taurus/Sable, Ford needed a lot more V-6 engines. The 2.8/2.9-liter Cologne V-6 was already being heavily used in North American trucks and SUVs as well as the bigger European Ford cars and Transit, and the subsequent 4.0-liter version would be needed in truly staggering numbers for the U.S. Ford Explorer. (Cologne built 3.94 million 4.0-liter pushrod V-6s in 12 years, where total production of ALL the smaller Cologne V-6s was 5.55 million in 34 years.) So, they needed an engine they could build domestically in sufficient numbers to power a big chunk of Taurus/Sable production (which was a lot), and that could also replace the Cologne engine in U.S. trucks and vans to start freeing up capacity in Cologne for the 4.0-liter engine. Any design considerations for the Vulcan were at best secondary.
Thanks for the enlightening responses. It is interesting to compare Ford’s approach to its European divisions vs General Motors, where they were at one time thinking of cutting their losses with Opel before deciding to invest massively and Opel over time capitalising on Vauxhall’s misfortune (and the decline/cost of Bedford as GM Europe’s commercial division).
Touching upon Ford SAF for a second, did the stillborn Dearborn designed pre-war French market version of the Taunus differ significantly from its German and UK counterparts?
Depending on Ford SAF’s approach to a post-war Taunus-esque model and prospects for success relative to the 12CV Vedette, they would have likely carried French tax horsepower ratings of 5CV (933), 7CV (1172) and 9CV (1498 aka Taunus 15M – planned for G93A in SV form).
Probably not. The British and German 933 cc and 1,172 cc engines were, to the best of my understanding, basically the same design, probably differing in minor details to suit different local manufacture and supply requirements, and I have no reason to think the French version would have been very different. (The 15M 1.5-liter engine was not related to the older 8HP/5 CV or 10HP/7CV engines; the 1.5-liter four was an oversquare OHV postwar design, whereas the others were thirties-vintage sidevalve fours.)
This is essentially the object of the Tolliday paper I mentioned, which is entitled “Transplanting the American Model? US Automobile Companies and the Transfer of Technology and Management to Britain, France, and Germany, 1928–1962,” Chapter 3 of a book called Americanization and Its Limits: Reworking US Technology and Management in Post-War Europe and Japan (Oxford University Press, 2000). (Tolliday is a professor at the University of Leeds.) I’m not persuaded by all of his arguments, and he makes some unfortunate factual blunders — for instance, he mistakenly conflates the revived Buckel-Taunus with the facelifted versions of the 1952-vintage 12M/15M — but he makes some important points, and I would recommend that chapter.
Quite a few years ago I read something, quite possibly in CAR magazine, to the effect that “that nail of a V-4 has been sent back to the Transit range whence it came.”
I gather that the Essex V-4’s level of NVH was acceptable in a van and was acceptable in a passenger car–until it wasn’t.
The Essex V-4 differed in various respects from the Taunus V-4, in particular in that it had crossflow heads with Heron-type (bowl-in-piston) combustion chambers. This provided better breathing and had some advantages in terms of emissions, but even Ford admitted that it made for harsher combustion, especially at low speeds, to which was added the inherent secondary imbalance and odd engine note that came with the 60-degree V-4 layout. (Of course, the OHC Pinto I-4 was not a particularly smooth or sweet engine either, nor was the subsequent CVH engine, which was notoriously harsh and thrashy.) Ford made things harder on itself by using the V-4 in models like the Corsair, which was sort of notionally aimed at the more upscale 2-liter Rover P6 and Triumph 2000, near-luxury cars that (especially in the case of the Triumph) were notably more refined.