Ford started toying with the thought of a domestically produced smaller compact in the mid Sixties. Dozens of accounts have been written to commemorate Lee Iacocca’s foresight in pushing for production of the Mustang, the sporty compact that started the ponycar craze in the mid Sixties. Including to the sick feelings was the fact that Knudsen was fully out of sync with Iacocca’s plans for a small domestically constructed automotive. Including to the confusion was the new Pontiac Grand Am, which was also competing for the efficiency-oriented portion of the GP market. The brand new generation represented by the 1973 Pontiac Grand Prix needed to share some key style and engineering elements with many General Motors intermediates. Via a collection of delays triggered by the infamous Normal Motors strike in the fall of 1970, Pontiac was forced to delay its launch. Nevertheless, when Arjay Miller left the submit in late 1967 to grow to be Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors, Henry Ford II shocked practically everybody within the business when he went exterior the company to Basic Motors and brought over Semon “Bunkie” Knudsen. Clamming up is what we did at Ford in the late ’70s once we were bombarded with suits over the Pinto, which was involved in a lot of fuel tank fires.
In Knudsen’s view, Ford was already ahead of the game with the 1970 Maverick, due out in early ‘sixty nine as a substitute for the aging Falcon. This created tension between the Iacocca camp and people who got into Knudsen’s nook. However, Iacocca argued that confronting the imports directly was the most effective course. Iacocca, then executive vice president in command of Ford’s North American Vehicle Operations, argued that between the Volkswagen from Germany and the rising tide of Japanese compacts, these imports would quickly seize the whole subcompact market within the United States, and Ford ought to produce a car to meet these international challengers head-on. This defeat, plus continuing pressures from different areas of the corporate, led to Knudsen getting the word from HFII that his efforts as president were “simply not working.” In due time, the presidency was Iacocca’s. Iacocca’s persistence paid off and in January 1969, Henry Ford II gave his approval for Ford’s first home sub-compact. This different “pony” — Ford’s fourth product line to comply with the equine theme — was the subcompact Pinto. For 1957 the corporate line was again fully redesigned — at a cost of some $300 million — beneath the direction of Virgil Exner, who had joined Chrysler in 1949 but had exerted only restricted styling control to this point.
After the profitable launch of the Mustang and an upswing in sales, many felt Iacocca was subsequent in line for the presidency at Ford. The 1971-1980 Ford Pinto was another of Ford’s “pony” cars. There was nothing really fancy concerning the Pinto. Nonetheless, there was another “pony” automobile throughout his tenure at Ford, and Iacocca is less freely related to the start of the Ford Pinto. By some accounts, Knudsen did have a considerable role in the Pinto venture. His little “G-car” might have been a little bit too small, but something smaller than Maverick was going to be essential. They preferred the idea and didn’t know it was a Cadillac,” Anderson stated. “We had been going in the right course. As famous, the premium Electras attracted increased sales instantly. It was there as a one-yr check bed with a couple of thousand homeowners to ensure every part was right. As early as 1967, there had been some consideration of an 85-inch-wheelbase car powered by something with lower than six cylinders. In fact, the ragtop Riv died with the ’86 E-physique, which was deemed too small to be a sensible four-seater in convertible form (though Buick later confirmed a prototype of just such a automotive).
As a substitute of being a two-seat sports activities automobile — which accounted for only 0.27 p.c of the ‘fifty three market — it was a luxurious and sporty “private” four-seater much like Ford’s publish-1957 Thunderbirds. Its fundamental goals were to offer cheap comfort and adequate performance for modern freeways whereas being economical to purchase and maintain. Once the weak sister of sports-automotive firms, Plymouth jumped into the performance area for 1956 with its restricted version Plymouth Fury that did nothing but get higher for 1957 and 1958. The first Furys have been the plushest and most potent Plymouths of the decade. Like the Mustang, this car was a marketing success in a brand new field. As an alternative of coming out for 1972, the all-new GP was held over to 1973. Although it did an excellent job of continuing the Grand Prix tradition of personal luxury mixed with sporty aptitude, it represented the beginning of GM’s homogenization of its mid-dimension automotive platforms. By all accounts, Iacocca watched over the delivery of this car nearer than he had with the Mustang, and was decided that it would not value a penny greater than $2,000, nor weigh an ounce greater than 2,000 pounds.