Wednesday 28 April 2021
The Ford Taunus 17 M is a middle sized family saloon/sedan that was produced by Ford Germany between September 1960 and August 1964. The Taunus 17M name had been applied to the car's predecessor and it would apply also to subsequent Ford models which is why the 17M introduced in 1960 is usually identified, in retrospect, as the Ford Taunus P3. It was the third newly designed German Ford to be launched after the war and for this reason it was from inception known within the company as Ford Project 3 (P3) or the Ford Taunus P3.
Members of the press had apparently competed to find a suitably disrespectful epithet to describe the controversially styled first Taunus 17M, and it was in the same tradition that the new 17M for 1960 became known as the "Badewannetaunus" (Bath tub Taunus).
The Ford Taunus P3 was a commercial success. 669,731 were produced during a four-year production run, giving an annualised rate more than twice that achieved by the predecessor model during its three years in production.
The first post-war Taunus models had been designed in North America. The Taunus P3 was designed by Uwe Bahnsen, a German born designer who would dominate car design at Ford of Germany for nearly thirty years and whose subsequent designs included the 1969 Ford Capri and its successors. Towards the end of his time in charge of design with Ford of Germany, Bahnsen also led the teams that designed the Fords Sierra and Scorpio. In the context of 1960 the Taunus P3 can nevertheless be seen as Bahnsen's most innovative design for a production car.
The 1960 Taunus design featured a recurring geometrical shape, which was a cross between a short sausage and a long lozenge. The rear panel and the side panels respected the same basic shape as did the front grill, subject to two large cut-outs for the headlights.
The same shape was carried over to the interior of the car where the main dials and controls on the dash-board were surrounded by a thick frame in the shape that respected a short sausage (or a very long lozenge). The repetitious use of a single simple shape at different levels of the design gave the overall car a consistent visual unity which was in stark contrast to the high finned flamboyance of the previous Taunus 17M and was seen at the time as a radical switch by Ford of Germany away from American styling in favour of European styling. There were no tails fins and there was very little decorative chrome included. The efficiency of its superficially much more simple design enabled Ford to boast that the 1960 car, despite being fractionally narrowed on the outside, offered usefully more interior width than the car it replaced.
Despite the importance of sausages in German cuisine, the award for a catchy soubriquet was earned by the person who saw the car and was reminded not of a sausage but of a bathtub. It was and remains the "Badewanne" (bathtub) soubriquet that caught the eye of the press reporters, and it is as the "Badewannetaunus" that the car continues to be remembered by enthusiasts
The P3 and the 1961 Citroën Ami were the first cars with rectangular or lozenge-shaped (non-round) headlights. This technical innovation was developed by lighting manufacturers Hella (Taunus) and Cibie (Ami). At the time, it was an unquestioned article of faith that headlights were round, and in the United States, it was the law, so these new headlights were illegal there. Ten years later this had inspired European automakers to come up with various non-round headlamp shapes, though many had by 1970 settled on a standardised shared rectangular shape.
Technical data:
- engine: S4
- capacity: 1498 cc
- horsepower: 55 HP
- gearbox: 4+1
- top speed: 130 km/h
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