Passing Traditions

I was rummaging through some of my parts the other day, looking for a few small things to document and check parts numbers on, finding a few things I forgot that I had. At one point I nearly tripped over a spare header panel sitting in the corner. I picked up that header panel, used but in decent shape...and that simple piece of fiberglass enlightened me about how car designs have changed so much over the past 20 years.

We tend to think of our Cougars and T-Birds as these wonderful, state-of-the-art machines for their time. I suppose in comparison to everything else that was being made, that was essentially true. Fact is, a lot of the manufacturing techniques, and even some of the technology, dated back to the 1960s and 1970s. If you've got reading lights in the sail panels, they're from an original Mustang, virtually unchanged for over two decades. The way the back seat hooks in, top and bottom...products of 1960s tech. Some of the components, like the power window switches, power seat switches and power mirror switches, were blacked-out versions of chrome switches that came into being in the 1970s Fords and Lincolns. The power seat motors were upgraded over the years, but their basic design principles are straight out of the disco era. Our 4-link rear suspension setup? 1960s, thank you very much. Our exhaust routing? Check any muscle car...it's basically the same. And of course, we all know that the Fox chassis dates to 1978.

What was truly new for our cars? Well, for one, robots were doing the welding. And the painting, too: the Lorain plant benefitted from Ford's cutting-edge use of laser guidance for the paint spray system. That's why the earlier aero Fox cars' metallic paint finishes were nearly flawless. Of course, over the years Ford and other automakers figured out ways to cut corners concerning paint, so later cars' finishes suffered a bit in overall luster. Still, Ford was a pioneer in our time and thanks to the laser-guided paint system, our cars got a great boost in quality and, probably more importantly, the perception of quality. Also, adhesives were used to glue some panels on, and to keep some panels separated but quiet. We don't have nearly as much squeaking from metal body panels as other cars from our era. Engineers found some pretty cool ways to keep things attached to the car, like the B-pillar trim pieces on 1983-86 cars. The door panel part double-clipped on, and the door jamb part clipped and screwed on, but the screws were buried within the rubber weatherstripping surrounding the door. No fasteners to be seen at all. The effect was one of uncommon smoothness...and that was uncommon for our era.

But smoothness, that was the deal-breaker there, a sign that things were evolving. We saw it first with the 1986 Taurus and Sable. Bumpers that fully wrapped around to the wheelwells--no more metal to rust on the bottoms of the fenders. No more conventional header panel either...the hood flowed right into the grille, unbroken by fiberglass. Eventually the low-liftover trunk design signaled the end of the traditional taillight. And then the Cougar and T-Bird got the same treatment for the 1989 redesign. From a manufacturing standpoint, as well as visually, it was the right decision. Simple design changes made things easier overall: easy to assemble, easy to look at, easy to fix if ever needed. And that's just swell.

Except that it took some of the rough edges away. All automakers started doing that, somewhere around 1990-ish. Things got really smooth, really quickly. And things like side molding started to disappear. Headlights extended back into fenders, into bumpers, into hoods, with sometimes no indication as to where they really belonged visually. Bumper covers became the header panels. Taillights were relegated to split functionality: sometimes the panels on the trunklid lit up, sometimes not...sometimes there were none. The old ways simply disappeared.

All this smoothness brought futuristic, space-age design to the streets. We used to see things like that at auto shows as prototypes. Now, every single vehicle on the street is smooth. But that doesn't mean it has character. Or soul. Cars are finally to the point where they are over-designed.

The traditions are gone.

In a way, we had some of the last of the great, old-fashioned cars. We had actual, real header panels. We had traditional grilles, some of them made from real metal. We initally had conventional 4"x6" headlights, made from real glass. We had horizontal taillights that required extra muscle for liftover into the trunk. We had no airbags, no ABS (with the exception of later Turbo Coupes, of course), no traction control, no stability control, no overuse of electronics. Sure, we had rust, unexplainable use of side molding, and no cupholders. But those are minor things overall. The 1988 model year was the last of the simple ways, the old carmaking traditions and, I will go on record as saying, the last year of the Cougar's original aero soul. We really had something special. And I think I figured out why.

The designers of our cars had a very daunting task: to make a car that fit an existing chassis, using traditional manufacturing techniques on the unibody. And that, of course, is not what designers wanted to hear. They want outside-of-the-box thinking--literally. But given the times (high unemployment, gas prices high, economy in a recession) the order of the day was that of nearly extreme conservativism. When they submitted their first drafts to then-design chief Jack Telnack, he asked them if they'd be proud to have that car sitting in their own driveways. They said, "Not really." He told them to start fresh. And they did, but they decided right then to push boundaries more than anyone else did in the early 1980s.

Of course, the engineers had to be in on this too. It's no secret that designers and engineers don't exactly see eye-to-eye when it comes to car designing. But there was a missing element that helped pull them both together: computer-aided design. Our cars were among the first to benefit from CAD drafting. All of a sudden, a few doors were opened for both of them. They still had the confinings of traditional elements (headlights, for example, had to be a standard size and a standard height from the ground, according to the U.S. government). But they had all these great new manufacturing processes at their disposal--adhesives, for example--and they decided to use them. Maverick? Not really. Just smart. It was a way to do traditional things in a different manner. Call it "grace under pressure", if you will.

The end result was a car shape like nothing else before or since. Fenders were pulled, rounded, creased, smoothed, but in such a graceful way. Traditional styling cues were there, but not in-your-face. Things were gentle where needed and sharp where needed. And everything was done just enough, no more, no less. This was truly a transition car, a step between the previous box and the next aero version. It had to do a lot of things. It had to appeal to traditionalists, but it also had to attract buyers that would keep purchasing future versions. I think above all, what makes me the proudest about our cars is that they were never pretentious. They were soldiers: born and bred to get out there into the showrooms and do their jobs. And they did. People recognized smart design right away. They could see the clever solutions that both the designers and engineers came up with. Hidden wipers? A brilliant touch. The aircraft doors? Solved so many logistical problems that all other cars had at the time. Compare a 1984 Cougar with a 1984 Grand Prix or Cutlass and the sheer brilliance of our cars' design shines through every time.

There is an overwhelming sense of the horizontal with our cars. Nothing is taller than it is wide. The 1983 Cougar was designed to look low to the ground, but from every angle, parallel to the ground as well. The wide front ends, the crease on top of the fenders that extends to the back of the car, the moldings, and yes, those traditional taillights, all give the perception of motion, of the car somehow cutting a horizontal swath in the air even at rest. Only the Cougar's upthrust C-pillar breaks that horizontal plane, but not by much: even it looks hunkered down, pushed downward by the roof. The 1987 restyling only further reinforced the horizontal theme, with straighter lines and more succinct cues toward the rear of the car. It was more "laid back" but still a sharp-edged knife, quite literally a cat ready to pounce at a moment's notice. It was taut, lithe, smooth. And level to the ground in every respect.

I never realized just how horizontal our cars were, until I saw one going the other way one day while driving. Right behind it was a new Cadillac CTS, a car that emphaizes the vertical, with a side wedge-shaped profile and tall headlamps. Seeing the two, one right after another, was disconcerting but a good refresher at the same time. It showed me how much things have really changed.

I doubt that carmakers will ever go back to the "old ways". Truthfully I hope they don't. But I do wish that we'd see some of the traditional design elements on newer cars. It's more than nostalgia: it's about a sense of order, of precision, of creative problem solving, of knowing when to curve and where to crease, of blending all elements together in a way that nobody has done before. We had that with our cars. They have withstood every test of time and passed gracefully.

As I like to say, our cars were never designed. They were sculpted. And that header panel, that last piece of traditional carmaking, reminded me of this. We were fortunate enough to own cars that made a statement in an era where it wasn't necessarily fashionable to do so. That has always made us outsiders. At times, we suffer because of that fact. But we are better car owners for it. It makes us stronger, it makes us understand things better. It makes us resourceful. And it makes us truly unique. That can never be taken away.

I can't ever promise that the traditional header panel will come back into fashion. But I do know that I'm definitely keeping my spare one...even if it's just for posterity's sake.

Until next time,

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