ALL-CONQUERING ‘BORING’ FALCON
THE first-generation American Ford Falcon was so plain that they had to add vanilla to give it some flavour. Of course, it wasn’t the first boring car in the world, that would probably the Model T. Yes, the first mass-produced car - the one that changed the world - is, in my opinion, the first boring car in the world.
I would forgive the Model T for being boring because I don’t think they knew they were building a boring car. In fact, they probably thought it was the bee’s knees given that it was the first carriage the common man could buy that didn’t force the driver to stare at a horse’s backside.
Actually, I have sometimes wondered if some of man’s current preoccupation with winsome rears are a socio-genetic throwback to the time when we had to spend countless boring hours on the road to the clickety clack of metal hooves and horse derrieres shaking left and right.
I would suggest that the Model T was unintentionally boring because it was the first mass-produced car and they didn’t know any better.
After the end of World War 2, Europe and Japan were in ruins and barely had two metal sheets to rivet into anything so all they could do were dinky little scooters and tiny cars that could fit seven people.
Some classic car fans like to describe them as cars with character, you know, because hardship builds character and all that, but in my mind, aside from the Mini and the Fiat 500, the rest were just pretty awful. Well alright, the Beetle was so ugly that it was almost cute, and it was cheap and hippies liked them. So that’s how it borrowed some character from them.
America, on the other hand had a population whose bank accounts were filled to the brim from wartime overtime while the returning GI’s brought back swagger and a no-fear attitude to the country. The country also made so much money from winning World War 2 they decided to build an actual moon traveller rocket.
An inevitable side effect of all this cash and bravado and technology was an explosion of fantastic cars from the United States.
Nearly everything looked like alien technology. Power window, automatic transmission, air conditioning, in-car radio, electric seat, pop-up headlamp, you name it, they had it in everyday cars.
They knew how to build fantastic car, ridiculous cars, cars with engines so big they made the car rock side to side, cars so long it wouldn’t fit on the roads in any other country, and cars with fins you think George Jetson dropped by for dinner. They had everything except boring cars.
All that changed in 1960 when Robert Mcnamara, then president of the Ford Vehicle Division, came up with a car that would hold back the tide of imports and it was the car that would change the way Americans thought about cars.
Why the sudden need for small affordable cars?
The 1960s was such a fantastic time for the Americans that they were already working on the problem of designing cars for second-car buyers when most of the rest of the world was still struggling to get firewood out of the kitchen.
Since most of these second cars are to be driven by housewives who didn’t need to compensate for anything with the length of the bonnet, imported small cars from countries that lost the war began gaining popularity.
In those days, most of the imported cars in the US were the Beetles, Mercedes Benz and Ferraris with a smattering of Japanese toy cars.
Mcnamara, who later became defence secretary under president John F. Kennedy, was said to be such a straight laced bean counter that he came up with a car so basic it looked at home in Europe.
In fact, it was exactly what the market wanted.
Chrysler and General Motors were also on board with the idea of product he ing compact cars and they came up with the Dodge Dart and Chevrolet Corvair but these were far too interesting for the housewife market.
When it comes to handbags and shoes and dresses, women are not so sensible and can spend hours and thousands of dollars on an outfit but when it comes to cars, sensibility is the byword for them, all they want is four wheels, roof, room for the kids and a steering wheel.
Cars are a necessary waste of money for them. They also didn’t want manual transmission. If at all possible.
Ford gave the Falcon a two-speed automatic as an option and it seemed that most buyers did not tick any of the other cheaper option box and went straight for the slush master two speeder.
As it was an economy car designed for the secondcar market, Falcon had thin profit margins and Ford was generally very cautious about spending money on it, so they dusted off some tried and tested technology and came up with the Ford Mileage Maker 2.4-litre inline six-cylinder engine.
They had a very straightforward way of naming things them Yanks. If this was British Ford engine it would have had a grand name like Valkyrie or Griffindor or Centaur or shared name with some other mythical creature.
For the rest of the world, this would have been the peak of luxury but in America, this was just about acceptable for the housewife driver.
The engine had a crossflow cylinder head, which meant the intake and exhaust valve were on the same side of the block and the air coming in had to reverse flow out and air doesn’t like to reverse much.
Thanks to this difficult airflow path, it was about as efficient at producing power as a water wheel but since all the valves were on one side, they only had to make one camshaft and all the pushrods could be on the same side. It was a bean-counter’s dream engine.
It also came with a sort of hybrid monocoque + ladder frame chassis where the passenger compartment was monocoque but the front and rear axles were hung on chassis rails that were welded directly to the cabin.
This was a low-cost exploratory model so they didn’t really think it would take off, but it did. Boy did it ever.
They sold nearly half a million Falcon in its first year of production without even really trying. It was so popular they Ford built them in Australia, Argentina and Mexico soon after.
The Dart and Corvair with their more interesting and quirky design didn’t do so well in the face of this overwhelming Plain Jane.
I put it to you that the Falcon taught car companies a valuable lesson; Most consumers see cars as white goods.
However, a car is still a big-ticket item and buyers want to feel good about choosing a particular model and men still make a lot of the car buying purchase so they are always looking to feel like a man, to compensate.
Therefore, each company must have a monster car in their lineup and stick a sporty badge on the rump of their boring cars and create a link between the two.
Men don’t care how tenuous the link is, we are willing to suspend our disbelief and will come up with an appropriate story to tell the wife about why this is the best boring car there is.
That’s why Ford still makes the Mustang, Chevrolet insists on the Corvette, Mercedes-Benz still builds the SL even though sales is falling through the floor and BMW has the 8-series even despite knowing it will never sell in numbers.