Playing the 'What If?' Game

So I get this cool new satellite dish for my new home, and it's jam packed with Sirius satellite radio stations. I'm browsing through and find the 80's Hair Band station, and as I sit there listening to these once-thought-to-be-cool-but-now-are-mostly-cheesy songs, I start flashing back to the 1980's something fierce. Yeah, I remember when this song came out...yeah, I remember where I was...yeah, I remember what (who?) I was doing....

Ahem. Sorry about that. I'm not one to reminisce much but my memories are full of good stuff from that era. It was truly a great time to be alive. For those of us that grew up in the 1980's things seem to have gone downhill ever since. One thing that makes me proud is the fact that our Cougars and Thunderbirds were shining stars amongst a sea of throwaway, boxy, meaningless cars. Let's face it: the one thing we all have in common with these cars is our deep, almost inexplicable love for the body style. That's what suckered us into them in the first place.

So I let my mind wander and started playing the 'what if?' game. Things could have been so radically different for our cars.

What if:

...these cars hadn't been so popular? It probably would have been the end of the life cycle for the cars as we knew them, as the MN12 chassis was fully dependent upon the success or failure of the Fox chassis. Now I knew they were dynamite the first time I ever saw them. There was no doubt in my mind that they'd be hits, and judging by the massive sales of the cars in my area, that was a correct assumption. But it could have been different...thankfully that's one part of our history we don't have to second guess.

...Ford had allowed the 1985 interior change to continue the console-only tradition? All 1983-84 cars had a console, and all 1989-97 cars did too. Why the 4-year shift? I think the marketing department had a lot to do with that. Ford was starting to become savvy with customer surveys and surprisingly, they listened to a lot of it. One such complaint was that older drivers wanted the feeling of more room up front, without being so tight and semi-claustrophobic. So Ford made the full console an option and put the consolette in as standard. In reality it should have been the other way around; that way the 20th Anniversary would have received the console it deserved. Certainly the full console being standard would have added to the sportier image of the car, even if you had the column shifter. Besides, it's not like you can buckle up another person between the driver and passenger seats. On all the cars with the consolette, there were controls there (or at least the provision for them). Looking back I'm thinking there were a few people at Ford that wish the consolette would have never happened.

...there were no more column shifters after 1984? Think about it: every car with a full console and a floor shifter, just like all 1989-97 cars. Not only would that have been great for continuity of the styling, but everyone would now be on the same par as far as parts. We wouldn't have to convert cars from column to floor shift. If you want to install an aftermarket shifter, hey, the hole's already there for ya. Think about our dash clusters...no more shift indicator there. And we'd have shared the Mustang or Mark VII floor-shift AOD, making life a lot easier to find a replacement when it craps the bed on you. It would have been even cooler if we also could share the floor shifter with another Fox car (Mustang or Mark VII). Life would be a hell of a lot easier now, wouldn't it?! I'm sure this is another thing that would have been changed by a few people at Ford if it were up to them.

...there were only two instrument clusters available from 1985-88? While there's nothing wrong with the base cluster, it could easily have been supplanted by the full electronic cluster in the LS and base Thunderbird. And of course, the analog cluster would have been great to have in a base model as an option. Now imagine this: the wiring for the full electronic cluster and the analog cluster would be the same. Ahhh, the joys of interchangeability. Really, I have no idea why we had three clusters, multiple wiring harnesses and many configurations when you factor in the shifter type and the System Sentry (lamp out) option. Suffice to say, the designers and engineers weren't on the same page in this department. We definitely had the nicest Fox dashboard of the era, so we deserved the best attention to detail. Too bad...this would have been a great situation, as it would have saved money, engineering time, and headaches for owners.

...the new body style would have debuted in 1986 as originally planned? Was the world ready for it? Maybe...maybe not. I'm not going to lie to you, folks: while I love both body styles, my heart will always be with the 1983-86 body because of my first car ('84), the follow-up to it ('86), and the fact that I think the older body style looks much cooler as a convertible. That's my opinion, of course. But if you look at the history of what happened from 1986-87 you'll realize that we were tied to the ankles with the Mustang. That's rather odd, considering how much more the Mark VII is like our first cousin, whereas the Mustang was a distant second cousin from another state that you usually see once in a blue moon. For 1986 the Mustang had its last hurrah in what some would consider the last "true" Mustang front end, with the quad headlamps. The GT got the new 200hp HO engine with SEFI. Well, we got the same engine, save for the cam and computer--the SAME engine. And we still had quad headlamps too. Now look what happened in 1987: the Mustang got a new aero front end with two headlamps. And hey, so did we. If the '87 body had come out one year earlier, would it have cannibalized sales from the Mustang? Very possible, at least from an aesthetic point of view. Truth is, Ford wanted to refine our cars and that they sure did. It's just that they couldn't get everything done for 1986, so they milked one more year out of the older body. In the end, it turned out to be the "magic" body style: old body, new SEFI 5.0 engine. And the Cougar, Thunderbird and Mustang hit everyone with a one-two-three punch in 1987. Maybe it was better like that. Then again, Ford could have stepped up the aero Mustang front end to 1986, along with our cars. Hmmm....

...the MN12 didn't debut until 1990? Imagine skipping the 1993 car, and bump everything up one model year. The MN12 would have been on two-year cycles uninterrupted, and the Fox cars would've had an extra year for the stunningly refined 1987-88 body. That also would have meant more parts availability for the Fox cars. Imagine a 1989 Fox XR7; what would it look like? A continuation of the 1988 XR7, or maybe something pushed a little more? Would that one year have made enough of a difference to persuade the powers-that-be to drop in the HO motor? A one-year 225hp HO XR7 for 1989...man, that would have just rocked big time. Although I have to admit, it would have been strange to go from a hot HO motor to the super-6 motor the next year, and lose a few horsepower. Then again, the proposed HO XR7 could have received even the relatively mild 1986 Mustang HO cam and computer for 200hp, and that would have more than satisfied us after dealing with the underpowered 155hp 5.0 in 1988. Ford already had the parts, after all...it was just a matter of dropping them in, or not. Had the insurance industry not been as screwed up as it was back then, we might not be dreaming of this right now--it may have been reality.

...the 1989-90 cars had a V8 available from the start? Okay, let's get one thing straight: the 1989-90 LS/LX will never be worth much. It's a basic V6 transportation car, no matter how much you love it, and it hurts me to put that down in writing. But you know and I know that's true. Not having a V8 available until 1991 really hurt Ford in a big way. And launching an all-new, world-class rear drive chassis with independent rear suspension without the power of a V8 to back it up was practically suicide, especially after dumping $2 billion into the program. How they expected a 150hp V6 to propel a 3800 lb. car properly is beyond me. Would a 200hp V8 have cannibalized from the XR7's 210hp supercharged V6? Possibly, but maybe not as much as you'd initially believe. The V8 would have been a nice, middle-of-the-road alternative for LS/LX buyers, without all the complexity of the super-6 motor. Look at what happened to sales in 1991, when the 5.0 was finally available. And not everyone wanted the boy-racer image of the XR7; the traditionalists wanted the V8 with subtle, more traditional styling. I don't know who dropped the ball with the V8 development for the MN12, but there were a few people that deservedly got fired because of this situation. And in the end, the consumers were the biggest losers.

...the MN12 was mildly restyled halfway through its run? Seems like 1994 would have been about the logical time to do that, what with the older MN12 body being 5 years old at that point--a practical eternity in today's styling cycles. Plus the new interior design was already on schedule for 1994, along with the new 4.6 V8 and the EEC-V system. And it would have given the "new" styling at least a 4-year run. Imagine the styling: how far would Ford have pushed it? Would they have tampered with the infamous roofline? Would the front end have been as radical as the 1996-97 front end? And more importantly: would that have given the car the shot in the arm it needed to generate more sales, and possibly stave off its demise? Obviously if the car had sold more (and therefore be more profitable) then it wouldn't have been left out to pasture and die a slow death. Ford probably would have made future plans for it, despite the fact that SUV's were hot sellers. Then again, RWD cars were becoming a thing of the past back then. What would have been the logical chassis for the next-gen Cougar? In 1998, all you had was the Mustang chassis and the Panther (Crown Vic) chassis, and neither offered an IRS option. An all-new chassis would've had to be developed years prior. And importing a chassis from another continent would not have been a profitable alternative. Maybe it's better that the cars ended the way they did: true to themselves. Still, I can't help but wonder how a restyling may have changed the course of the cars. Maybe holding off the next-gen car until 1999, when the Mustang went with the IRS on the Cobra, and offering an SN95 Cougar. Ooooh, imagine the possibilities....

Wow...and to think, I thought all this stuff up sober. Chew on it for awhile. It'll really make you think about things in a different perspective. Hey, Dokken is on now...I'll cach y'all later.

Until next time,

 < Back to SOTC Main

[ top ]