(first posted 8/25/2018) Here’s an interesting 26 minute video from Ford – likely from the early 70’s. Its a real flashback to that era, and entertaining for a couple of reasons…
Most of these promotional videos are upbeat; smiling actors, catchy music, etc. This one is dead serious, almost documentary style – with a solemn voiced narrator. If I hadn’t seen the credits, I would have sworn it was a “Quinn Martin (QM) Production”.
Lots of ordinary folks from the 70’s – mullets, mutton chops, and thick ties…
There is a crash test showing a Galaxie being rear-ended – there were a few Pintos off to the side (wonder why…).
Another Galaxie prototype being run through the test track, and wallowing all over the road.
One scene explaining customer data collection shows a huge room with aisle after aisle of magnetic tape – all of which could probably fit on a micro SD card today.
An interview with a very young Jack Telnack – a few years before he rose to be one of Ford’s most successful VP’s of Design.
Workers in the paint booth without masks or any breathing protection.
It’s interesting on its own, but if you were around in the 70’s I’m sure it will bring back a few memories (maybe both good and bad).
That whole electrical system running on a table around 12:25 blew my mind!
Perhaps not as much as the system being gingerly and carefully hand-assembled by a worker.
This is exactly how we made the wiring harness’ for the Bell helicopters used by various L.A. City departments .
-Nate
In all due respect, I feel a woman would do a better job of assembling the above wiring harness as opposed to a man!!
No cat fights please, just my opinion!!
Ford never built the best cars but they sure did the best marketing.
Fascinating for so many reasons. With all that manual involvement I would think that getting it all right would be a crapshoot.
Love the statement near the end about it being possible to watch the line crank out cars all year yet no two exactly alike. Today would seem much the opposite.
Airbag at 5:50!
Mustang and Cougar on the same line.
Where was the that kind of film shown?
In the Mandatorium, no doubt. I don’t think they’d expect a customer to sit through a 26-minute presentation.
Mustang, Cougars and Falcons were built together at the River Rouge Plant, code F in the second character of the VIN.
Some very GM Colonnade-looking design sketches in the studio. Also, I get a ’78 Fairmont vibe from the back end of one of those clay models. But the star of the show turns out to be *(drumroll please…)*
The 1971 full-size Ford, Paul’s favorite car!
Looking at the lead picture of the article, what do you suppose the two BIG sledge hammers on the hood of the Cougar were used for?
To make the headlights retract?
But it is not sledge hammers but a rubber mallet and perhaps a ball-peen hammer.
To hit the inspector who objected to your work
Those would have been used to help align panels that didn’t align naturally. Now I would have been a little peeved about laying a ball peen hammer head on my newly painted Cougar fender.
Based on the cars shown, I would guess this film is from 1973 or so. Some great porn-star mustaches, too.
The assembled footage (obviously) wasn’t taken the same day, but I’m trying to solve the “it couldn’t have appeared any earlier than XXXX” puzzle. The clipping below is from November 1972, so I’ll guess it was finished up sometime that year.
With my father a career guy at Ford, and my 1972-74 stint there, this really hits home. Things like OSHA hearing protection and such had just come into force, I was told.
If anyone doesn’t know already, the very opening has iron ore mining and then the conversion/refinement into the round “taconite” pellets before loading the big ships—familiar Great Lakes stuff.
Whoops—didn’t get the 11/72 clipping attached:
Love the opening. Ore-taconite-coking coal-molten iron. Missed the limestone! Not sure which of the “Brothers” ore ships that is, but you can now stay, on land, in the former Henry Ford staterooms from the Benson Ford:http://shiponthebay.com/index.html
Don’t need the “quotations.” Taconite is the type of ore now being mined. Spent many hours as an engineer on that same loadout bringing ore from the Thunderbird mine to the Fairlane mill, then the pellets to the yard in Proctor to the docks in Duluth. Yes, they were owned by Ford, hence the names (and the new Mustang line at the mill, even though its not owned by Ford anymore).
The employees look so clean, neat, and complacent – must have been at the beginning of a happy Friday shift. LOL, the guy contentedly smoking his pipe @19:30 in the engine assembly line. Easy to understand why so many factory-ordered cars – and there were a lot in those days – arrived at the dealership optioned differently than the order sheets stipulated.
In the days of scads of a la carte options, multiple color choices, and no computers, it’s amazing the cars arrived complete and working at the end of the line.
Ah, but the automakers did have and use state of the art computers at the time! Any ’70 build sheet, including AMC’s were computer generated.
And yet, after all that mental effort, monetary investment, planning time and physical labor – and identical processes were going on at GM and Mopar and AMC with every model they designed and sold, we still got the assorted Deadly Sins we’ve discussed here at CC.
Around 12:56 it looks like they’re taking the molds off of what looks like a Fairmont rear end.
All that “talk” about quality yet the cars of this era have the worst quality reputation in automotive history.
Do they still put materials and equipment through the same physical testing for endurance? Is it mostly computerized?
Also. you have to wonder how many of those people’s tasks were replaced by robots and/or technology.
The video is from 72-73. But that picture of the assembly line with the Mustang and the Cougar has to be from 67-68.
I liked the “progress” music…guess going back I’ve seen other similar videos and they seem to have the same purposeful sound.
To me it looked like they were making 1972 full sized (LTD/Galaxy) plus saw some wagons. The dashboard gave it away to me…the ’73 was more familiar to me because my Dad bought a new ’73 Ranch Wagon with a different dash (that they used for way more years, I think up till they stopped making them in ’78, even on the Lincolns by then. Seems some of the testing segments were of the ’73 (from the design of the grill). He traded his ’69 Country Squire on that Ranch Wagon.
You might laugh, but now that I’m retired, I’d really enjoy going on manufacturing tour as a holiday, more than going out and seeing some historical site or other kind of vacation. I took many of them when I was working, even in other industries than I was in, but I doubt that many companies would be open to having retirees or otherwise “non-workers” to go on tours…maybe partly due to liability, but to me things like this I really enjoy. Many years ago I used to work in manufacturing, albeit not of cars or “heavy” industry, guess my interest hasn’t waned even though there’s no practical reason I need to be familiar with it anymore.
Exactly. It’s all of those minor key tones and muted trumpets. I wouldn’t be surprised if the music was not made by the same people responsible for The Streets of San Francisco or The FBI. Quinn Martin did have a relationship with Ford, no?
I think I missed this when it ran before. All I could think of during those scenes where the bodies were welded up on those 1972-is LTDs was that this would be the last time those panels would ever be so rust-free. The rusting probably started during the simulated rain testing right after final assembly.
Would there have been a more miserable job than installing headliners or steering columns for 8 hours every day?
My brother and his friend were working in a “rubber stamping’, plant about then.He said it was a fair bit a “dismal”.
Paid far less then the folks installing steering columns/headliners..
His friend had a “68 Stang”.