The Design Makers - Inside Ford Design

What does it take to design a modern car and who are the people that do this? To answer those questions, Ford opened the doors of its very secretive Design studios in the 1970s and gave the public a look at how cars are created.
We meet the designers and see how they take a concept from imagination to a reality as a car.
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Ref: S047

[@KingRoseArchives]

No, I worked at GM in the video department and left to launch the History Channel with an automotive history series. I made over 200 auto history program for channels around the world. I'm now just posting the raw materials I used to make the films. I always liked watching these and thought others might as well. To me they're really historical documents and they're a good way to learn about automotive history and the time period.

[@jmj18462]

Thank you so much for posting these fascinating videos!

[@lakshminarayanareddygurram8998]

You are the best camera man. This video is very good and important for automotive history.

[@the0nef0rg0tten]

My grandpa is in this! He's the English guy at the very beginning and, obviously, throughout

[@thetreblerebel]

Best chap of the whole video!

[@dkdzyn]

Incredible film. This was STILL the dominant environment I worked in as a Car Designer during the late 80's and early 90's.

[@yello355]

If I remember it was either '69 or '70. I was a clay sculptor in the Advanced Studio working on the '72 Torino,and the '72 full size Fords & Mercs. 1.5 years at Ford then to Art Center then to GM Design for 33 years.Left GM as Director of Design/Cadillac Exteriors

[@SpockvsMcCoy]

Cadillac had some very brilliant designs in the 1970s.

[@secondchapter]

2:13 - 2:30 That's me, my sister, and my daddy David Rees!!! SO proud of him!

[@peterkennedy439]

please

[@matrox]

Seems like a real cool dude!

[@2many2say]

@Tracey R: Sounds like his from the UK. Did he move from Ford Dunton which is the UK studio to Ford US?

[@selvoyfillerup8311]

Are you related to an artist named H Rees? I have one of his drawings of a mustang made in 1964.

[@yello355]

I remember the day they filmed some of the footage for this video. I was one of the clay modelers in the background. Cool stuff.

[@yourallbrainwashed]

Wow. Lucky

[@lrg3834]

john manoogian II, you people are really talented. You've brought much joy to many!

[@comdrsca]

A very cool look inside the workings of the Design Studio back in the day... 1968 I am guessing,, maybe late 67, as they were discussing the upcoming Continental Mark III, which was introduced mid yr 68 as a 69 model. Some of the notable faces i recognized were Gene Bordinat, Ken Spencer, Johnny Najjar, Buzz Grisinger, Don DeLaRossa and Gayle Halderman. This is priceless stuff here. Bet they hardly do one single thing the same way in the studios at Dearborn today.....

[@SuperPhDdoc]

hey "theOnefOrgOtten"- your grandpa with the English accent is also the greatest DAD on the planet- David Rees was not only brilliant at FMC but he IS brilliant as a dad and grandfather. THANK you for posting this FMC Designer C-Suite retiree's. YOU GUYS MADE Ford!!!

[@murraythet]

That would be David Rees! He was my manager for a while as was the next designer in the film; Ken Spencer. I was even a passenger in Ken Spencer's airplane. At 18:25 - 19:09 Ken Spencer discusses an Advanced Mustang concept based on one of my sketches. 12:00 - 13:33 is Glade Johnson who graduated from Art Center with me. Incredible to see this film all these years later.

[@SimonGomezV]

Car design in the dawn of the Mad Men era . . . thanks for posting this.

[@DavidJSmith-hl6kb]

I've been a Ford guy since the 60's and my father bought me a 66 ford Mustang Coupe (used) while back in High School in the 70's. I was interested in Auto Design back then and even took Art and Drafting while in High School. I also had a chance to go to the Pasadena School of Automotive Design when it was still located a in rehab home! Meanwhile as a African American I am glad to see that the Ford Motor Company was forward thinking and open mined enough to Hire Black Auto Designers back in the 70's! (see time mark:17:21)...God Bless!

[@talonsx494]

David J. Smith I was gonna say the same thing...I being a American African.(show them we are better) ...I have a design to totally bring back the T-Bird...But I'm not finished with school...so I'll go another route to make it real...I suffer with major dp so I have to...I grew up with a 1970 ford thunderbird (tank) lol. I'm in Pasadena now...still kinda homeless...my landlord had mental issues...kicked me out after I moved across country from DC. The cars and design schools are here...I need help to finish, and design friends! Hit me up. Car design makes me happy and sad.

[@KingRoseArchives]

Thanks for commenting. What are some of the cars that you were working on at the time? What year was it filmed? What did you do after working with Ford?

[@KingRoseArchives]

Glad you liked it. Good luck and look forward to seeing your creations on the road.

[@bermuda3619]

Thank you for bringing this piece of great history ford rocks my world

[@adityanarayan314]

I just started working in the S studio at Ford, as an advanced exterior designer. Incredible video, and its crazy to think how similar things still are! thanks for sharing!

[@secondchapter]

jrmosery86: You asked when the video was made - it had to be around 1969. I was around seven years old in that video.

[@AZHARArchitecture]

Thank you for this posting, it is an incredible piece of film making and a genuine insight into design, designers, studios and industry! Brilliant

[@KingRoseArchives]

Thank you Murray for sharing your memories. Much appreciated.

[@adityanarayan314]

I look at old cars a lot, there are a lot of cool ideas and proportions that have been explored in the past. Ford now has a strong design language that we all try to incorporate into our designs. The 105s fun, im sure you'll find our future small cars plenty fun too! Thanks for the wishes, gluck to you too!

[@pcno2832]

Now that you bring it up, I have to admire the design of the Explorers Ford has been making for about the past 8 or 9 years; nice smooth lines, angles only where needed and all of the lines in harmony with the motion of the wind. Despite actually being a very roomy box-on-wheels, the Explorer looks to be in motion even when sitting still. These having become the police vehicles of choice in the USA, I see a lot of them and they are so much easier on the eyes than most other SUVs.

[@carmine440]

This was great. The absolute pinnacle of design before everything fell off a cliff and never recovered. Even though I never liked the "Bunke Beak" T-birds, it was great to listen to the guy around 7:50 with the goatee talk about building cars with "identity, luxurious, strong, and powerful". That was probably the last time those words were used in a design studio. Soon after it was giant safety bumpers, downsizing, aerodynamic blobs and finally today... everything looks like an angry cockroach. Only way to improve this video would have been a Lee Iacocca walk through! Thanks for posting it!

[@KingRoseArchives]

I have to agree there is a lot sameness to design today and it did go through a terrible period of awkward attempts to incorporate the new safety requirements. The cars were ungainly and unappealing. Even though Pontiac and others tried to make it work -- remember the Bonneville ads showing off the resilient new bumper? They promoted that instead of performance since power took a nose dive when they tacked on all the emission control components. But they've evolved and performance is back and there are glimpses of great design that pop up. Bentley Continental GT, Jaguar F type, the S Class Mercedes, Tesla and I'm sure there's an America brand that's doing something right. But you're right, there's a lot of glop. On Iacocca, Ford did what the Soviets did. Once someone got the boot they were erased from history.

[@carmine440]

Lol on the Iacocca comment! I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but the perfect storm of regulation and apathy is on the horizon. Once these transport pods are driving themselves, there is no connection, no passion. Speaking of appliances, I noted the little segment on Philco. Remember when even fridges had style? Now they're commodities. This is where vehicles are headed :-( *I hope I'm wrong! I hope the future holds "identifiable, luxurious, strong, and powerful" land-cruiser class cars running along on a solar electric grid!

[@scottanderson3285]

Its fun to reminisce and compare the designs back then, when everything was so crude and rudimentary, compared to today..... The plastic Pontiac "beaks" were attributed to Bunkie Knudsen, who with John Z. DeLorean, loved that beaked Pontiac front end... Hence in the year or so that Knudsen came to Ford, he really left his imprint there, with his sidekick Larry Shinoda, who came in like a bull in a china shop... The Bunkie Bird Thunderbirds of 1970-71 were nothing less than hideous, to Thunderbird standards.... but they would have made great Grand Prixs. (^_~) It's still fun to only wonder where Ford may have gone in the sixties and seventies had George Walker gotten his wish and installed his heir apparent Elwood Engel into the top spot at Ford in April 1961, instead of Bordinat. Gene was a good businessman, but lacked all the panache and mystiique and "aura" that Walker, Earl, Exner and Mitchell had. Engel had style, hated the business end of things...he just wanted to design the best cars in the world and blow stuff up, and plant smoke bombs in his concept cars and pitch pennies across the design studio at unsuspecting designers and clay modelers. He was a well loved man by his crew in Advanced Design at Ford. Just ask Jack Telnack.

[@matrox]

Dats because of Govt. mandates, unfotunatley styling is now secondary. Do to gas mileage mandates cars are now designed in wind tunnels to get minimum drag for maximum MPG.

[@talonsx494]

carmine440 I liked the beak until I saw it was of Pontiac...

[@thetreblerebel]

I dig the dude's Red Cortina Ford powered sports car! Wowey!!

[@pcno2832]

This is quite a revealing film. I like the way they were scrutinizing the fit of the grille on the Lincoln (presumably, the Mark III); it makes sense, since those grilles were expensive and the car would have looked silly if the fit were anything less than perfect. At 19:23, it appears that they are discussing the shape of the '71-'73 Mustang, anticipating much of what led to the car's failure in the marketplace. They started out with something so over-styled that by the time they made it big enough to hold an engine and 2+2/2 passengers, it looked bloated. I've always thought that encouraging designers to start out with impractically sleek shapes was a bit roundabout, and prone to last minute compromises. If they had started with the targeted interior and under-hood dimensions, then tried to build the sleekest possible shape around them, effectively designing the car "from the inside out", I suspect that the final product would have looked better.

[@SpockvsMcCoy]

The grille of the 1969 Mark III was the most expensive of all American cars at that time. The goal of the design of the 1971 Mustang was to make the engine compartment wide enough for a big block 429 V-8.

[@Requiredfields2]

It's just my thing and I feel groovy about it. You've got your bag and hey, I've got mine. A man has to be free.

[@BigEightiesNewWave]

His sunglasses are timeless. Great design.

[@onerenochef]

I had a 71 4 door T-Bird in high school

[@ErnestHemingwayJr]

That final "future Mustang" from 19:22 onwards... Early prototype of the '71-73 bodystyle?

[@nw8000]

What happens to all the clay cars once production starts?

[@KingRoseArchives]

Good question. I think it's reused or tossed out. They had to make room for the next model.

[@BeryJensen]

I know some is kept,some is destroyed.

[@ltunedkc]

Was that Donald Petersen when they were talking about scanning the grille of the Mark III?

[@ohok3608]

no it wasn't.

[@herrbela84]

Yupp, it was him.

[@jrmosery86]

Does anyone know the exact year this video was made? I know someone who worked at Ford around this time, and I think he's in the video but I want to be sure.

[@thetreblerebel]

What is the name of the concept car at the end ?

[@pcno2832]

Looks like the start of the '71-'73 Mustang, but I don't know what internal name they used.

[@introvidmedia7563]

Fantastic to see this piece of film. I have just published my first book on Al Mcneal's work, he was in the design studio at this time. Link to his work is here. www.buy-car-art.com

[@thetreblerebel]

Not just any Ford's. Just before gas crisis Ford's!! Beautiful and thirsty Ford's. Oh yeah!

[@adityanarayan314]

Thanks, were you a designer at Ford too?

[@alraspberry4327]

Computer Assisted Drafting has allowed ther creation of cars with many complex lines. Just because something can be done does not mean it should be done.

[@BubbaSmurft]

Pretty sure this is from the late '60's not the early '70's. Probably '67-8

[@Kobalt321]

dude.............hows u..

[@Kawsaki]

7:53 No wonder so many cool concept cars don’t make it to market. Closed-minded management. Imagine how much more advanced and better-looking American cars could be

[@thetreblerebel]

Probably the worst designed Ford's was this era unfortunately. I mean they are big and beautiful but wrong time for such things

[@angelloaiza2609]

ford is and will always be garbage

[@lrg3834]

Angel Loaiza, have to disagree with you there. Every car manufacturer has its hits and flops. The original Mustangs and Capris were really fine character cars. The GT, just plain awesome. Even many of the new models today aren't that bad compared to the competition.