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).
Two decades before the American-market Escort, Tempo, and Taurus, Ford Motor Company very nearly offered a U.S.-market front-wheel-drive subcompact, codenamed Cardinal. Although Lee Iacocca killed the U.S. version at the last minute, the Cardinal went into production in West Germany as the 1962–1970 Ford Taunus 12M P4 and 12M/15M P6 (codenamed Prelate). In this installment of Ate Up With Motor, we trace the convoluted saga of the Cardinal project, the evolution of the P4 and P6, and how they fit into Ford’s changing strategy in postwar Europe.
![1964–1966 Ford Taunus 12M coupe taillight and decklid badges](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1964_Ford_Taunus-12M-coupe-BW_tail-badge_FMC-ArchivNr-N-01062-P4-hinten.jpg)
Ford vs. the World
Whenever the Ford Cardinal project is discussed, there is a tendency to present it as an early prototype of the “world car” efforts Ford Motor Company attempted in more recent years, like the Mk1 Fiesta, the Mk3 Escort, and the Mk1 Mondeo/Contour/Mystique. However, Henry Ford I would certainly have argued that Ford had already had its most successful world car in form of the Model T, which was exported around the globe even before the First World War, accompanied from 1918 by the Model TT truck. They were not always sold in vast numbers (even the humble Tin Lizzy was still an enormously expensive purchase by many standards), but they were successful enough to make Ford cars and trucks ubiquitous even in unlikely places. Moreover, the American company’s investment in its overseas sales affiliates was generally very modest, making the export business extremely profitable.
![1915 Ford Model T roadster front 3q (black) with yellow Model T Club Long Beach decal on the body side behind the door](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1915_Ford_Model-T-roadster_front3q.jpg)
The Model T Ford was once a common sight around the world. The author had the opportunity to ride in (but not to drive!) this well-preserved 1915 roadster. (author photo)
Much to Henry’s irritation, this couldn’t — and didn’t — go on indefinitely. By the twenties, high tariffs and local vehicle taxes based on displacement (or at least cylinder bore area) had begun to limit the export potential of the Model T and Model TT. The Model A Ford, launched in 1928, didn’t fare nearly as well as the T overseas, faced with a new array of smaller British and European rivals that were less burdened by tariffs and import duties, and often much cheaper in road tax terms. In the UK, for instance, the standard 200 cu. in. (3,285 cc) four in the Model A had a daunting 24 HP taxable horsepower rating, which carried three times the annual tax of an Austin 7. Ford responded by offering a Model AF, with a de-bored 125 cu. in. (2,042 cc) engine, but even that had a fairly hefty 14.9 HP rating.
![1930 Ford Model AF Tudor sedan front 3q (Copra Drab over Chicle Drab with Straw yellow wheels)](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1930_Ford_AF-sedan-green_front_Stahlkocher-CCBYSA30.jpg)
This Ford Tudor sedan (which we believe is a 1930 car) is a Model AF: The four-cylinder engine is de-bored from 3.88 inches (98.4 mm) to 3.05 inches (77.6 mm), giving a displacement of 124.6 cu. in. (2,042 cc). Although the engine’s taxable horsepower rating was 14.9 HP, its developed output was actually 28 hp (20.9 kW), against 40 hp (29.9 kW) for the Model A. The latter was also available concurrently, and actually cost £5 less to buy, although it was much costlier to own. (Photo: “Ford AF Sedan green vrd.jpg” by Stahlkocher, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) license)
By the early thirties, a growing international trend toward protectionist import policies forced a gradual shift from importation to local assembly or local manufacture (which should be understood as a spectrum encompassing many possible gradations of local industrial involvement), initially concentrated in Ford subsidiaries in England, Germany, and France. This provided some relief from tariffs and duties, but Ford still struggled with restrictive trade policies, and local assembly involved much greater investment, and thus greater financial risk. Worse, as long as the local affiliates were still making the same products as the U.S. parent, they were effectively competing with Ford’s U.S. factories (which could achieve substantially lower unit costs through greater economies of scale), and the products still weren’t ideal for local markets.
In 1932, Ford introduced its first car designed specifically for overseas sales: the 8 HP four-cylinder Model Y, later called Ford Popular in the UK. Although initially built exclusively in the English Ford factory in Dagenham (Ford Motor Company Limited, which we’ll abbreviate Ford Ltd.) and intended specifically for European consumption, it was designed at Ford headquarters back in Dearborn, Michigan, with scant input from the English affiliate that was to make and sell it. Still, the Model Y and subsequent Model C (10 HP De Luxe) seemed a step in the right direction, being both cheaper and less expensive to run than either the Model A or the new V-8 cars, whose displacement and thirst made them specialty items outside North America.
![1934 Ford Model Y Tudor sedan (green with black fenders and white wheels) front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1934_Ford_Model-Y-Tudor-green_front3q_Steve-Glover-CCBY20.jpg)
The Ford Model Y was the first Ford car designed specifically for European markets, powered by a 933 cc (56.9 cu. in.) L-head four. Despite its 8 HP British taxable horsepower rating, it actually produced about 22 hp (16.4 kW). While the sign indicates that the pictured car is for sale, please note that the photo is from August 2012 — we doubt it’s still on the market! (Photo: “Ford Model Y 2 Door Tudor (1934)” by Steve Glover, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) license)
U.S. Ford officials remained very reluctant to allow its local affiliates much control over the product, and Dearborn ceased development of the Model Y in 1934. Nonetheless, Dagenham was able to cut costs enough to steadily lower the British price of the 8 HP Ford Popular, which fell to just £100 by late 1935, more than 15 percent less than at launch.
![1937 Ford Popular sedan (black with red wheels and pinstripe) front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1937_Ford_Popular-black_front3q_Steve-Glover-CCBY20.jpg)
In the UK, the Model Y was renamed Ford Popular for 1935, and soon lived up to its name, thanks mostly to aggressive price cuts. At launch, the Model Y had cost £120, but in October 1935, Ford Ltd. announced that it would be offered for as little as £100 (then the equivalent of $493 USD), the lowest price in its class. This was not reflected in export markets, where tariffs and import restrictions sometimes made the Model Y much more expensive than it was in Britain. The price wasn’t sustainable in the UK either, but it was a very effective strategy for building Ford’s British market share. (Photo: “Ford Model Y Tudor ‘Popular’ (1937)” by Steve Glover, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) license)
Emboldened by this success, Ford Ltd. developed its own redesigns for the Popular and De Luxe, a liberty that so outraged Ford production chief Charlie Sorensen that he threw a fit at Ford Ltd. purchasing manager Patrick Hennessy, who had drawn the perilous assignment of taking the models of the proposed cars to Dearborn for post facto approval. Sorensen relented after examining the models more thoroughly, and he praised them to Edsel Ford the following day, leading to their approval for a fall 1937 introduction, but Dagenham was reminded in no uncertain terms that designing cars was not their job.
![1938 Ford 10 HP De Luxe (7W) Fordor saloon (black) front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1938_Ford_7WTen-black_front3q_Steve-Glover-CCBY20.jpg)
The 1938 8 HP and 10 HP cars were the first English Ford models in whose design Dagenham played a significant role. This “Fordor” saloon is a 1938 Ford 7W, which had an 1,172 cc (71.5 cu. in.) L-head four, rated at 10 HP, but actually developing 30 hp (22.4 kW). (Photo: “Ford 7W Ten (1938)” by Steve Glover, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) license)
Despite its British success, the Model Y again ran into trade restrictions that limited its European export potential. Ford Ltd. exported the Popular, but in many markets, it cost almost as much as the far more powerful V-8 cars, which made it a poor value. It was a commercial disappointment in France (where it was subject to import duty) and in Canada (where high shipping costs raised prices to uncompetitive levels even though Canada imposed no import duties on British cars). In Germany, the Nazi government’s protectionist policies soon led Ford to develop a locally manufactured version of the Model Y for its German affiliate, Ford AG (known from July 1939 as Ford-Werke AG), beginning in 1933. This was dubbed Ford Köln (Cologne), named for the location of the Ford AG works in North Rhine-Westphalia. In 1935, the Köln was succeeded by the four-cylinder Eifel, supplemented by German-made V-8 cars. The Eifel in turn was replaced in 1939 by the somewhat larger four-cylinder Taunus.
![1938 Ford Eifel sedan (black over white two-tone) front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1938_Ford_Eifel_limousine-black-over-white_Berthold-Werner-CCBY30.jpg)
Although it looks like a 1937 U.S. Ford that shrank in the wash, the German Ford Eifel was based on the 10 HP English Ford De Luxe/Model C, albeit manufactured entirely in Germany in concession to Nazi trade restrictions and nationalist prejudice against products not certified as “Deutsches Erzeugnis” (German-made). The Eifel thus survived in mildly updated form for several years after Ford Ltd. replaced the Model C with the newer 7W seen above. By 1938, its 1,172 cc (71.5 cu. in.) L-head four claimed 34 PS DIN (25 kW), giving a top speed of about 56 mph (90 km/h). The two-door sedan was priced at about RM 2,590. Production ended in 1939. (Photo: “Ford Eifel BW 2011-09-03 14-30-57.JPG” by Berthold Werner, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) license)
Although the prewar German Ford models weren’t offered in the U.S. or Canada, the German affiliate did export them to certain other European markets before the war, which kicked off an uneasy competition between Ford’s British and German affiliates that would not be resolved until the seventies. It might have even worse — Dearborn also developed a version of the Taunus for the French Ford affiliate, Ford SAF, but war broke out before production could begin. (The unused tooling was written off in December 1945 and scrapped.)
![1940 Ford Taunus G93A sedan (white) side](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1940_Ford_Taunus-G93A-white_Alex-Panoiu-CCBY20-AScrop.jpg)
Introduced in June 1939, the first Ford Taunus (known by the chassis code G93A) used the same engine as the outgoing Eifel, but was 3.2 inches (80 mm) longer overall on a 4-inch (101-mm) longer wheelbase, and somewhat more expensive, starting at RM 2,870. It quickly earned the nickname “Buckel-Taunus” (“Buckel” meaning “Hunchback”), for obvious reasons. (Photo: “Ford Taunus G93A (AP4M1874)” by Alexandru Panoiu, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) license; this version was modified (recropped) and resized 2024 by Aaron Severson, and is licensed under the same CC BY 2.0 license as the original photo)
This situation was far from ideal, particularly in view of the modest production volumes involved. The best prewar years for Ford Ltd., 1936 and 1937, yielded total car and truck production of 94,180 and 94,165 units respectively. Ford AG peaked in 1938 and 1939, at a mere 36,582 and 35,364 units respectively. Ford SAF, which as yet had no really unique products, peaked in 1937 at just 13,849 units.
At such levels, it made some financial sense for Ford to develop a European-specific model or set of related models (which was the plan when the Model Y was first designed), but tooling for separate production of three would have been painful even if they weren’t destined to compete against each other in export markets. Of course, this was a political problem rather than an engineering one, but the main alternative would have been for Ford to essentially concede certain markets to local rivals, something Dearborn was loath to consider. (That was Ford’s ostensible rationale for remaining in Nazi Germany, although Henry Ford was also either willfully oblivious to or tacitly supportive of the hateful trajectory and martial ambitions of the Third Reich. Even after the U.S. and Germany officially became enemies, the Nazis saw no problem in retaining existing Ford-Werke managing director Robert H. Schmidt and chairman Heinrich F. Albert, who also became wartime administrators of Ford plants in occupied France and Belgium while using forced labor in Cologne to manufacture trucks and other equipment for the Wehrmacht.)
Ford Faces the Postwar Markets
Ford’s new postwar administration faced a similar dilemma when civilian production resumed following the end of the war, although it took several years for a new postwar order to emerge.
The French affiliate was the first of the European Ford factories to offer an all-new postwar product, from autumn 1948, but Ford SAF managing director Maurice Dollfus had made the wrong bet, abandoning the Taunus-based car Dearborn had developed before the war in favor of the Ford Vedette, plucked from the wreck of an abortive U.S. Light Car program and fitted with a 2,158 cc (131.7 cu. in.) L-head V-8, the metricized V8-60 engine from the prewar Matford line. The Vedette was much too rich for postwar France, and Ford SAF annual production never again topped 24,000 units. By the early fifties, Ford’s French business was so obviously terminal that getting the Poissy operation sufficiently tidied up to prepare it for sale to Simca (concluded in November 1954) seemed a heroic feat, a kind of financial Miracle of Dunkirk.
![Early (1948–1952) Ford Vedette Berlina (white) front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1949–1951_Ford_Vette-Berlina-white_front3q_Patrice-CALATAYU-CCBYSA20.jpg)
Stretching 177.2 inches (4,500 mm) on a 105.9-inch (2,690-mm) wheelbase, the Ford Vedette was a large car by postwar European standards — it was 4.7 inches (120 mm) wider than the German Ford Taunus — but what made it a hard sell for many European buyers was its 2,158 cc (131.7 cu. in.) V-8 engine, which had 60 hp (44.7 kW), but was thirsty and expensive to run. (In France, it carried a taxable horsepower rating of 12 CV.) Ford SAF director Maurice Dollfus had hoped, vainly, to make it a sort of French Buick — note the portholes on the front fenders. (Photo: “Ford Vedette” by Patrice CALATAYU, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) license)
Ford’s German affiliate in this period was a commercial threat only to itself. Although the plant in Cologne was largely undamaged during the war, throughout the late forties, Dearborn considered the situation in Germany too unstable to be worth making any substantial investments in Ford-Werke. Even as West Germany began its dramatic postwar recovery, Ford-Werke floundered. Production at Cologne passed its prewar peak after the introduction of the first postwar Taunus in 1952 and continued to grow, but Ford-Werke market share actually shrank, and Ford’s U.S. management remained reluctant to offer the kind of assistance GM was providing Opel. This left Ford-Werke in what very nearly became a death spiral: Demand for new cars was generally strong, but Cologne didn’t have the capacity to keep up, and Dearborn decreed in 1950 that any expansion would have to financed from the German affiliate’s own earnings, such as they were. It wasn’t until 1954 that U.S. officials decided Ford-Werke warranted any substantial investment, and even then only at a very modest level.
![1950 German ad for the Ford Taunus, showing a stylized red Taunus sedan and the headline "Autofahren ist kein Luxus, aber immer ein Vergnügen mit dem TAUNUS"](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1950_Ford_Taunus_German-ad_rauter25-CCBYSA20.jpg)
Postwar production in Cologne initially focused on trucks, but Ford-Werke resumed production of the prewar Taunus (now identified by the chassis code G73A) in November 1948. The headline of this 1950 ad — whose angle underscores how much the Taunus resembles a 1939 American Ford — translates as “Driving is not a luxury, but always a pleasure with the Taunus.” (Image: “Buckel-Taunus”, scanned by rauter25, who has made it available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) license)
Ford Ltd. in Dagenham was in much better shape. Until the mid-fifties, the British domestic market was still tightly constrained by public policy, but Ford Ltd. had strong market share, and its production facilities were far more modern than those of Ford-Werke or most British rivals. Through the end of the 1949, Ford Ltd. had actually owned significant stakes in many other Ford international affiliates (including minority interests in Ford-Werke and Ford SAF), but in January 1950, Ford-U.S. bought out most of those shares for about £4.3 million (about $12 million), giving Dagenham an additional infusion of cash to expand its engineering facilities. While Dagenham didn’t yet have the resources to take over all aspects of engineering development, Patrick Hennessy (Sir Patrick, as he’d been knighted in 1941), now managing director, convinced Ford’s new U.S. management in Dearborn to allow the English operation more control over the design of its products.
![1952 Ford Taunus 12M G13 limousine (light blue) front](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1952-1955_Ford-12M-G13-blue_front_MartinHansV-PD.jpg)
The 1952 German Ford Taunus 12M (chassis code G13) was still powered by a 1,172 cc (71.5 cu. in.) L-head engine, although it now offered 38 PS DIN (27.9 kW), good for about 70 mph (112 km/h). In other respects, the 12M was all-new, with unitized construction, independent front suspension, and modern styling that looked like the illegitimate offspring of a 1952 U.S. Ford and a 1950 Studebaker. Its West German price in 1952 started at DM 7,350. (Photo: “MHV Ford Taunus G13 03.jpg” by MartinHansV; which was released into the public domain by the copyright holder)
Still, even Dagenham remained a rather stubby tail wagging a very large dog. In 1957, for instance, when Ford-U.S. and Ford Ltd. each achieved its second-highest total production output to date, the U.S. factories still outmatched Dagenham by more than seven to one. Ford-Werke production, meanwhile, was still shy of 100,000 units a year. In this light, it’s not surprising that when it came to product development, both Ford Ltd. and Ford-Werke wanted things Dearborn was not prepared to authorize.
![1952 Ford Taunus 12M G13 (blue with white roof) side](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1952_Ford_Taunus-12M-blue_side_Martin-Vaehning-CCBYND20.jpg)
To American eyes, the 1952 German Ford Taunus 12M still looks like a little car, which makes it that much more important to understand that, with an overall length of 159.8 inches (4,060 mm) on a 98-inch (2,489-mm) wheelbase, it was almost a foot and a half (450 mm) longer than the popular Renault 4CV. (Photo: “1952 Ford Taunus 12m Lingen 15.05.2010” by Martin Vähning, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0) license)
Toward the top of that list was an all-new smaller car that could compete with European C-segment models. Hennessy had been asking for such a thing since becoming managing director in 1948; the lack of such a car had been the death knell for Ford SAF, and by the latter half of the fifties Ford-Werke was approaching a similar crisis point. Nonetheless, the answer from Dearborn had always been no. Just as a smaller car wasn’t necessarily cheaper to build than a larger model, it wasn’t any cheaper to design and develop, and Ford management was not sanguine about the likely return on investment, particularly since it would mean trying to carve out a piece of an established market segment where Ford had little presence.
!["F K" emblem on the right front fender of a gray 1952–1955 Ford Taunus 12M (G13) sedan](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1952-1955_Ford_Taunus-12M_F-K-badge_Andrew-Bone-CCBY20.jpg)
The double-oval badges on the fenders and tail of this German Ford Taunus 12M read “F K” (for “Ford-Werke Köln”), with the phrase “Ein Produkt Der Fordwerke AG Köln” etched on the border. In 1955, Ford-Werke tried and failed to register this emblem as a trademark in the UK, which may have had something to do with its subsequent abandonment. By the late fifties, the Ford name was greatly deemphasized in the badging of Ford-Werke models in favor of “Taunus” identification. (Photo: “Ford Taunus 12M Ford-Koln badge detail” by Andrew Bone, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) license)
The English Ford price leader in this era was the Ford Popular 103E, which was essentially a stripped-down, value-priced continuation of the prewar Anglia, and hardly competitive with modern European C-segment cars. Ford-Werke had to make do with the 1952-vintage Taunus 12M, which was still relatively modern, but cost over 50 percent more than a basic Volkswagen 1200, without the advantage of Volkswagen assembly quality.
![1955 Ford Popular 103E saloon (gray) front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1955_Ford_Popular-103E-grey_front3q_Graham-Robertson-CCBY20.jpg)
When the English Ford Anglia and Prefect were updated in late 1953, Ford Ltd. promptly stripped the old Anglia E494A of every nonessential, fitted it with the 1,172 cc (71.5 cu. in.) engine from the outgoing Prefect E493A, and revived the Ford Popular name. The Popular 103E, offered through August 1959, was antiquated but cheap: You could have two of them for less than the price of a single six-cylinder Ford Zephyr Zodiac, giving you a medium-size if very basic four-cylinder saloon capable of 60 mph (97 km/h) and about 30 miles per U.S. gallon (7.8 L/100 km). (Photo: “1955 Ford Popular 103E” by Graham Robertson, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) license)
Dream Cars, Falcons, and the Treaty of Rome
By 1956, Dearborn’s resistance was beginning to soften. It was becoming clear that free trade agreements would soon reshape European markets — the Treaty of Rome, which established the foundations of the European Economic Community (EEC), would be signed on March 25, 1957 — which meant that the rapid growth in Renault and Volkswagen sales could no longer be overlooked. In December 1956, J. Wilner Sundelson of Ford’s international division broached the idea that Ford Ltd. should develop a new pan-European light car rather than its then-forthcoming Anglia replacement.
![August 1953 aerial B&W aerial photograph of the Ford-Werke plant on the Rhine River](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1953_Ford-Werke_plant_aerial-photo_Bundesarchiv-Bild-195-0811-CCBYSA30DE.jpg)
The cornerstone for the Ford-Werke factory in Cologne-Niehl, on the bank of the Rhine, was laid on 2 October 1930. By the early fifties, the plant still remained relatively small, as shown in this aerial photograph, dated 1 August 1953. The original photo captions in the Federal German Archive read “Rheinbefliegung der Alliierten 1953; Ford-Werke in Köln-Niehl”. (Photo: “Rheinbefliegung, Köln-Niehl – Köln-Merkenich”, Bundesarchiv, Bild 195-0811 / CC BY-SA 3.0
While Dagenham was still in a much stronger position in terms of production, resources, and capital investment, the dawn of the EEC also appears to have laid to rest any serious doubts about the future of Ford-Werke. Ford’s German subsidiary had a long way to go, but West Germany was a signatory to the Treaty of Rome, while the UK was not. In August 1957, Ford began pumping significant amounts of capital into Ford-Werke, launching a major program to expand its production facilities, including preparations for a new engine plant in Cologne-Niehl.
Throughout 1957, Ford executives in the U.S., like their counterparts at GM, also became increasingly preoccupied with the growth of imported car sales, which coincided with a recessionary economy and a substantial downturn in U.S. new car sales. (Ford Division sales for the 1958 model year tumbled 41 percent from 1957.) These trends gave new momentum to the idea of a domestic “light car,” something with which Ford had been flirting on and off for over a decade.
![Globe-like Taunus emblem on the nose of a gray 1955–1958 Ford Taunus 15M (G4B) sedan](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1955-1958_Ford_Taunus-15M_Taunus-ornament_Andrew-Bone-CCBY20.jpg)
Perhaps the most extravagant detail of the fifties Taunus 12M and 15M is this intricate nose emblem. Despite the globe theme, these weren’t exactly world cars, although they were sold in some export markets outside West Germany. (Photo: “Ford Taunus 15M front badge detail” by Andrew Bone, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) license)
That spring, Ford management solicited engineering proposals from Ford advanced design in Dearborn and advanced engineers in Dagenham and Cologne for a compact or subcompact “dream car” to take on European small car rivals. These were strictly paper proposals (although the Ford Design studios had already been doing some work along these lines, some of which had reached the scale model stage) for what was at this stage still a fairly tentative development project.
Short of traveling to Michigan to delve into old Ford Motor Company records, little detailed information about these “paper car” proposals is now available, and what publicly available data there is has often been often conflated with the details of later production programs. However, the British proposal was for a small front-engine, rear-wheel-drive (RWD) sedan of efficient but conventional design, while the Ford-Werke proposal was more technically ambitious, calling for front-wheel-drive (FWD), a flat-four engine, and a front suspension with a transverse front leaf spring à la Fiat. The Ford-Werke concept was reportedly similar in many respects to the then-new Goliath 1100, probably because one of the engineers who conceived it was the one-time Grand Prix racing driver August Momberger, who had previously been technical director at Goliath-Werke Borgward & Co.
![1958 Goliath 1100 sedan (red with white roof) front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1958_Goliath_1100-red_front3q_Lothar-Spurzem-CCBYSA-DE.jpg)
Introduced in February 1957, the FWD Goliath 1100 was 1.6 inches (40 mm) shorter than the contemporary Ford Taunus 12M, but almost 2 inches (50 mm) wider and 4 inches (100 mm) lower. The 1100 was powered by a 1,093 cc (66.7 cu. in.) flat-four, mounted ahead of the front axle. Like the later Ford Cardinal, the Goliath 1100’s front suspension used a transverse leaf spring with lower wishbones, while the rear was a beam axle on semi-elliptical springs. We don’t know why this particular car has whitewall tires only on its rear wheels. (Photo: “Goliath 1100 (2007-09-08).jpg” by Lothar Spurzem, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Germany (CC BY-SA 2.0 DE) license)
We suspect that the British proposal was very similar to Dagenham’s planned all-new Anglia replacement, the Anglia 105E, which was then in development. Ford Ltd. by this time was more concerned with the British market than with Common Europe, of which the UK management had become somewhat dismissive, and Dagenham executives were not keen on the prospect of canceling or delaying such an important new British product for a European-focused “dream car.”
As for Ford-Werke, the 1957 FWD concept appears to have been more of an engineering exercise than a serious product proposal. The front-engine/FWD (FF) layout offered some advantages compared to rear-engine/RWD (RR) rivals, particularly in the area of stability at higher speeds, but what Ford-Werke more urgently needed from a product planning standpoint was something smaller and cheaper than the existing 1.2-liter Taunus 12M, which the FWD proposal was unlikely to be. The cheapest Goliath 1100 listed for DM 260 more than the 12M, it had many teething pains, and it was not a great success in the German market. (After a single year and only 14,908 units, Borgward rebranded it as the Hansa 1100, but sales of the Hansa version amounted to just 16,575 additional units through 1961.)
![Four-cylinder "boxer" engine in a red 1959 Hansa 1100 sedan](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1959_Hansa_1100-red_engine_Lothar-Spurzem-CCBYSA-DE.jpg)
The horizontally opposed (boxer) four in the Goliath 1100 and Hansa 1100 was an oversquare all-aluminum OHV engine, making 40 PS (29.4 kW) with a single carburetor or 55 PS (40.5 kW) with dual carburetors. Ford contemplated developing an H-4 engine like this for the Cardinal project, but rejected the boxer format as too wide for the car’s intended dimensions. (Photo: “Hansa 1100, Bj. 1959 (2014-08-31 6801) Boxermotor.JPG” by Lothar Spurzem, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Germany (CC BY-SA 2.0 DE) license)
There were also two proposals from Dearborn, the larger of which, codenamed XK-Thunderbird, became the more immediate corporate priority, particularly once Ford learned that Chevrolet and Chrysler were also preparing American-market compacts. The XK-Thunderbird received production approval in November 1957. It was initially slated for a fall 1960 introduction as a 1961 model, but in early 1958, the timetable was accelerated to bring the new car to market for the 1960 model year. In April 1958, it was officially named Ford Falcon.
As an interim measure, Ford also arranged to import some English and German Ford models for select U.S. dealers, beginning in early 1958. This was a minor but significant shift in the order of things, really the first time Ford management had looked at the unique products developed for their overseas subsidiaries as a resource rather than just a grudging concession to local market conditions. As GM recognized with Opel and Vauxhall at about the same time, it was a way to swiftly meet an immediate need with existing products built in existing factories. There were obvious limits to this approach — neither Dagenham nor Cologne had the capacity to supply the U.S. market in large numbers, and Dearborn in those days was reluctant to make its U.S. sales organization too dependent on cars built overseas — but the financial risk was low, and the extra business was a boon for the subsidiaries. (Cars exported to the U.S. accounted for about 11.6 percent of Dagenham passenger car production for 1958 and 13.3 percent for 1959.)
![1958 or 1959 Ford Taunus 17M de Luxe (P2) two-door sedan (two-tone sky blue over white) front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1957-1959_Ford_Taunus-17M-deLuxe-blue-over-white_front3q_ChiemseeMan-PD.jpg)
Introduced in August 1957, the German Ford flagship Taunus 17M was known internally as Projekt-2 (P2), since it was the second all-new postwar German Ford model. It was built in Cologne, but the styling (nicknamed “Gelsenkirschen Baroque”) and jaunty two-tone paint practically screamed that it was designed in Dearborn. It was 172.2 inches (4,375 mm) long and 65.7 inches (1,670 mm) wide on a 102.5-inch (2,604 mm) wheelbase and was powered by a 1,698 cc (103.6 cu. in.) OHV four, a new engine sharing the same architecture as the smaller 1.5-liter four in the Taunus 15M, offering 60 PS DIN (44.1 kW). The 17M P2 was one of the German Ford models sold in the U.S. from 1958 to 1960, listing for $2,160 POE (port of entry) in de Luxe form. (Photo: “Ford Taunus 17M deLuxe 1” by ChiemseeMan, which was released into the public domain by the copyright holder)
There was no serious consideration of building existing English or German models in the U.S., which would not have been persuasively cheaper than introducing an all-new model. Even in those days, designing a new car and a new engine wasn’t inexpensive, but the design costs paled before the expense of production tooling, which had to be amortized over hundreds of thousands of units. Since all-new tooling and new or expanded assembly plants were necessary either way, Ford could just as well tailor the new product to better suit American tastes.
Inevitably, concessions to the latter meant the XK-Thunderbird rapidly outgrew its original conception. What had initially been conceived as a four-cylinder car roughly the same size as the new German Ford Taunus 17M soon gained 10 inches (254 mm) in overall length and 6 inches (155 mm) in overall width; the production Ford Falcon was a six-passenger sedan about the size of an English Ford Zodiac or a Mercedes-Benz 220S, with an all-new 144 cu. in. (2,365 cc) six-cylinder engine. This made the Falcon competitive in size and price with the new breed of U.S. compact cars, but it was much too big for most European buyers and redundant for Ford Ltd., which already had the similarly sized Zephyr and Zodiac. (The Falcon did go on to a long life in Australia, although the lightweight XK Falcon was not rugged enough for Australian roads, as we’ve previously recounted.)
![1960 Ford Falcon four-door sedan (Belmont blue) front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1960_Ford_Falcon-Fordor-blue_front3q_Greg-Gjerdingen-CCBY20.jpg)
The 1960 Ford Falcon was compact only by contemporary U.S. standards: It was 181.1 inches (4,600 mm) long and 70 inches (1,778 mm) wide on a 109.5-inch (2,781-mm) wheelbase. Remarkably, even with its 2,365 cc (144.3 cu. in.) cast iron six, the Falcon was just 65 lb (30 kg) heavier than the significantly smaller four-cylinder German Ford Taunus 17M, although as buyers of the Australian XK Falcon learned the hard way, it was very lightly built. (Photo: “1960 ford falcon usa” by Greg Gjerdingen, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) license)
The production approval of the Falcon therefore left Ford with most of the same problems as before: Ford still didn’t have a strong competitor for the European C-segment (the forthcoming Anglia 105E was the right size, but was it was really tailored for British tastes); there was still no replacement for the aging Taunus 12M; and if U.S. buyers interested in small cars didn’t regard the new Falcon as a viable alternative to the smaller Beetle or Renault Dauphine, Ford still had nothing else to offer them.
The I-PF-4 Project
It was here that a more ambitious idea began to take shape. Although Ford-International had already broached the possibility of developing a four-cylinder “European Common Car” that could be ready for production by 1962, there was no assurance that this would sell in sufficient numbers to be worth the cost, especially if Ford Ltd. was only willing to consider it as a supplement to rather than a replacement for the Anglia 105E. Similarly, many Dearborn executives saw no way to build a U.S.-market subcompact that would could actually turn a profit. However, if those projects could somehow be combined, in collaborative production as well as design, it might be possible to surmount some otherwise difficult financial barriers and create a Beetle-fighter that would be viable both in Europe and in the U.S. “Segment I” subcompact market.
![1957 Renault Dauphine sedan (gray) front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1957_Renault_Dauphine-gray_front3q_Rutger-van-der-Maar-CCBY20.jpg)
One of the principal threats to which the I-PF-4/Cardinal project was intended as a response was the popular Renault Dauphine. Introduced in February 1956, it was a bit larger than the Renault 4CV, with a rear-mounted 845 cc (51.5 cu. in.) four-cylinder engine, giving a top speed of about 71 mph (114 km/h). The Dauphine remained in production in France until 1967 and in Argentina through 1970. (Photo: “1957 Renault Dauphine” by Rutger van der Maar, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) license)
This kind of commonality was much to the liking of Robert S. McNamara, Ford group vice president for cars and trucks, who was a strong believer in stamping out anything he saw as wasteful duplication of effort. A few years later, as U.S. secretary of defense, McNamara mounted a campaign to eliminate redundancy in military programs, perhaps the most infamous result of which was the Tactical Fighter, Experimental (TFX) program, which sought to consolidate several sets of superficially similar Air Force and Navy requirements into a single technologically ambitious aircraft. That program, which became the variable-geometry (swing-wing) General Dynamics F-111, proved costly and endlessly controversial. The intended Navy version was canceled after a handful of prototypes, a planned British version never got off the ground, and it took many years to sort out the USAF variants’ numerous design and developmental shortcomings. (You can consider this foreshadowing in more ways that one.)
![1957 photo of Robert S. McNamara](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1957_Robert-McNamara_BW_FMC-neg112091-003.jpg)
Robert Strange McNamara in 1957, around the time he became vice president of the Car and Truck Group, the executive to whom the various Ford divisional general managers directly reported. (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
In 1958–1959, however, all that was still in the future, and the idea of a European-American co-production seemed to have considerable financial logic. Cost studies suggested that Ford could build the engines for both U.S. and European cars in Germany for less than it would cost to set up a U.S. production line for a new four-cylinder engine — enough less, McNamara determined, to make the small car profitable in the U.S. even at a price significantly below that of the Falcon, which would otherwise be difficult if not impossible.
Since this still-hypothetical car was to be sold in the U.S., its development was assigned to the product study vehicles department in Dearborn, where department manager Fred Bloom began preliminary work in February 1959. Early on, his team gravitated toward the FWD package outlined in the 1957 Ford-Werke “dream car” proposal, as the engineering team (among them several Germans, including Klaus Arning, Helmut Graetzel, and Frank Theyleg, along with former Ford Ltd. engineer Roy Lunn) felt a FF layout could be decisively superior to existing European RR cars in stability, noise levels, and heating. This package was designated I-PF-4, meaning Segment I (subcompact), power pack forward, four cylinders.
![X-ray view of the Cardinal/12M P4 showing the bench seats and flat floor](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1962_Ford_Cardinal_cutaway-passenger-cargo_FMC-P4-Roentgen-02.jpg)
This drawing of the Cardinal/12M P4 layout shows how a front-wheel-drive power pack, with the engine well forward, provides a relatively spacious interior (with a flat floor) while still leaving room for luggage in the rear — a significant shortcoming of rear-engine cars. (Image: Ford Motor Company)
Much like the German proposal that inspired it, the I-PF-4 would have a traditional longitudinal engine FWD layout. Neither Roy Lunn nor Frank Theyleg, who was responsible for transmission and differential design, was interested in using transfer gears or a transfer chain to route power to the front wheels, which would have meant additional cost, friction, and noise. With a subcompact car, this meant the engine had to be as short as possible to avoid excessive front-end length. The German “dream car” proposal had specified a flat-four, like the Goliath 1100, but Ford had little production experience with horizontally opposed engines, and there were concerns that a flat-four would be too wide.
![Lancia Tipo 100B V-4 engine in a 1954 Lancia Ardea](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1952_Lancia_Ardea_V4-engine_Mr.choppers-CCBYSA30.jpg)
Lancia was a longtime adherent of V-4 engines. The 903 cc (55.1 cu. in.) engine in the compact Lancia Ardea had its cylinder banks set at an included angle of 20 degrees, allowing the use of a single cylinder head with hemispherical combustion chambers. Late Tipo 100B engines, like this 1952 example, had aluminum heads and about 30 hp (22 kW). (Photo: “1952 Lancia ‘tipo 100B’ engine in an Ardea.jpg” by Mr.choppers, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) license)
The alternative Dearborn initially pursued was a Lancia-style narrow-angle V-4, with both banks sharing a common cylinder head to reduce cost and weight. This was to be an extremely short and narrow engine that could easily fit entirely ahead of the front axle. Initial conceptions included both 1.1- and 1.4-liter (66.5 or 83.8 cu.in.) versions.
Like the Falcon before it, the I-PF-4 also grew rapidly. The development team was likely aware that Ford market research had indicated a strong American preference for five/six-passenger seating, and while the FWD powertrain was a boon to packaging efficiency, the original package dimensions didn’t provide the desired interior space. Thus, the planned wheelbase of the I-PF-4 increased three times, and exterior length and width grew commensurately.
![1959 Ford HummingBird concept vehicle side](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1959_Ford_HummingBird-concept_side_FMC-S3049-32.jpg)
Most of the exterior styling for the I-PF-4 was done in a small corporate advanced styling studio led by Gale Halderman, later the designer of the 1965 Ford Mustang. Photographed in September 1959, this rather dumpy-looking styling model, whose proportions betray its FWD layout, was badged “HummingBird” (with a capital “B”). The placards on the ground read “S-3049-32” and “9-18-59” (the date the photo was taken). (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
Despite the ever-swelling dimensions, the engineers in Dearborn were confident that the I-PF-4 could have a dry weight of less than 1,600 lb (725 kg) in production form, making it a substantial 385 lb (175 kg) lighter than the facelifted 1960 German Ford Taunus 12M. The FWD car’s target weight was subsequently adjusted upward to 1,630 lb (740 kg) dry, with a curb weight of about 1,700 lb (770 kg), but this would still have been very light for a car of its dimensions.
Cologne’s NPX-C5
Meanwhile, Ford-Werke was preparing to go in a very different direction. Its new American managing director John S. Andrews, who succeeded Erhard Vitger in March 1958, was initially preoccupied with the boom in mini-cars with engines under 1,000 cc (61 cu. in.) — whose share of the German market had recently swelled by 43.5 percent (from 20.2 percent of the market to 29.0 percent) — and with the increasing commercial moribundity of the Taunus 12M.
![1969 photo of John S. Andrews](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1969_John_Andrews_Ford-Europe_FMC.jpg)
John S. Andrews, Ford-Werke managing director from 1958 to 1965, photographed in 1969. Andrews was from Texas, but he spoke fluent German and had a conservative style and manner that reassured German staff members wary of stereotypically brash Americans. In 1967, Andrews became the first chairman of Ford of Europe, although he retired for health reasons in May 1969 and died not long afterward. (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
Cologne’s existing Taunus 12M was too big, too expensive, and too thirsty to compete with the mini-cars, and it was becoming increasingly dated. The 12M had made a splash when first introduced, but it was an early fifties design with an essentially prewar L-head (side-valve) engine, and all Ford-Werke had really done with in six years was a few minor tweaks and some de-contenting to bring down the price, which remained too high. Of course, the popular Volkswagen Beetle was an even older design, but the Beetle was substantially cheaper than the 12M, and significantly better built as well.
![1955–1957 Ford 15M (G4B) two-door sedan (black) front](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1955-1957_Ford_15M-black_front_Alexandre-Prevot-CCBYSA20.jpg)
Introduced in December 1954, the German Ford Taunus 15M (chassis code G4B) was a Taunus 12M with a different front end treatment and an all-new 1,498 cc (91.4 cu. in.) OHV four, offering 55 PS (40.4 kW) and a top speed of 80 mph (128 km/h) for cost DM 505 more than the 12M. The 15M was dropped in 1958. (Photo: “Ford Taunus 15M” by Alexandre Prevot, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) license)
Ford-Werke had more luck with the pricier and more powerful Taunus 15M, but even that was no great shakes (its annual sales had never broken 40,000), and it didn’t help at the lower end of the market, where Ford-Werke was losing ground. By 1958, the 15M was gone and 12M sales had fallen below 20,000 units.
![1960–1962 Ford Taunus 12M two-door sedan (blue with white roof and side spear) front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1960-1962_Ford_Taunus_12M-blue-white_front3q_Lothar-Spurzem-CCBYSA20DE.jpg)
Launched in August 1959, the facelifted German Ford Taunus 12M was easily identifiable by its new grille, which made it look a little like a miniature 1955 Chevrolet. It was 1.2 inches (30 mm) lower and 0.4 inches (10 mm) narrower than before, and about 55 lb (25 kg) heavier; a 12M 1,5-Liter was now 2,006 lb (910 kg) at the curb. The side stripe helped to make the 12M look more different from its predecessor than it actually was; two-tone paint with a contrasting stripe was a DM 35 option. The facelifted 12M 1,5-Liter was imported to the U.S. (as the 12M Super) in 1960, albeit apparently only in very limited numbers. (Photo: “Ford P1 (Front 2011-09-24 Sp).JPG” by Lothar Spurzem, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Germany (CC BY-SA 2.0 DE) license)
Andrews and Ford-Werke finance chief Robert G. Layton had no illusions about Ford-Werke being able to profitably compete in the mini-car market, short of merging with another automaker already producing such models. Further price cuts and a modest facelift temporarily resuscitated 12M sales in 1959, but Andrews knew that couldn’t last, and he still hoped to replace the existing car with something smaller and more modern, powered by an all-new water-cooled 1-liter (61 cu. in.) OHC four.
![1960 Ford Taunus 12M Super (yellow) engine compartment](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1960_Ford_Taunus-12M-Super_engine-compartment_FMC-negc1003_48.jpg)
Although the Ford Taunus 12M retained the old side-valve four as standard through 1962, the facelifted 1960–1962 car could also be ordered with the 1,498 cc (91.4 cu. in.) OHV four that had previously powered the discontinued Taunus 15M. This I-4 remained available in the bigger 17M line through 1964, when it was dropped in favor of the Taunus V-4. (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
As initially conceived, this engine was to drive its single overhead camshaft with a rubber or nylon timing belt with plastic teeth, a new concept that hadn’t yet been tried in production. However, Ford-Werke engineering chief Jules A. Gutzeit also insisted on developing an alternative version with a conventional chain-driven camshaft. Had the engine gone into production, Gutzeit’s plan was to introduce the engine with a chain-driven cam and then transition to the belt-drive setup once the latter had proven itself. Prototypes of this engine produced up to 60 PS (44 kW) on the test stand, a very respectable specific output for 1958–1959, although production engines wouldn’t have been that powerful, at least to start.
![1959 Ford NPX-C5 full-size model front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1959_Ford_NPX-full-size_front_FWFS175.jpg)
An early full-size styling model of the NPX-C5, next to a Taunus 12M. The scrawled letters in the foreground (which read 22.5.59) are presumably the date the photo was taken. These vintage Ford-Werke styling photos are owned by Ford, but the Ford Archives were unable to supply higher-quality versions, so we’ve used scans from Hanns-Peter Rosellen’s 1988 book Ford-Schritte: der Wiederaufstieg der Ford-Werke Köln von 1945 bis 1970 (identified on the cover as Ford-Schritte: Ford in Deutschland, 1945–1970). (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
Ford-Werke hoped to install this new OHC engine in an all-new C-segment sedan codenamed NPX-C5. This was to be an otherwise conventional front-engine, RWD model with MacPherson strut front suspension (something Ford-Werke had recently adopted for the larger Taunus 17M); a live rear axle; and an upright fuel tank, mounted in the right side of the trunk. The NPX-C5 was originally slated to have an overall length of 145.7 inches (3,700 mm), making it more than a foot (360 mm) shorter than the existing 12M and around 220 lb (100 kg) lighter.
The 1-liter (61 cu. in.) engine was to be standard in the NPX-C5, offering 34 PS (25.0 kW), and a 1.2-liter (73 cu. in.) version with 40 PS (29.4 kW) was to be optional. Overall length was increased during development to 153.5 inches (3,900 mm), but Ford-Werke were keen to keep it smaller than the existing Taunus 12M, and more in line with contemporary C-segment rivals.
![1959 Ford NPX-C5 scale model front 3q on table](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1959_Ford_NPX_scale-model_FWFS6.8-59-3.jpg)
Another Ford-Werke photo scan from Rosellen’s Ford-Schritte, showing a scale model of the NPX-C5 in the styling studio in Cologne. The numbers on the placard (which reads “6.8 59 3”) presumably indicate that this was the third photo of this model taken on August 6, 1959. The split front end was a common styling economy, making it possible to demonstrate two different design variations on the same model. (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
V-4 Engines and the Ponypak
By the summer of 1959, Ford engineers in Dearborn were working on two competing V-4 engine designs: a narrow-angle engine (see the sidebar below) and an alternative design with a wider 60-degree bank angle, separate cylinder heads, and an open-deck block design that could be easily adapted for either cast iron or high-pressure die-cast aluminum. The 60-degree V-4 was heavier, wider, and somewhat more expensive than the narrow-angle engine, but it provided room for larger main bearings and had greater growth potential, including the intriguing possibility of creating a compact 60-degree V-6 that could share the same tooling.
![1963 Ford Taunus 12M engine cutaway](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1963_Ford_Taunus-12M_engine-cross-section_FMC-SAE13.jpg)
Cutaway of the 60-degree OHV V-4 engine in its initial production form, with the exhaust manifolds integral with the cylinder head and an open deck cylinder block. (The latter was replaced by a closed-deck block in late 1967.) The 60-degree bank angle made the V-4 wider than the initial narrow-angle engine, but still much narrower than a 90-degree V-4 or a horizontally opposed engine. The related 60-degree V-6, first offered on the Taunus 20M in fall 1964, didn’t have (or need) the V-4’s balance shaft. (Image: Ford Motor Company)
Both V-4 engines suffered significant balance issues. The initial version of the narrow-angle V-4, with only two main bearings, was deemed unacceptable. The 60-degree engine had its own problems: It had an unbalanced vertical secondary force, like an inline-four, along with an unbalanced horizontal secondary couple and a severe unbalanced primary couple. The secondary forces and couples were manageable — the vertical shake was milder than an inline-four of the same bore and stroke dimensions, and the horizontal secondary couple was relatively small — but the primary couple was bad enough to make a balance shaft mandatory. This added further to the engine’s cost and weight, and the balance shaft did nothing to improve the secondary imbalance, so it still didn’t make the engine a paragon of smoothness.
![1963 Ford Taunus 12M engine balance shaft assembly with pistons and flywheel](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1963_Ford_Taunus-12M_engine-balance-shaft_FMC-SAE14.jpg)
The balance shaft of the 60-degree V-4 engine was driven off the timing gear at engine speed, countering the V-4’s otherwise unbalanced primary couple. Unlike the counter-rotating balance shafts on bigger modern I-4 engines, this did not reduce the engine’s secondary imbalance, although because this was split into vertical and horizontal components, the magnitude of the vertical shaking force was 12.8 percent less than in a comparable I-4. (Image: Ford Motor Company)
Like the Chevrolet Corvair, which arrived in the fall of 1959, the I-PF-4 transaxle placed the differential ring and pinion between the clutch housing and the gearbox; the pinion was a hollow quill shaft through which passed the input shaft for the transmission gears. The quill shaft was expensive, but it was compact, and it allowed a direct drive top gear rather than the noisier all-indirect ratios of a typical FF or RR transaxle. There were to be both three-speed and all-synchro four-speed gearboxes, and the American market would have demanded an automatic; we’ve seen no specific details for the latter, although a speculative September 1961 article in Mechanix Illustrated plausibly suggested it would be an adaptation of the lightweight two-speed automatic developed for the Falcon.
![1963 Ford Taunus 12M transmission power flow diagram](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1963_Ford_Taunus-12M_transmission-power-flow_FMC-TaunusP4-Antriebschema.jpg)
In the Cardinal’s FWD transaxle, the engine and clutch were ahead of the differential with the transmission behind. The input shaft (black) passed through the differential pinion gear and drove the transmission from the back. Power then flowed forward to the differential, avoiding the need for an additional set of transfer gears or a transfer chain. (Image: Ford Motor Company)
The I-PF-4 had several engineering novelties beyond front-wheel drive. Roy Lunn had suggested revisiting a concept Ford Ltd. had explored in the early fifties, which involved mounting the front suspension arms on the transaxle case rather than on the unit body or its crossmembers. The idea of this layout, which was dubbed the “ponypak,” was that the mass of the engine and transaxle would serve as a damping weight, resisting road shocks to provide a more comfortable ride. The front suspension itself was to be by longitudinal torsion bars, pivoting on abutments mounted on the engine itself, with an unusual steering layout by sector and pinion. In back, there was to be a solid beam axle, suspended on then-novel longitudinal single-leaf springs like the “Mono-Plate” springs later used on the Chevrolet Chevy II/Nova and Camaro/Firebird; this promised to be cheaper and to reduce harshness by eliminating the inter-leaf friction of multi-leaf semi-elliptical springs.
![Illustration of the cooling system of the Cardinal/Taunus 12M P4 with arrows showing airflow direction](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1963_Ford_Taunus-12M_cooling-heating-airflow_FMC-SAE23.jpg)
To avoid the need for a normal engine cooling fan, coolant flowed through the Cardinal’s heater core at all times, with the heater blower controlled automatically by a thermostatic switch. Air flowed into the cowl vent (above left), through the heater core, and then either into the cabin or, if the heater switch was off, downward under the car. (Image: Ford Motor Company)
A further novelty was the cooling system. A heater was standard, with a thermoswitch automatically activating the heater blower any time coolant temperature reached 205 degrees Fahrenheit (96 degrees Celsius) and turning it off if the coolant temperature fell below 198 degrees Fahrenheit (92 degrees Celsius). If the heater lever on the dashboard was turned off, the blower output was directed downward rather than into the cabin. In this way, the heater acted to supplement the radiator, which allowed the elimination of the normal engine-driven cooling fan. This saved a few horsepower as well as freeing up some space in the nose, although it meant the heater offered no air blending to vary the cabin temperature, and there was no way to run the blower without cabin heat, a headache in humid weather.
![1959 Saab 93B Deluxe (blue) front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1959_Saab_93B-Deluxe-blue_front3q_Staffan-Andersson-CC010-ASedit.jpg)
A blurry photo of an I-PF-4 development mule in Kurt Ludvigsen’s Cardinal article in Special Interest Autos No. 41 reveals that it was originally a 1958 or 1959 Saab 93B like this one. The 93B is identifiable by its one-piece windshield and the rectangular turn signals in the front fenders; unlike the subsequent 93F, its doors were still rear-hinged. Assuming the pictured car still has its original engine, it’s powered by a 748 cc (45.6 cu. in.) two-stroke inline three-cylinder engine. (Photo: “SAAB 93 B DE LUXE 1959 Falun Sweden” by Staffan Andersson, which was dedicated to the public domain by the copyright holder under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication; this version was modified (to obscure the occupants’ faces) and resized 2024 by Aaron Severson)
It may become apparent here that this was quite a list of novel and untried ideas for what was supposed to be an inexpensive economy car. Front-wheel drive was not yet as anathema at Ford as it became a decade later, when the prospect of using FWD for the B-segment model that became the Mk1 Fiesta sparked a multi-year battle, but it’s still curious that senior management in Dearborn, including McNamara, were willing to back such an unorthodox package. (It wasn’t Ford’s only FWD project either; for a time, there was serious consideration of adopting front-wheel drive for the Thunderbird.)
![1959 Ford HummingBird styling prototype front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1959_Ford_HummingBird-concept_front3q_FMC-S-3260-8-crop.jpg)
The split grille treatment on this late 1959 refinement of the I-PF-4 “HummingBird” concept made the front end look even blockier than it actually was, giving this a small car a curiously bulky and ungraceful air. The placards on the floor read “S-3260-8” and “12-11-59” (the date the photo was taken. (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
Nonetheless, Frank Theyleg later told journalist Karl Ludvigsen that it was the novelty of the FF “ponypak” helped to drive management interest in the subcompact project, calling it “the snowball that built the avalanche.” We suspect that the existence of the Falcon probably had something to do with that: If the Falcon had not yet existed, there probably would have been a greater push toward conventionality, but by the time the corporate Product Planning Committee got its first look at the I-PF-4 in June 1959, the very conventional Falcon was only about 90 days from Job One, which meant the first challenge for the Segment I engineering team was to demonstrate how their project differed from the car already nearing production.
![1959 Ford HummingBird styling prototype front](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1959_Ford_HummingBird-concept_front_FMC-S-3260-1-crop.jpg)
This HummingBird prototype’s triangular grille badge has what looks to be a stylized “H” emblem. Its unusual “floating” treatment seems conceptually similar to the integration of the globe-like ornament used on the fifties German Ford Taunus 12M and 15M. The placards on the floor in front of the car read “S-3260-1” and “12-11-59” (the date the photo was taken). (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
During 1959, the I-PF-4 engineering team in Dearborn converted at least one Goliath into a test mule for the “ponypak” and cooling system. This was followed in January 1960 by two FWD Saab 93B sedans, whose engines were removed and their headlights awkwardly relocated from the grille to the front fender nacelles to make room for the V-4 engines and their cooling systems. A prototype 60-degree engine was installed in one test mule, with the narrow-angle V-4 in the other.
![1959 Ford HummingBird styling prototype side](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1959_Ford_HummingBird-concept_side_FMC-S-3260-7-crop.jpg)
We unfortunately don’t have complete dimensions for the I-PF-4, but our guess is that this late 1959 model had a 97.5-inch (2,477-mm) wheelbase. Aside from giving the model rather awkward proportions, the truncated tail obvious came at a cost in luggage and rear seat space, even with the entire powertrain mounted ahead of the firewall. The placards on the floor read “S-3260-7” and “12-11-59” (the date the photo was taken). (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
Company chairman Henry Ford II took an unexpected interest in the project and asked to borrow one of the Saab prototypes to try himself over the weekend. He returned it with a bent valve; asked what timetable the team anticipated for its launch; and said, “Make it 1963 and you’ve got yourself a program.” This was a victory, but it meant the still very experimental all-new model would have to be ready for production within just two years.
Ludvigsen’s account of this encounter (based on later interviews with the engineers involved) suggests that this tight deadline came as a rather jarring surprise. However, HFII was probably aware of the earlier “dream car” project and at least peripherally aware of Wilner Sundelson’s suggestion of a pan-European C-segment car back in 1956–1957. The original target date for those projects had been 1962, so the chairman might well have felt that a 1963 model year debut was consistent with the timing discussed three years earlier.
![1959 Ford HummingBird styling prototype rear](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1959_Ford_HummingBird-concept_rear_FMC-S-3260-5-crop.jpg)
A rear view of the HummingBird styling model. The placards on the floor read “S-3260-5” and “12-11-59” (the date the photo was taken). Rosellen identified this photo as being the rear of the German NPX-C5 prototype, which is incorrect; these pictures were definitely taken in Dearborn. The dummy license plates have the words “ADVANCED STYLING” along with the number “00 00 00.” (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
In any event, Ford was quite serious: In late March 1960, the project was transferred to Ford Division for further development as a production model. The narrow-angle V-4 was dropped, and the project received a new code name: Cardinal, which, as Ford officials were subsequently at pains to clarify, was intended to refer to the bird rather than the Catholic clerical rank. Its actual name in U.S. production would likely have been Redwing V-4; there were rumors that a Mercury version might be called Oriole. The Product Planning Committee approved the Cardinal project for U.S. production on May 16, 1960.
![Male Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) sitting on a branch](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/Northern-Cardinal_on-branch_Judy-Gallagher-CCBY.jpg)
Although the Catholic jokes have never stopped, Ford officials repeatedly insisted that the Cardinal project was actually named for the bird: Cardinalis cardinalis. Only male cardinals are bright red like this; females are yellowish brown or yellowish gray, albeit with red beaks. (Photo: “Northern Cardinal – Cardinalis cardinalis, Everglades National Park, Homestead, Florida” by Judy Gallagher, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) license)
Hatching the Cardinal
German Ford officials received the news of the Cardinal project rather gloomily. John Andrews had high hopes for Gutzeit’s NPX-C5, which had been presented to the Ford-Werke management board in December 1959 and had been designated Projekt-4 (P4), the next all-new German Ford model after the then-forthcoming 17M P3. With styling development underway in Cologne’s small Formgestaltung department, Andrews had taken the P4 proposal to Dearborn to request production approval, only to learn that U.S. management insisted that Cologne accept the larger FWD Cardinal instead.
![1960 Ford NPX-C5 (P4) styling prototype front](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1960_Ford_NPX_front3q_FWFS-S-8-3c.jpg)
Cologne’s NPX-C5 (Projekt-4) took a new styling direction in early 1960. Rosellen’s Ford-Schritte includes photos of several variations on the new theme, of which this one might be the earliest. The lettering at the bottom reads “S-8-3c” (probably meaning that this was the third photo of the S-8 styling prototype) and “3.60” (which we assume means the photo was taken in March 1960). (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
There were several factors at play. Dearborn still questioned whether Ford-Werke could actually produce an all-new model on its own — the Taunus 17M P3, which was the first postwar German Ford really designed in Cologne (see the first sidebar on the previous page), hadn’t yet entered production — and whether an all-new German-designed RWD C-segment car would sell enough to justify the tooling investment remained uncertain. (Although the facelifted 12M was now selling surprisingly well given the age of the basic design, the primary reason it had lingered so long was that its sales had been too weak to justify the tooling expense of an all-new model.)
![1960 Ford NPX-C5 (P4) Kombi styling prototype front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1960_Ford_NPX-Kombi_front3q_FWFS-S-13-2.jpg)
Another Ford-Werke styling photo scan from Ford-Schritte, showing a full-size model of a Kombiwagen (station wagon) version of the latest NPX-C5/P4 styling direction. The placard on the ground reads “S-13-2” (which probably means this was the second photo of the S-13 prototype) and “5.60” (which we assume means the photo was taken in May 1960). (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
The bigger issue was that McNamara had already concluded that joint U.S.-German production was essential to the financial viability of both projects. Without the cost savings of sourcing the powertrains from Cologne, Ford couldn’t hope to sell the U.S. Cardinal for a competitive price, and without the additional volume that U.S. sales would provide, it remained much harder to justify the necessary capital investments for Ford of Germany. At that time, what Ford-Werke really needed to establish a real competitive position in West Germany, much less Common Europe, was not simply a new C-segment model, but also a major expansion of its production facilities. Starting in the fall of 1957, Ford-U.S. management had authorized some significant upgrades in Cologne, and there had been tentative plans for a new engine plant since 1958, but Andrews and Layton had just spent three frustrating years chasing possible merger deals, which still seemed like a more feasible path to increasing Ford-Werke production capacity than convincing Dearborn to authorize new plant construction with so many uncertainties about when (or if) European sales might repay the investment. If Cologne were also supplying the U.S. market, however, the numbers became much more compelling, potentially doubling production volume and thus making it easier to keep new factories operating in the black.
![1960 Ford NPX-C5 (P4) four-door sedan styling prototype front 3q high angle](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1960_Ford_NPX-4door_front3q_FWFS211.jpg)
A Ford-Werke styling model (again scanned from Rosellen’s Ford-Schritte) of a four-door sedan version of the NPX-C5/P4, showing the roofline subsequently adopted for the Cardinal. Although this photo is not dated, we think it was likely taken around the same time as the photo of the S-13 Kombi prototype above. The badge on the front fender and the lettering on the nose, not legible at this scale, read “TAUNUS.” (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
Unfortunately for Ford-Werke, for this plan to work as Dearborn wanted, the American and German cars needed to be substantially the same. This in turn meant that Cologne would have to accept the larger Cardinal “package,” which was bigger than the existing 12M and much bigger than the German NPX-C5/P4 design, and which had front-wheel drive, of which senior Ford-Werke technical staff wanted no part. The RWD P4 would have been simpler and cheaper — although engineers in Dearborn still insisted it would be heavier than the U.S.-designed FWD car, something about which Ford-Werke chassis design chief Bernhard Osswald remained justifiably skeptical — but while the German design might have been more suitable for European markets, Ford management thought the NPX-C5/P4 much too small for American consumption. Given the anticipated sales volumes, the U.S. version was deemed the higher priority, so if the Cardinal was larger than the Germans preferred, that was just too bad.
![1963 Ford Consul Cortina 1200 two-door saloon (light green) front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1963_Ford_Consul-Cortina-1200-lt-green_front3q_Andrew-Bone-CCBY20.jpg)
An early production version of a very popular car: a 1963 English Ford Consul Cortina 1200. (The “Consul” moniker was dropped two years after launch.) Developed under the codename Archbishop, it was intended to outdo the Cardinal with completely conventional engineering, and mostly did. At launch, the UK-market Cortina 1200 listed for £639 0s 3d (then the equivalent of about $1,790 USD at the prevailing exchange rate of $2.80 to £1), with the de Luxe version adding £27 10s. (Photo: “Ford Cortina Mk.1 (1963)” by Andrew Bone, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) license)
If the reaction to this in Cologne was glum bordering on despondent, response in Dagenham was positively defiant. Once the Cardinal project was moving toward production, Ford management in the U.S. also revisited the idea of making it a joint British-German program. Sir Patrick Hennessy, by this time the chairman of Ford Ltd., promptly informed his Light Cars executive engineer Fred Hart and product planning chief Terence Beckett that he had no intention of accepting the Cardinal, and charged them with developing a superior all-British alternative that could be ready on the same timetable. Beckett and product planning manager Hamish Orr-Ewing waggishly suggested the codename Archbishop.
Beckett’s conception for the Archbishop program immediately identified the central conundrum of the FWD Cardinal: that what still seemed a rather dinky little car by American standards was in fact a medium-size one in a British or European context. Fortunately for Hennessy and company, Ford Ltd. already had a brand-new model for the British small car market; the Anglia 105E had debuted less than six months earlier, to strong critical and commercial response. Initially, the Archbishop concept built on existing studies for an Anglia successor, but it soon evolved into a new mid-price model, positioned between the Anglia and the larger English Ford models. With such limited lead time, it wouldn’t be technologically daring, but rather a light, efficient, conventionally engineered model that would offer buyers more car for less money, with the potential of much higher profits.
![1960 Ford Cardinal styling prototype front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1960_Ford_Cardinal-prototype-front3q_FMC-S-4061-8-crop.jpg)
This styling prototype, photographed in Dearborn in October 1960, illustrates the stylistic convergence between the American and German designs; it was essentially the NPX-C5 design shown above, scaled up and adapted for the Cardinal FWD package. Curiously, the left side of this prototype had a “V4” badge on the front fender, but there was no such badge on the right side. The placards on the ground read “S-4061-8” and “10-20-60” (the date the photo was taken). (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
Ford-Werke didn’t have that luxury, nor could it match Ford Ltd. engineering resources, which made writing off the development work and tooling that had already been done for the NPX-C5/P4 and its OHC engine a very bitter blow. Through much of the year, Andrews continued trying to persuade Dearborn to allow Ford-Werke to go ahead with the smaller RWD P4, but it was to no avail.
![1960 Ford Cardinal styling prototype side](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1960_Ford_Cardinal-prototype-side_FMC-S-4061-7-crop.jpg)
The Americanization of the German NPX-C5/P4 design included greatly increased dimensions, with overall length growing almost a foot (300 mm) compared to the German styling models shown above. Some of the increase was in front — note the increased front overhang — but the tail was also significantly longer than that of the earlier I-PF-4 “HummingBird” clays, allowing a larger trunk. The placards on the ground read “S-4061-7” and “10-20-60” (the date the photo was taken). (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
Dearborn eventually agreed to compensate Ford-Werke for some of its development costs, but in the short term, the only consolation U.S. management was prepared to offer Cologne was adopting the design Wes Dahlberg’s German studio had developed for the RWD P4. Cologne’s earliest design conceptions had been somewhat awkward-looking, but the later iterations that took shape over the spring and summer of 1960 were an improvement on the ungainly American styling prototypes.
![1960 Ford Cardinal styling prototype rear 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1960_Ford_Cardinal-prototype-rear3q_FMC-S-4061-6-crop.jpg)
The Cardinal’s oval-shaped taillights, now horizontal rather than vertical, seemed to complete the line of the body-side crease. The “Sedan” badge on the decklid (not really legible at this scale) suggests that a formal name for the U.S. version was still up in the air when this model was built. The placards on the ground read “S-4061-6” and “10-20-60” (the date the photo was taken). (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
Unfortunately, scaling up the German design and reshaping the front end to accommodate the Cardinal power pack was also accompanied by significant revisions. Designer John Najjar told Karl Ludvigsen that the object was to limit the number of individual body panels in order to minimize tooling costs, which also resulted in a non-coincidental resemblance to the contemporary Rambler American, whose 1961 restyling had had a similar cost-conscious design brief. To modern eyes, the resulting design might qualify as cute, but there was something slightly odd about the sedan’s proportions, like a man wearing an off-the-rack suit a size too large, and the interior, whose design was supervised by Art Miller, was pleasant but very basic. There were also compromises in body engineering aimed at further reducing assembly costs and increasing compatibility with U.S. manufacturing equipment.
![1960 Ford Cardinal prototype front with Volkswagen Beetle and Ford Anglia in background](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1960_Ford_Cardinal-prototype-front_FMC-S-4061-1-crop.jpg)
This styling prototype had a Ford-Werke badge on the grille, while the lettering on the nose spelled out “FORD”; the dummy license plate says “ADVANCED 00 2 00”. The placards on the ground read “S-4061-1” and “10-20-60” (the date the photo was taken). Note the cars in the background; the one on the left is a Volkswagen Beetle, next to which is an English Ford Anglia 105E. (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
![1962 Rambler American two-door sedan (red with white roof) front](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1962_Rambler_American-2dr-sedan-red-front.jpg)
The Ford Cardinal resembled the 1961–1963 Rambler American in several respects, although the Rambler was bigger — 5.9 inches (150 mm) longer overall and 6.8 inches (184 mm) wider — and was powered by a comparatively enormous 3,206 cc (195.6 cu. in.) six, more than twice the displacement of the 60-degree Ford V-4. (author photo)
The U.S. version of the FWD car was known internally as Cardinal A, while the German version was to be Cardinal B, differing mainly in engine displacement and trim details. Powertrains for both versions were to be produced at the new engine plant in Cologne-Niehl, whose construction began in September 1960. This plant, which was completed the following October, was slated to make 1,200 V-4 engines a day, three-fourths of them earmarked for the U.S. The Cardinal A was to be assembled at the Ford plant in Louisville, Kentucky, which had previously been an Edsel plant, with an expected volume of about 150,000 units a year. To make it competitive with the Beetle on price, the target U.S. retail price was set at $1,650, necessitating a bare-bones level of standard equipment and trim.
With the narrow-angle engine shelved in favor of the 60-degree V-4, Dearborn decided there would be two initial versions of the new engine. The U.S. Cardinal A engine was to be 1.5 liters (90 cu. in.), while the Cardinal B would have a 1,183 cc (72.2 cu. in.) version, produced on the same assembly line. For cost reasons, the proposed aluminum block was abandoned, and the V-4 engine’s exhaust manifolds were made integral with the cylinder heads. Cardinal B engines would also make do with 6-volt electrical systems, although the U.S. engine was to have a 12-volt system from the start. The Cardinal B did get a standard four-speed gearbox, borrowing many components from the new fully synchronized transmission that was optional on the 17M P3, with constant-mesh gears and a reverse lockout; U.S. cars were to have a three-speed with an unsynchronized low gear. All Cardinals were to have column-mounted shifters.
![Illustration of the rear suspension of the 1963 Ford Taunus 12M (with rear anti-roll bar)](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1963_Ford_Taunus-12M_rear-suspension_FMC-SAE28.jpg)
Ford wanted to use single-leaf semi-elliptical springs for the Cardinal’s rear suspension, but the only supplier then capable of making a suitable spring was the U.S. firm Rockwell, which would have been troublesome for Ford-Werke. Instead, the Cardinal got four-leaf springs, with the stiffer fourth leaf only coming into play with the added weight of passengers and cargo. This gave the rear suspension a dual spring rate: 62 lb/inch (1.1 kg/mm) with the driver only, rising to 83 lb/inch (1.5 kg/mm) at design load. (Both figures are at the wheel.) Note the rear anti-roll bar, which was deleted from production cars in the spring of 1964. (Image: Ford Motor Company)
Inevitably, some other aspects of the I-PF-4 package were also changed or abandoned during production development of the Cardinal. The torsion bar front suspension and rack-and-sector steering were deemed too risky, and there weren’t enough suppliers able to make the planned single-leaf rear springs. In their place, the Cardinal front suspension adopted a Goliath- or Fiat-style transverse leaf spring that did double duty as upper wishbones, while the rear suspension was revised to use multi-leaf springs, along with an anti-roll bar fitted ahead of the axle.
![Illustration of the 1963 Ford Taunus 12M front suspension](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1963_Ford_Taunus-12M_front-suspension_FMC-SAE26.jpg)
The “ponypak” suspension of the Cardinal and early Taunus 12M P4 mounted the lower wishbone pivots on the transaxle gearbox housing, with the transverse leaf spring, which passed above the transaxle behind the engine, doing triple duty as spring, upper wishbones, and anti-roll bar. (Image: Ford Motor Company)
Initially, the front leaf spring was clamped atop the gearbox housing, in keeping with the “ponypak” concept, but road testing revealed that this caused unacceptable bucking, and allowed so much powertrain movement that it threatened to break the exhaust system. The Ford Division advanced light vehicles department was able to mitigate this by clamping the spring to a body crossmember rather than the powertrain, but this was still only a partial fix.
![Illustration of 1963 Ford Taunus 12M front leaf spring clamp](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1963_Ford_Taunus-12M_front-spring-clamp_FMC-SAE27.jpg)
The original transverse leaf spring used in the Cardinal/Taunus 12M P4 had a single central clamp, which was bolted to a crossmember of the unit body. In production, this was replaced in spring 1964 by a new dual-point spring mounting, which will be discussed later in this article. (Image: Ford Motor Company)
Steering, meanwhile, became a conventional recirculating ball setup, with the steering gear fixed to the body rather than the powertrain; power steering wasn’t contemplated. After examining the operating angles of the driveshafts, engineers in Dearborn also decided that Rzeppa-type constant velocity (CV) joints were necessary only on the wheel end of each driveshaft, with cheaper Cardan (Hooke) universal joints sufficing for the inboard (differential) ends.
![Illustration of the driveshaft and universal joints of the 1963 Ford Taunus 12M](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1963_Ford_Taunus-12M_driveshaft_FMC-SAE19.jpg)
Cardinal driveshafts used conventional Cardan U-joints inboard, with constant velocity (CV) joints outboard. Because the effective length of the driveshaft had to change as the wheels moved through their range of travel, the shafts had sliding splines; the rubber boot near the center of the shaft served to contain the spline lubricant and keep it from being contaminated by water or dust. (Image: Ford Motor Company)
There were many teething pains during development, and not a little friction between engineers in Cologne and Dearborn. Ford Division engineer Bertil T. Andren, the Cardinal project leader, flew to Germany to evaluate some persistent problems with the cooling system and complained in his eventual report that the Ford-Werke engineers were uncooperative. The Cardinal B may have had a Ford-Werke project number — it assumed the P4 code previously intended for the German RWD design — but so far as the German staff was concerned, it was strictly NIH: not invented here.
Iacocca Objects
In November 1960, Robert McNamara was appointed president of the Ford Motor Company. At the same time, 36-year-old Lee Iacocca, an engineer and salesman who had previously been head of marketing for Ford Division, succeeded Jim Wright as the division’s general manager. McNamara, who would soon depart to become secretary of defense, had been the Cardinal project’s most powerful supporter; Iacocca would be its most formidable nemesis.
![1960 photo of Lee Iacocca](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1960_Lee-Iacocca_BW_FMC-neg120543-001.jpg)
Lee Iacocca in 1960, around the time he became general manager of Ford Division. (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
Some months into his new role, Iacocca traveled to Cologne to see how the Cardinal project was progressing there. In his 1984 memoir, Iacocca claims this was his first glimpse of the prototype Cardinal, which left him “underwhelmed” with its size and styling. He allowed that it “was a fine car for the European market” (a sentiment that few Ford-Werke personnel would have endorsed at that point!), but for the U.S., he said he thought it was “a loser,” and came away determined to kill it.
![1961 Ford Cardinal prototype front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1961_Ford_Cardinal-prototype_front3q_FMC-S4695-2.jpg)
Another full-size styling model of the Ford Cardinal, photographed in Dearborn in July 1961. The placards on the ground read “S-4695-2” and “7-11-61” (the date the photo was taken). (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
Iacocca’s account leaves some troublesome unanswered questions. His memoir implies that his trip to Cologne was his first glimpse of the Cardinal, which makes little sense. Although the version of the car he would have seen in early 1961 had probably undergone a few minor design and engineering refinements, there was by then a whole assortment of scale models, full-size styling prototypes, and test mules in Dearborn, which Iacocca could certainly have seen (and even driven) without flying to Germany. Indeed, it would have been very peculiar if he hadn’t already done so, since this was an important new U.S. Ford model that was then only about 18 months from production. Hanns-Peter Rosellen’s account of the Ford-Werke perspective in his 1988 book Ford-Schritte is no help in this regard, mistakenly stating that Iacocca’s visit was in February 1960, a year earlier than Iacocca himself indicates, and some nine months before Iacocca became head of Ford Division. (In February 1960, Iacocca was Ford Division general marketing manager, and by his own account had not yet been to Germany.)
![1961 Ford Cardinal prototype side view with the Styling Rotunda in the background](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1961_Ford_Cardinal-prototype_side_FMC-S4695-3.jpg)
These July 1961 Cardinal prototype photos, like the October 1960 photos shown in the previous section, were taken on the patio of the old Product Development Center in Dearborn — that’s the Styling Rotunda in the background. The placards on the ground read “S-4695-3” and “7-11-61” (the date the photo was taken). (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
However, if the details of Iacocca’s visit to Cologne are slightly suspect, his antipathy is not in doubt. Iacocca disliked the Cardinal both for what it was (small, cheap, dowdy) and for what it represented; his memoir repeatedly characterizes it as “McNamara’s car,” by which he meant the embodiment of a cold-blooded, numbers-driven technocratic frugality to which Iacocca held himself superior. (The implied rivalry strikes us as rather one-sided — McNamara may not have had much feel for sporty or luxurious cars personally, but he was certainly not adverse to them if he thought they’d make money — but even two decades later, Iacocca’s determination to prove he was savvier and smarter than his former boss had obviously not abated.)
In February 1961, Iacocca dropped hints to the automotive press about the division’s subcompact and intermediate projects, remarking, “We’re going to have smaller ones and bigger ones.” However, that summer, the Cardinal project got a new product planner, Jack Eckhold, who, after two successive in-depth audits, concluded that (in Karl Ludvigsen’s words), “the U.S. Cardinal’s true total cost to the Ford Motor Co., not just to the Ford Div. alone,” was actually greater than the Falcon’s, meaning that there was no way it could be profitably sold for a lower price. Ludvigsen’s account, published seven years before Iacocca’s memoir, implies that it was this unexpected revelation that drove Iacocca’s disdain for the project, but it seems far more likely that it was the other way around. Iacocca had learned enough from McNamara to understand that arguments couched in financial terms were often the most persuasive. Iacocca’s strategy for souring Henry Ford II on the Cardinal was to compare it to the Edsel and warn that it wouldn’t appeal to the youth market, while in other company, Iacocca insisted loudly that the market for subcompacts in the U.S. was “pretty small and pretty thin” and would eventually be erased by the Falcon and Fairlane. However, to convince people like controller Arjay Miller to write off the substantial investment Ford had already made, Iacocca needed some unfavorable numbers on costs and return on investment. That the relatively junior Eckhold fortuitously came up with a report full of data supporting his boss’s contention that the U.S. Cardinal would be a hopeless money-pit therefore seems like something other than mere coincidence.
![1961 Ford NPX-C5 (P4) styling prototype with new horizontal taillights](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1961_Ford_NPX-model_rear3q-with-W111-lights_FWSC210.jpg)
Rosellen (from whose Ford-Schritte book this vintage Ford-Werke styling photo was scanned) says this styling model was created in 1961 (perhaps after Iacocca’s visit), with a new decklid/taillight design inspired by Paul Bracq’s W111 Mercedes-Benz 220SE coupé, which bowed at the reopening of the Daimler-Benz Museum in Stuttgart in February 1961. This treatment was not adopted in production, although the relocated tailights might have allowed a larger trunk opening. (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
Nonetheless, cost was becoming a definite problem for the Cardinal A program. According to a later Ford document provided to us by the Ford Archives (not dated, but apparently prepared during the run-up to the launch of the 1981 Escort in 1979–1980), when the Cardinal had received U.S. production authorization in 1960, the estimated wholesale price (dealer invoice, not suggested retail) was $1,306, $272 less than a basic Falcon two-door sedan. By December 1961, the Cardinal’s expected U.S. wholesale price had climbed to $1,414, $108 over the original target. One contributing factor may have been the revaluation of the Deutschmark in March 1961, which brought the exchange rate of the DM to the U.S. dollar from 4.2 to 4.0 to 1. This meant it would now be more expensive for Ford to import engines and drivetrains from Cologne, even with no other changes. The cost increases shrank the expected margin between the Cardinal and the Falcon to $170, and there was no longer any hope of matching or undercutting Volkswagen or Renault on list price.
![1961 Ford Cardinal prototype rear 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1961_Ford_Cardinal-prototype_rear3q_FMC-S4695-4.jpg)
Another view of the Cardinal styling prototype from July 1961. The placards read “S-4695-4” and “7-11-61” (the date the photo was taken). (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
In spring 1962, just four months before the scheduled start of production, Iacocca finally got his way. Henry Ford II announced in an April 11 press release that “as a result of market conditions and other factors,” Ford had decided the Cardinal — which had just been tentatively announced in a Ford prospectus issued on March 23 — would not be produced “in the United States this year.”
With this, the Cardinal A was effectively dead, although HFII noted that its demise “in no way affects plans our European companies, Ford of Britain and Ford of Germany, may have under consideration.” Since Ford Ltd. was well along with its Archbishop project, which emerged later that year as the Ford Consul Cortina, this meant Cologne would have to go it alone with the P4/Cardinal B. The irony was pronounced: Ford-Werke had had the Cardinal foisted upon them because it seemed to better suit U.S. requirements than the car Ford-Werke wanted to build, only to be stuck with the rather plump and somewhat undercooked bird after Dearborn decided it was no longer suitable.
![1962 Ford Cardinal styling prototype from the side, front, and rear](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1962_Ford_Cardinal-prototype_3-views_FMC-SC02-08-1962.jpg)
Three views of the Cardinal in its more or less final form. This model had “V-4” badges on the front fenders and a “Falcon” badge on the tail, although by this time, some ad mockups had already been made with the “Redwing” name. The placards on the floor next to the “1963 Cardinal” sign in the side view read “S-5143-2” and “2-8-62” (the date the photos were taken). (Photos: Ford Motor Company)
At a shareholders meeting on May 24, HFII declined to comment on how much Ford had lost with the cancellation. Iacocca later said that Ford had by that time invested about $35 million in the Cardinal program, although he didn’t specify how he arrived at that total. In the October 1962 Car and Driver, Joseph Rebholz cited “industry sources” estimating Ford’s losses at about $10 million, which probably didn’t include the settlements Ford paid to suppliers whose orders had been summarily canceled.
Ford Division also reluctantly agreed to pay Ford-Werke DM 62 million ($15.5 million) compensation for the termination of the agreement to provide powertrains for the U.S. Cardinal and for the tooling costs of the RWD NPX-C5 project Ford-Werke had been obliged to cancel. This was a tax write-off for the company, but it came out of Ford Division’s budget, something that earned Ford-Werke finance executive Hans Adolf Barthelmeh (who had flown to Dearborn to negotiate the deal) Iacocca’s lasting enmity.
![1960 Ford Falcon tudor sedan (gray) front 3q with grass background](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1960_Ford_Falcon-Tudor-gray_front3q_FMC-negC1001-24.jpg)
The Cardinal’s costs were carefully assessed relative to the bigger but more conventional Ford Falcon, since Ford believed the Cardinal needed to be cheaper than its larger brother. Wholesale cost of the 1960 Falcon in its most basic two-door form was $1,578, with a suggested base retail price of $1,912 (sometimes reported as $1,915), not including this car’s wheelcovers, whitewall tiers, radio, or Deluxe equipment. (Ford Motor Company)
That Iacocca saw this as a victory strikes us as a triumph of ego over common sense, particularly because the result was so uncompromising. Ford could, for instance, have offered the German-built Cardinal as a captive import (just as they had continued to do with English Ford cars) to evaluate actual American consumer interest before making a final decision on U.S. production. Indeed, some industry observers expected Dearborn to do just that, which would also have been a worthwhile concession for Ford-Werke, whose big new engine plant had been tooled with the expectation that it would supply V-4 engines for the U.S. as well as Cologne. However, the bottom line was that Iacocca just didn’t like the Cardinal any more than he liked the Falcon, and he didn’t want his tenure at Ford Division associated with it, even if that meant throwing away millions of dollars and further hobbling the company’s none-too-robust German affiliate.
It probably helped Iacocca’s case that the U.S. market share of import cars, which had caused such alarm just a few years earlier, had fallen off significantly since the introduction of the Falcon and other domestic compacts. This would prove to be a temporary reprieve, but by the time that became evident, the relevance of the Cardinal had passed. For a number of years afterward, Ford held onto the body dies that had been purchased for the Louisville plant while contemplating repurposing the tooling for Ford Brasil, but nothing came of that, and we assume the surviving tooling was eventually scrapped.
The Cardinal Lays a Curate’s Egg: The Taunus 12M P4
On July 17, 1962, Cologne finally bade farewell to the now very elderly 1952-vintage 12M. The facelifted car had managed to sell 215,471 units in three years, which, if hardly record-setting, was much better than John Andrews had feared back in 1958.
![Cover of the German brochure for the 1963 Ford Taunus 12M P4, showing part of a blue 12M with the title "der neue Taunus 12M"](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1962_Ford_Taunus-12M_der-neue-Taunus-12M_FMC-12m_01.jpg)
Cover of the initial German brochures for the new Taunus 12M. (Image: Ford Motor Company)
When the FWD Taunus 12M P4 debuted in September 1962, Ford-Werke officials were not very optimistic about its prospects either. It was new, which was good, and with a starting price of DM 5,330, it was a bit cheaper than its predecessor (and even more so if you considered that a heater, which was standard on the new car, had been an extra DM 160 on the old 12M, while a four-speed gearbox had been DM 75). However, the new 12M had a very peculiar mixture of vices and virtues.
Like the English Ford Cortina that made its public bow around the same time, the 12M P4 was really a class up from the contemporary C-segment in size and weight. It was significantly bigger than the Beetle, or the new Opel Kadett or Renault R8, as the following table illustrates. (We’ve also included the 1988 Honda Civic sedan, a C-segment car of 25 years later, as a more modern reference point.)
Model | Overall Length (in/mm) | Wheelbase (in/mm) | Overall Width (in/mm) | Overall Height (in/mm) | Curb Weight (lb/kg) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Ford Taunus 12M (P4) sedan | 167.2 in/4,248 mm | 99.5 in/2,527 mm | 62.8 in/1,594 mm | 57.4 in/1,458 mm | 1,863 lb/845 kg |
Ford Consul Cortina sedan | 170.5 in/4,330 mm | 98.0 in/2,490 mm | 63.0 in/1,600 mm | 57.4 in/1,448 mm | 1,766 lb/801 kg |
Volkswagen Beetle 1200 (standard) | 160.2 in/4,070 mm | 94.5 in/2,400 mm | 60.6 in/1,540 mm | 59.1 in/1,500 mm | 1,609 lb/730 kg |
Ford Anglia 105E sedan | 153.5 in/3,900 mm | 90.5 in/2,300 mm | 57.3 in/1,455 mm | 56.6 in/1,438 mm | 1,695 lb/769 kg |
Opel Kadett A sedan | 154.4 in/3,923 mm | 91.5 in/2,325 mm | 57.9 in/1,470 mm | 55.1 in/1,410 mm | 1,521 lb/690 kg |
Renault Dauphine sedan | 157.1 in/3,937 mm | 89.4 in/2,267 mm | 58.7 in/1,524 mm | 55.5 in/1,441 mm | 1,43 lb/650 kg |
Renault R8 sedan | 157.1 in/3,990 mm | 89.4 in/2,270 mm | 58.7 in/1,490 mm | 55.5 in/1,410 mm | 1,610 lb/730 kg |
1988 Honda Civic sedan | 166.5 in/4,230 mm | 98.4 in/2,500 mm | 66.5 in/1,690 mm | 53.5 in/1,360 mm | 1,874 lb/850 kg |
However, where the Cortina made its class-straddling position a commercial virtue, offering buyers a bigger, more powerful car than the Anglia for a fairly modest price premium, the 12M seemed like a stripped-down big sedan trying, not very convincingly, to pass itself off as a small economy model.
![Line drawing of the 1963 Ford Taunus 12M sedan calling out its major metric dimensions](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1963_Ford_Taunus-12M_line-drawing-dimensions_FMC-12M-P4-dimensionen.jpg)
Diagram of the Taunus 12M calling out its (metric) interior and exterior dimensions. The exterior dimensions are as stated in the table above, plus a track width of 49.0 inches (1,245 mm). The interior dimensions include front headroom of 38.5 inches (979 mm), front legroom of 43.0 inches (1,092 mm), front shoulder room of 49.6 inches (1,260 mm), front hip room 52.6 inches (1,337 mm), rear headroom 38.4 inches (973 mm), rear legroom of 3,78 inches (962 mm), rear hip room (1,314 mm), and rear shoulder room of 48.7 inches (1,237 mm). (Image: Ford Motor Company)
Despite its dimensions and the advantage of a flat cabin floor, the FWD 12M P4 was not substantially more commodious than the RWD Cortina. Front-seat passengers enjoyed generous legroom in the 12M, and the standard front bench seat (not common on German cars of this period) made it possible to carry a child between the driver and front passenger, but headroom was ungenerous for taller drivers, rear seat room was unexceptional, and rear passengers didn’t have enough thigh support because the seat cushion had been shortened to give the illusion of greater legroom. Compared to a Beetle, the 12M had an enormous trunk, but the utility of its impressive nominal volume was also compromised by a small opening, high liftover height, the intrusion of the rear wheel houses, and the position of the spare tire. Moreover, the 12M was far from luxurious in either fit and finish or equipment, and the paucity of brightwork made it seem rather austere even by German standards.
![1963 Ford Taunus 12M sedan luggage compartment](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1963_Ford_Taunus-12M_luggage-compartment_FMC-SAE08.jpg)
Ford claimed the 12M P4 had 19.8 cu. ft. (560 L) of trunk space, although not all of that space was really usable unless you were in the habit of liquefying your baggage for maximum space efficiency. (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
It was also quite heavy for its class and era. As Bernhard Osswald had predicted, Dearborn’s original weight targets had proved wildly optimistic: The production 12M P4 was some 263 lb (120 kg) heavier than the initial I-PF-4 target. Embarrassingly, the FWD 12M was also almost 100 lb (44 kg) heavier than the RWD Cortina, which had benefited from an aggressive program of cost and weight reduction.
![1964 Opel Kadett A two-door sedan (red) front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1964_Opel_Kadett-A-sedan-red_front3q_Lothar-Spurzem-CCBYSA20DE.jpg)
The Taunus 12M P4’s most direct German rival was the RWD Opel Kadett A, which arrived at about the same time, and was closer to what the stillborn Ford-Werke NPX-C5 probably would have become in production. The Kadett A was substantially smaller than the FWD 12M P4 and weighed a whopping 386 lb (175 kg) less, which meant better acceleration and fuel economy. In West Germany, the Kadett started at DM 5,075 — DM 255 (about 5 percent) cheaper than the 12M. (Photo: “Opel Kadett, Bj. 1964 (2014-09-13 6998).JPG” by Lothar Spurzem, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Germany (CC BY-SA 2.0 DE) license)
The P4’s weight inevitably hurt its performance. With its 1,183 cc (72.2 cu. in.) V-4 engine making a modest 40 PS DIN (29.4 kW; advertised in some markets as 50 hp SAE gross), the 12M could be outrun by the lighter Volkswagen Beetle at around-town speeds, and keeping up with traffic required full use of the (excellent) column-shifted four-speed gearbox. Ford-Werke initially claimed 0–62 mph (0–100 km/h) acceleration of 27.5 seconds, but the German car magazine auto motor und sport (AMS) couldn’t do better than 30 seconds, and the auto club magazine ADAC-Motorwelt needed 31 seconds. As expected of a German car, the 12M could cruise at its top speed of 78 mph (125 km/h), although it took its time getting there, and slowing down produced substantial brake fade. The factory’s claimed 31.4 mpg (7.5 L/100 km) was possible only if you stayed in the slow lane, although AMS found that full-speed, full-throttle Autobahn cruising still returned a respectable 25 mpg (9.4 L/100 km); their testers recorded 28.7 mpg (8.2 L/100 km/h) overall.
![Photo of the Cardinal/Taunus 12M P4 "ponypak" engine, drivetrain, suspension, and steering](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1963_Ford_Taunus-12M_ponypak-brochure_FMC-12m_04-crop.jpg)
This photo, extracted from the 1962 German brochure for the Taunus 12M P4, shows the Cardinal “ponypak” in initial production form, with the transverse leaf spring and steering linkage removed to provide a clearer view of the engine and transaxle. The caption, “So kommen seine 40 PS direktauf die Straße,” means roughly “How 40 PS gets to the pavement.” (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
Front-wheel drive gave the 12M excellent crosswind stability and fine wet-weather traction, and ride quality was exceptionally compliant for a car of this size and vintage. Handling was another matter. Unsurprisingly, the 12M P4 had substantial body lean and heavy understeer in fast turns, but it also had a tendency to hoist its inside rear wheel in dramatic fashion, which the controversial Stuttgart-based consumer testing magazine DM (Deutsches Mark) claimed could make the car roll over if pushed too hard. Ford-Werke officials were initially prepared to contest these allegations in court, which wouldn’t have been the first or the last time DM was sued — in 1964, Volkswagen filed a DM 10 million lawsuit over the magazine’s extremely negative long-term review of the Type 3 Volkswagen 1500 S. However, Andrews backed down after test drivers in Cologne found that the 12M could in fact end up on its roof in this way. This seems to have been a very rare occurrence in the real world, but AMS road testers repeatedly expressed concerns about the 12M’s unexpected penchant for abrupt trailing-throttle oversteer. Tucking in the nose if the driver lifted off the throttle in a fast turn was not an uncommon trait among older FWD cars, but it wasn’t in keeping with the P4’s otherwise sedate manners, and it could give unwary drivers a nasty surprise. Worse, carburetor starvation in hard left-hand turns could potentially produce the same effect even without lifting, albeit at much higher cornering speeds than most 12M drivers were likely to attempt.
![No. 75 Ford Taunus 12M hoisting its rear wheel at the 1964 Monte Carlo Rally](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1964_Ford_Taunus-12M-BW_wheel-hoisting-Monte-Carlo-Rally_FMC.jpg)
In hard cornering, the Taunus 12M P4 would lean dramatically and hoist its inside rear wheel, as driver Joachim Springer demonstrates in the Number 75 car during a circuit test at the Rallye Automobile Monte-Carlo in January 1964. Although a driver of Springer’s skill was unlikely to do so, either lifting abruptly off the accelerator or making sudden steering corrections at this stage could have unpleasant consequences. Sharp trailing-throttle oversteer was the most likely outcome, but Ford-Werke test drivers found the 12M could tip over after hoisting its tail like this. (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
Complicating that issue was the P4’s steering, which drew many complaints. Not only was it under-geared (steering ratio was 22:1) and lifeless in the customary American manner, it was also imprecise enough to frustrate quick evasive maneuvers. This was due in large part to the ponypak layout: Attaching the suspension arms to the powertrain rather than the unit body forced an uneasy compromise between chassis tuning and the need to isolate the body structure from the V-4 engine’s inherent secondary imbalance. The engine mounts were soft enough to allow significant compliance steer, which contributed materially to the vague steering response. On top of that, you could sometimes feel the powertrain shifting on its mounts (which wasn’t nearly as severe as the bucking that had plagued the prototypes, but could still be disconcerting), and some road surfaces would set up an unpleasant front wheel shake. Despite these handicaps, the engine wasn’t isolated enough to mask its vibration, especially at idle, which made the 12M feel crude despite its cushy ride. The V-4 was also unpleasantly loud on acceleration, although the lack of fan noise provided some mitigation at cruising speeds.
![Illustration of the engine mounting system of the 1963 Ford Taunus 12M](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1963_Ford_Taunus-12M_engine-mounts_FMC-SAE30.jpg)
Many, though not all, of the Taunus 12M P4’s early flaws were traceable to the “ponypak.” As this illustration shows, the suspension arms were hung from the powertrain, which was carried on three rubber-insulated mounts, the rearmost of which was attached to a rubber-insulated crossmember. This produced a mutually unsatisfactory compromise between engine isolation and wheel control. The early Cardinal prototypes had been much worse, suffering severe front-end bucking as the powertrain pitched and swayed on its mounts; fixing the spring clamp to a crossmember rather than to the top of the gearbox housing reduced but didn’t wholly eliminate the problem. (Image: Ford Motor Company)
Ford-Werke in this period still couldn’t approach Volkswagen build quality, and the reliability of the 12M was a mixed bag. The V-4 engine, transaxle, and driveshafts were surprisingly robust, especially given that they were all-new, but Automobil-Report repair data revealed frequent problems with the 12M’s electrical and exhaust systems — almost half of first-year owners needed unscheduled exhaust repairs, perhaps reflecting the stresses imposed by excessive powertrain movement. Paint flaws and body rattles were common, and rust could be a problem. Also, as AMS discovered when a rock hit their long-term test car’s windshield, the P4 didn’t have laminated safety glass.
The car’s American origins were by this time common knowledge, which wasn’t necessarily to the 12M’s advantage in European markets. John Andrews made a game attempt to tell the German press that the new Taunus 12M was 100 percent a Cologne design, but this fooled no one. Almost everyone connected with the auto industry had heard of the Cardinal project by this time, and even if they somehow hadn’t, the 12M P4 was marked by many obvious concessions to American tastes. Reinhard Seiffert of auto motor und sport compared it to an American attempt to replicate European beer, which strikes us as one of the most cordially damning things a German reviewer could say about a product.
![1964–1966 Ford Taunus 12M dashboard with radio and clock](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1964-1966_Ford_Taunus-12M_dashboard_Holger-Menzke-attr.jpg)
The Taunus 12M P4 dashboard underwent only minor changes through the production run of the P4, but the 160 km/h speedometer marks this example as a 1964 or later model. Curiously, despite its radio and clock, this car lacks the optional passenger-side grab handle above the glove box, which was an essential 12M accessory. The P4’s doors couldn’t be locked from inside, so passengers grasping for something to hold onto in a fast right-hand turn might conceivably find themselves getting up close and personal with the pavement! (Photo: “Ford12m-1Serie-Armaturenbrett.jpg” by Holger Menzke, who allows anyone to use the photo for any purpose, provided that the copyright holder is properly attributed; this version was resized 2024 by Aaron Severson)
Nonetheless, if the new 12M was still a curate’s egg, good only in parts, it had enough points of interest to make it worth a look, which hadn’t always been the case with its predecessor. Initial sales were very respectable, neck and neck with the cheaper Kadett, and Ford anticipated more: After spending years futilely chasing mergers with other automakers as a way of expanding Ford-Werke production volume, the German subsidiary established an all-new assembly plant in Belgium, along the Albert Canal outside the town of Genk, at a reported cost of $120 million USD. This plant, perhaps the most dramatic indicator to that point of the company’s faith in the Common Market, began producing the Taunus 12M in August 1963 and was fully operational by 1964. Genk would eventually assemble more than half of all P4 production and more than three-fourths of the subsequent P6 line.
In July 1963, British Petroleum (BP) approached Ford-Werke to propose using the Taunus 12M for endurance record attempts, as a way of simultaneously promoting the new BP Longlife motor oil and the durability of the FWD car. A 12M randomly selected from a French Ford depot in Rouen and fitted with safety equipment was driven continuously at top speed for 141 days on the Miramas Autodrome oval track in southern France, driving the equivalent of the distance from the Earth to the moon at an average speed of 65 mph (105 km/h). There was an interruption of about 12 hours on October 29 after driver Michael Grammond went off the road and rolled twice, but the extremely battered car was hastily hammered back into driveable shape and went on, eventually completing 221,475 miles (356,430 km) before Ford-Werke and BP called a halt on November 28, having set 140 international and world class records. Remarkably, the record-setting car eventually ended up in private hands, still wearing its many scars, honorably earned.
![1964 Ford Taunus 12M BP endurance car](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1964_Ford_Taunus-12M-endurance-car-BW_front_FMC-P4-Miramar-Rekord.jpg)
The record-setting 12M endurance car on the track at Miramas Autodrome in fall 1963. The car ran flat out for 141 consecutive days, interrupted only by pit stops and, in one occasion, emergency repairs under the watchful eyes of FIA officials. (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
The Cardinal Molts
The termination of the U.S. Cardinal/Redwing was a blow to Ford-Werke in that the new engine plant was initially operating well below its expected capacity, with no U.S. production to keep the factory operating in the black. However, the silver lining was that Ford-Werke was no longer obliged to kowtow to American tastes and priorities, and could finally tackle the 12M P4’s assorted shortcomings.
Leading the agenda was more power. The 1,183 cc (72.2 cu. in.) V-4 remained standard throughout the model run, but from December 1962, there was also a new 12M TS (for “Tourensport”) model with a 1,498 cc (91.4 cu. in.) engine. This was not quite the same as the aborted Cardinal A engine, which had a smaller bore and a longer stroke (giving a displacement of 1,466 cc or 89.5 cu. in.). The TS engine had the same stroke as the 1.2-liter engine, but a bigger bore, a bigger carburetor, and a higher compression ratio, giving 55 PS (40.5 kW; 62 hp SAE gross) and 80 lb-ft (107 N-m) of torque, compared to just 58 lb-ft (80 N-m) for the base engine.
![194 Ford Taunus 12M coupe (red) front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1964_Ford_Taunus-12M-coupe-red_front3q_Martin-Vaehning-CCBYND20.jpg)
Introduced in September 1963 and offered only with the 1,498 cc (91.4 cu. in.) engine, the Taunus 12M coupe was 2.9 inches (74 mm) longer than the sedan and notably sleeker-looking. It was more aerodynamic too — auto motor und sport managed a top speed of 91 mph (146 km/h) with a 1964 coupe, abetted by a taller 3.56:1 axle ratio (compared to 3.78:1 for the 1.2-liter sedan). (Photo: “Ford Taunus 12m Coupe Lingen 14.06.2015 Bernd Rosemeyer-Oldtimer-Classic Tour” by Martin Vähning, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0) license)
Even with a taller standard axle ratio, the extra power and torque had a transformative effect: 0–62 mph (0–100 km/h) acceleration times fell from around 30 seconds to 17 seconds or less, with much better flexibility, while top speed was now 84–85 mph (135–138 km/h), comparable to a six-cylinder American compact. While the base 12M was a slug, the 12M TS was quick enough to make it something of a performance bargain. Handling was still a weak point, but the TS had more comprehensive standard equipment, including front bucket seats, nicer trim, and thick carpeting that provided better sound insulation. The TS package cost an extra DM 870 — over 15 percent more expensive than the base car — but it was really a much better all-around value. Starting in September 1963, a cheaper 1.5-liter engine became available as a standalone option on the 12M, without the TS trim and equipment. This had a lower compression ratio and the smaller carburetor from the base engine, giving 50 PS (36.8 kW; 57 hp SAE gross) and 76 lb-ft (103 N-m) for an extra DM 120. It was thirstier than the 1.2-liter car — AMS averaged 24.4 mpg (9.7 L/100 km) — but its performance was much sprightlier.
![1964 Ford Taunus 12M Kombi (light blue) rear 3q with hatch open](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1964_Ford_Taunus_12M-Kombi-ltblue_rear-hatch-up_FMC-P4-Kombi-05.jpg)
Although it was never very common, accounting for fewer than 50,000 units in the P4 generation (plus an unknown number of the commercial Kastenwagen (van) with no rear side windows), the 12M Kombi was a capable compact load-hauler, taking full advantage of the FWD platform’s flat floor and giving away surprisingly little in usable volume to the bigger Taunus 17M and Opel Rekord wagons. The lower liftover height was also a plus. Note that to accommodate the tailgate, the fuel filler has been moved to the right rear fender. (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
A two-door Kombiwagen (station wagon) was added to the line in March 1963, followed in September by a four-door sedan and a 2+2 coupe, the latter only available in TS form. From August 1963, the coachbuilder Karl Deutsch offered a 2+2 cabriolet, although since it cost almost 50 percent more than the coupe on which it was based, the cabriolet was rare.
![1964–1966 Ford Taunus 12M four-door sedan (white with red roof) front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1964-1966_Ford_Taunus-12M-4dr-sed-white-red_front3q_peterolthof-CCBYND20.jpg)
Although a four-door sedan was added to the Taunus 12M P4 line a year after launch (and remained available through the run of the P6), German buyers in this era tended to prefer two-door sedans, perhaps because, in those days before child safety locks, a two-door model entailed less risk of inadvertently scattering errant children along the roadside. The four-door also cost DM 350 more than the two-door sedan. (Photo: “Ford Taunus 12M P4” by peterolthof, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0) license)
Somewhat surprisingly, Ford-Werke homologated the P4 in the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) Touring class in the fall of 1962. Even with the TS engine, the FWD 12M was underpowered for its class; in 1964, the factory ran four specially prepared 12M coupes at the 6 Hours of Nürburgring, with undistinguished results and various technical problems. However, the 12M did achieve some rally success: Rudi Golderer used a 12M to win the German Rally Championship in 1964, while Alfred Burkhardt and Heinrich Zertari took the championship in another 12M the following year.
![Rudi Golderer leaning on the hood of a 1964 Ford Taunus 12M](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1964_Ford_Taunus-12M_Rudi-Golderer_FMC-Golderer-Tourenwagenmeister.jpg)
Rally driver Rudi Golderer poses with his 1964 Taunus 12M (P4). (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
The rally drivers benefited from some recent improvements to the 12M’s handling. Throughout 1963, Ford-Werke engineers had grappled with the various issues posed by the P4’s “ponypak.” This was eventually addressed in two stages. The first step was to revise the transverse leaf spring to use two spring mounts rather than one, which provided greater front roll stiffness and self-centering action. The two-point spring mount was similar to the latest transverse front spring designed by Dante Giacosa and Ettore Cordiano for the new Autobianchi Primula, and was subject to Fiat patents; Ford-Werke body development chief Waldemar Ebers drove to Turin in the spring of 1963 to negotiate a licensing agreement.
![Diagram of dual-point transverse front leaf spring for the Autobianchi Primula](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1964_Autobianchi_Primula_front-spring.jpg)
This diagram (which is not to scale) illustrates the basic layout of the patented dual-point transverse leaf spring arrangement Fiat developed for the Autobianchi Primula. Each end of the main leaf spring (colored blue and identified by the number “5”) was riveted at four points to the spherical housing of the upper ball joint of the steering knuckle (numbered “13”) and a leaf spring section (colored purple and numbered “10” and “9”). There were two additional leaves above the main leaf (the first colored red and identified by the number “6” and the second colored green and numbered “7”); the leaves were joined with clamping bands (colored orange and numbered “16”) and a single central bolt (numbered “8”). Each of the two spring mounts terminated in an elastic bearing (numbered “2” and “3”), with rubber cushions that allowed the suspension leaves to move laterally relative to one another. (author diagram, based on British and German patent illustrations)
Testing of the new suspension began in the summer of 1963, and the revised front springs were added in production in the late spring of 1964, perhaps six weeks before the 6 Hours of Nürburging. The early P4’s rear anti-roll bar was deleted at the same time, and firmer shock absorbers were added for better body control, at a slight cost in ride quality.
The next step was to abandon the ponypak concept entirely, replacing the existing lower wishbones with wide lower A-arms attached to the unit body rather than to the gearbox housing. This was implemented in production in September 1964, and markedly improved the P4’s deportment. The 12M would still oversteer if the driver lifted off the throttle in a turn, but the previous steering vagueness was greatly reduced, and the revised suspension allowed the powertrain mounts to be re-tuned to better isolate the V-4 engine from the body structure. The V-4 wasn’t any quieter or smoother than before, but its coarse buzz was now at a more comfortable remove, particularly at idle. On all models, the new front suspension was also accompanied by standard front disc brakes, providing much more consistent stopping performance with less fade.
![Brochure photo of 1965 or 1966 Ford Taunus 12M front disc brake with suspension arms and steering linkage](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1965_Ford_Taunus-12M_front-disc_FMC-AR-96-212010-30138-crop.jpg)
This photo from a late (1965 or 1966) German Taunus 12M brochure shows the front disc brakes added for 1965, and also gives a close look at how the front suspension fits together. At the top, painted red, is the transverse leaf spring, which is bolted to the upper ball joint housing of the steering knuckle, painted green. At the bottom, painted lighter blue, is the new lower wishbone, which is attached to the body rather than the gearbox housing. In between, identifiable by its rubber boots and coarse dark blue paint, is the driveshaft. (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
At the same time, the TS engine got a higher compression ratio, bringing output to 65 PS (47.8 kW, 73 hp SAE gross) and 83.2 lb-ft (117 N-m) of torque. It now required premium fuel, but it still returned respectable fuel economy; Ford-Werke claimed 24.8 mpg (9.5 L/100 km). More than three-fifths of all 12M buyers settled for the base engine, which was cheaper and more economical, but the late 12M TS was probably the most desirable iteration of the P4 generation: a little homely-looking and still not terribly agile, but a comfortable cruiser with sprightly performance and reassuring winter traction, for a palatable price. Like all late 12M P4 models, it also had revised interior ventilation, with “Vario-Air” vents on either end of the dashboard rather than footwell flaps (which provided greater air volume, but were difficult to adjust while driving), and a new automatic choke. It was a far cry from the smaller, cheaper RWD car Ford-Werke had wanted to built, but in its maturity, the 12M TS wasn’t a bad effort.
![1966 Ford Taunus 12M coupe (red) rear 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1966_Ford_Taunus-12M-coupe-red_rear3q_Niels-de-Wit-CCBY20.jpg)
The 1965–1966 Taunus 12M P4 coupe looked the same as before, but it had a better suspension, front disc brakes, a 65 PS (47.8 kW) engine, and a taller (numerically lower) first gear to reduce the 1.2-liter car’s big gap between first and second. It was capable of reaching 62 mph (100 km/h) in as little as 15 seconds flat — muscular performance for a mid-sixties German car of its price range. List price in West Germany in 1966 was DM 6,390, DM 400 more than an Opel Kadett B coupe, but DM 790 less than the much slower Volkswagen Karmann Ghia 1300. (Photo: “1966 Ford Taunus 12M Coupé” by Niels de Wit, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) license)
With no U.S. model, total Taunus 12M P4 production through July 1966 was only about half the original target for the Cardinal program. Still, 680,206 cars in four years was hardly a disaster — it was 19 percent better than the old 12M and 15M had managed in 10 years, and at times, it outpaced the Opel Kadett A. In West Germany, interest in the FWD model helped to boost Ford-Werke market share to 14.4 percent in 1963, dipping to 11.3 percent in 1964 and 11.5 percent in 1965. Starting in 1964, the 12M also accounted for a good chunk of Cologne’s export business; 41 percent of P4 production was sold outside Germany. (There were no official U.S. imports of the P4, but the Taunus V-4 engine was eventually offered as an industrial and marine engine in the U.S. as well as in Europe.)
![1965 Ford Taunus 12M German print ad showing the headline "Der Taunus 12M beleibt, wie er ist!"](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1965_Ford_Taunus-12M_bleibt-wie-ist_FMC_Print_Ad-0003_0309.jpg)
This wordy, curiously defensive German print ad, probably circa September 1965, shows new Ford-Werke managing director Robert G. Layton declaring, “Der Taunus 12M bleibt, wie er ist!” — “The Taunus 12M remains as it is!” — and assuring owners that their current cars were the same as the ones Ford exhibited at the IAA show in Frankfurt. The attempt to suggest Volkswagen-like continuity of design seems unnecessarily self-conscious, particularly considering that the 12M P4 was then less than a year from a major redesign. (Image: Ford Motor Company)
![Photo of the final Taunus 12M P4, with a sign on the roof and a bouquet of flowers on its hood](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1966_Ford_Taunus-12M-BW_last-car_FMC-19660712-LAATSTE-TAUNUS-P4-1-crop.jpg)
The last Taunus 12M of the P4 generation, a two-door sedan, rolls off the assembly line in Genk, Belgium, on July 12, 1966. The sign, written in German, Dutch, and English, gives the total of P4 production: 680,206 cars, 363,345 of them built in Köln (Cologne) and 316,861 in Genk. (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
Where the 12M looked far less successful was in comparison to the English Ford Cortina. German Fords were rare in the UK (although a few were offered there in right-hand drive form), and English Fords were not often seen in the Bundesrepublik, but the two subsidiaries’ products still competed directly in some export markets. The Cortina was quicker and more agile than the 12M, and while it didn’t have the FWD car’s flat floor, it gave away little in usable interior space. Its appeal was bolstered by a lengthy options list and an array of upscale and sporty models — including the racy Lotus-Cortina — that demonstrated their sporting bona fides in sedan racing as well as rally competition. Offered at generally attractive prices, the Cortina was very popular, selling more than 1 million units between 1962 and 1966. Since it was less mechanically complex than the FWD Taunus 12M, it would have been more profitable even if their sales had been equal, but outselling the P4 by almost 50 percent made the Cortina a huge breakout hit, where the 12M’s commercial performance was merely okay.
![1963 Ford Consul Cortina Super two-door saloon (maroon) front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1963_Ford_Consul-Cortina-Super-maroon_front3q_Charles01-CCBYSA30.jpg)
Introduced a few weeks later than the German Taunus 12M TS, the English Ford Cortina Super was conceptually very similar, offering better equipment and a 1,498 cc (91.4 cu. in.) engine with more power for a modest price premium. It was a great success, and hotter versions of the 1.5-liter engine went on to an impressive competition record. (Photo: “Ford Cortina Mark I reg Aug 1963 pre first facelift.JPG” by Charles01, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) license)
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.
![1964 Ford Prelate (P6) fastback coupe styling prototype rear 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1964_Ford_P6-coupe-fastback-model_rear3q-FWFS-cs382-3.jpg)
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 was 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.
![1968 Ford 12M 1300 two-door sedan (white) front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1968_Ford_12M-1300-2dr-sed-white_front3q_Berthold-Werner-CCBYSA30.jpg)
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.
![Photo of the front power pack (engine, transaxle, suspension) of the 1966 Ford Taunus 12M/15M P6](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1966_Ford_Taunus-P6_power-pack_FMC-2159.150.jpg)
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.
![1968 Ford 12M 1300 two-door sedan (white) rear 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1968_Ford_12M-1300-2dr-sed-white_rear3q_Berthold-Werner-CCBYSA30.jpg)
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).
![1967 Ford Taunus 15M two-door sedan (white) front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1967_Ford_15M_2dr-sed-white_front3q_Charles01-CCBYSA30.jpg)
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.
![1967 Ford Taunus 15M two-door sedan (white) rear 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1967_Ford_15M_2dr-sed-white_rear3q_Charles01-CCBYSA30.jpg)
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.
![Cutaway illustration of Ford Taunus P6 suspension and steering seen from the rear](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1966_Ford_Taunus-P6_suspension-steering_FMC-Archiv-Nr-N-05408-Zeichnun-Vorderachse.jpg)
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.
![1967 Ford Taunus 15M coupe (dark blue) rear 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1967_Ford_15M-coupe-dk-blue_rear3q_peterolthof-CCBYND20.jpg)
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.
![X-ray front 3q view of 1966 Ford Taunus 15M P6 two-door sedan](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1966_Ford_Taunus-15M_front3q-xray_FMC-Archiv-Nr-N-05407-15M-Roentgenbild.jpg)
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.
![1969 Ford 15M RS coupe (silver with black roof) front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1969_Ford_15MRS-silver_front3q_Alex-WI-PD.jpg)
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.
![1969 Ford 15M XL coupe (red with black roof) front 3q and rear 3q side by side](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1969_Ford_15MXL-coupe-red_front3qrear3q_Alex-WI-PD.jpg)
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.
![1972 Ford Escort 1100 two-door sedan (brown) front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1972_Ford_Escort-1100-2dr-brown_front3q_Charles01-CCBYSA30.jpg)
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.
![1969 Ford Capri 1500XL (light blue with fog lamps) front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1969_Ford_Capri-1500XL-lt-blue_front3q_peterolthof-CCBYND20.jpg)
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.
![1968 Ford Transit van (white with light blue side spear) front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1968_Ford_Transit-white-with-blue_front3q_allen-watkins-CCBYSA20.jpg)
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.
![1972 Ford Taunus 1600 L four-door sedan (brown) front 3q](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1972_Ford_Taunus-1600L_4dr-sed-brown_front3q_peterolthof-CCBYND20.jpg)
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)
Cardinal Aftermath
In the 1961 report that helped Iacocca to justify killing the U.S. Cardinal project, Jack Eckhold predicted that there would be a need for a car like the Cardinal about 15 years in the future. That this happened to coincide with the eventual launch of the Ford Fiesta was pure happenstance; an internal battle was already brewing by mid-1969 over the need for a B-segment car smaller and cheaper than the Escort, which was too big and too expensive for many buyers outside Western Europe and the U.S. This fight, which we’ve previously chronicled, closely paralleled the arguments over the C-segment a decade earlier, with some factions urging that Ford risked shutting itself out of emerging markets by not having such a car and others insisting that it was waste of money to pursue a low-profit segment that some Ford executives confidently proclaimed would soon disappear completely. The trend in postwar Ford products, even in Europe, had almost always been upward in size and price, and any proposal to the contrary met with fierce resistance, whatever the market trend data showed.
We very much doubt that Eckhold’s remarks (to which we don’t have access except via Kurt Ludvigsen’s description in Special Interest Autos No. 41) rose to the level of a serious proposal. In product planning terms, 15 years in the future meant “don’t worry about it”: not so far into the realm of science fiction that it mightn’t be worth an advanced study or two, but safely beyond the reach of even long-lead product development. The immediate object of Eckhold’s report was almost certainly to reinforce the conclusion Lee Iacocca had already reached: that the Cardinal wasn’t something Ford Division needed, either then or in the immediately foreseeable future.
![Brochure photo showing a female model at the wheel of a red 1965 or 1966 Ford Taunus 12M coupé](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1965_Ford_Taunus-12M-coupe-red_interior-brochure_FMC-AR-96-212010-30138-crop.jpg)
With bucket seats, attractive colors, better equipment, and much plusher trim than Ford Division originally planned for the basic U.S. Cardinal — paired with a much improved suspension, better brakes, and enough power for American traffic — the later Taunus 12M TS might have found a niche in the U.S. market, at least in coupe and wagon form. Note the useful passenger-side grab handle; as mentioned previously, this was a vital item for brisk cornering with a front-seat passenger. (Photo: Ford Motor Company)
Was Iacocca right? In the short term, probably — the styling of the Cardinal A did have a dowdy Rambler American vibe, something that became a veritable marketing death sentence in the U.S. by the mid-sixties, so it probably wouldn’t have been a strong seller, at least in sedan form. The greater immediate risk to Ford Division would have been cannibalization, which was already an issue with the Falcon. Although Ford had sold more than 400,000 Falcons for 1960, total Ford Division sales actually declined slightly, and the division lost more than four percentage points of U.S. market share (from 27.3 percent in 1959 to 22.6 percent in 1960). It appears likely that the Falcon primarily attracted the same entry-level buyers who had previously been buying the full-size Custom 300, which in previous years had been the cheapest U.S.-made Ford; its sales dropped from 272,726 in 1959 to almost nothing in 1960. The last thing Ford needed was to repeat that process with the Falcon and the Cardinal/Redwing. Even if the Redwing wasn’t hopelessly unprofitable on a unit basis, as Iacocca insisted it would be, shifting entry-level buyers from a $2,200 product to a $1,950 one and then a $1,750 one over the course of four model years wouldn’t have looked good for the division’s balance sheet.
This was the idée fixe that doomed most U.S. attempts to develop viable subcompacts: the presumption that only kooks bought smaller cars for any reason other than penury, so the only way to sell such models in any numbers was to cut costs to the bone, which also precluded any real profit. Ironically, the strongest counterargument was Iacocca’s own Mustang, but it was a lesson that Detroit never really absorbed, and the Cardinal was handicapped by that thinking from its inception: By European standards, the Cardinal was neither very small nor particularly inexpensive, but it was tailored for American cheapskates, just as its road manners were tailored for American driving styles, and even eight years of revisions and refinements couldn’t wholly erase that stigma. Could something more have been done with the basic package? In principle, maybe, but Ford Division was unlikely to do so when there was far more money to be made on the simpler, more technologically orthodox Mustang. Moreover, even the German Prelate/P6, which had less dowdy styling and completely abandoned the original “ponypak” concept, was still not very competitive with the better European FWD cars except on price.
Nonetheless, the death of the subcompact market that Iacocca had confidently predicted in 1961–1962 never came to pass, and the decline in American buyers’ interest in smaller cars was strictly temporary. U.S. Renault sales collapsed beyond recovery in the early sixties, but U.S. Volkswagen sales did not, exceeding 300,000 for the first time in 1964, and within a few years, Nissan/Datsun and Toyota also became serious players in North America. Moreover, while Renault was no longer having much luck selling cars in the States, it had no such problems in Europe, where Renault production climbed from about half a million units a year in the early sixties to nearly three-quarters of a million by 1967–1968.
Compromised as they were, the Taunus 12M/15M P4 and P6 were therefore important products for Ford-Werke through a difficult period. If they were ultimately dead ends in terms of product development, they provided some useful building blocks for Ford’s European future, including the Cologne-Niehl engine plant, the assembly plant in Genk, and the long-lived Taunus V-4/Cologne V-6 engine family. Ford-Werke built 4,455,009 60-degree Taunus V-4 engines through 1985, with the related V-6 family accounting for a staggering 14,277,474 engines through 2011, 8,724,600 of those the 4.0-liter (244 cu. in.) OHV and SOHC engines once ubiquitous in Ford’s profit-spinning trucks and SUVs. It wasn’t the payoff Ford senior management expected back in 1960, but Ford probably did get its money’s worth in engine production alone. Significantly, a lot of that payoff might never have been possible if not for the Cardinal project. Even though the U.S. version was canceled, the expectation that the FWD car would also be built and sold in the States made it significantly easier for Ford management to justify the necessary European investments, which Dearborn had been resisting for years.
![Line drawing of the Ford Cardinal/Taunus 12M, showing the powertrain layout](https://ateupwithmotor.com/contentfiles/uploads/1962_Ford_Cardinal_cutaway-mechanical_FMC-P4-Roentgen-01-crop.jpg)
Despite its initial design flaws, the Cardinal/12M was Ford’s most technologically ambitious production car of the sixties. (Image: Ford Motor Company)
In his 1984 memoir, Iacocca generously allowed that the Cardinal would have gone over better in the U.S. in the seventies, after the 1973–1974 OPEC oil embargo. By that time, of course, the P4 and P6 were long dead, but for a few years later in the decade, the U.S. did get a federalized version of the Mk1 Fiesta. The Fiesta was relatively short-lived in the U.S. due to high European demand and importation limits for the new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations, and so for 1981, it was succeeded by a locally built version of the FWD Escort, which was just as severely compromised for American tastes as the original Cardinal had been. Where the European Mk3 Escort overcame a bumpy launch to become a respected C-segment player, the American car was seldom more than a bargain basement special, again selling more on low price than on merit.
Ford subsequently revisited the “world car” idea several more times, usually with very mixed results. The priorities and expectations of major automotive markets were still just too different, and the economies of scale were seldom as attractive in practice as they seemed like they should be, complicated by factors like shifting exchange rates. With Ford’s share of the European market diminishing precipitously, they’ll likely keep trying, although given the trends in electrification and the fact that Ford no longer makes any passenger cars other than a diminishing number of Mustang coupes, any true “world vehicle” Ford fields may be far removed from the now-extinct Fiesta, Focus, or Mondeo/Contour, much less their almost forgotten FWD ancestors.
AUTHOR’S NOTES
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NOTES ON SOURCES
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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.