Why Are Ford's So Good To Drive

[Willie Krashitt]

An extract from the August 07 EVO magazine. Explains a bit as to why the Mk1 Galaxy was the best handling people carrier of the 90's.

 

Petrolhead: Why Are Modern Fords So Good To Drive?

 

You might remember the Escort mark IV. You might remember its dismal, wet-sock styling, its depressing, lowest common-denominator engineering, its flaccid, weedy engines. And yet, bizarrely, the mkIV Escort is direct[y responsible for why modern Fords drive so well. It spurred the good people of Dunton and Cologne to pull their collective fingers out and start taking dynamics seriously, all, under the expert stewardship of Richard Parry-Jones.

Parry-Jones is Ford's most famous `car guy'. These days the sign or his office door reads Group Vice President - Global Product Development and Chief Technical Officer of Ford Motor Company. It must be quite a big door, He's become the public face of Ford's transformation into a maker of bread `n' marg cars that can make drivers smile, and despite almost certainly having something more important to do, when I went to drive the new Mondeo last month he offered to ride along as navigator and, with beguiling frankness, made that direct link between the new Mondeo (which drives brilliantly) and the mklV Escort (which didn't).

It's a puzzling ore, this, because, although the Escort was hopeless, it sold depressingly welt. Doesn't sound like much impetus to do better. `It was about looking to the future,' Parry-Jones says. `About thinking what other people would be doing and realising we'd be left behind. And our research proved that even people who said they weren't keen drivers could appreciate a car that drives well.'

Suddenly Parry-Jones had a mandate to make future Fords properly sorted. And with the original Mondeo already in development, just in time. `When I drove the Mondeo [prototype) for the first time it wasn't too good,' he admits. And here's where it becomes an interesting lesson in what happens when a big car company decides to get serious about chassis. `I've never worked on anything like it,' he says. `Everything was possible.' The whole company threw itself behind making the Sierra replacement drive well and when it finally went on sale in 1993, by golly, it did.

 

Next, Parry-Jones's team descended on the Galaxy people-carrier, then being developed by partner VW under a team more used to working on vans. The prototypes weren't promising so Parry-Jones's department called a sit-down with VW bosses including scary overlord Dr Ferdinand Piech. The serious Ford squad made an impassioned speech about what was wrong with the car and how they'd like to fix it. Piech was silent during the meeting, he just sat there,' Parry-Jones remembers. When I'd been through everything, finally he just said "He is right" and that was that.' Ford took control.

 

After that, the engineers cut loose on the Fiesta, polishing the existing chassis whilst the designers concentrated on making it look like a mildly surprised carp.

With the excellent Ka and Puma already done, attention then turned to the Escort replacement. The result was the Focus, the zenith of Ford's 90s fixation with making sweet- handling cars and also a paradigm for how they continue to do things today Nothing especially radical - even the feted `control blade' rear suspension is really just a trailing-arm set-up, although pressing the bits from steel instead of casting them from alloy meant they could afford an independent rear axle in the first place - but simply sweating over the details to get things right. I don't know, maybe Toyota or Peugeot worry about this stuff too, it just doesn't show in much of their current lineup. Maybe they need to plunge to the depths of the mkIV Escort first.

[Dave-G]

Very revealing that thanks, and it's so true - The Gal does drive extremely well.

 

It's probably the reason we are so tolerant about it's common failures.