Last week’s post described a fifth-semester Art Center design assignment involving a domestic automaker investigating the use of a “not invented here” powertrain for use in several of their vehicle lines, in that case General Motors and the Wankel rotary engine, for which it had secured a license.
Under the able direction of Professor Strother MacMinn, teams of two students each developed design studies for potential Wankel-powered GM vehicles, with the end result being full-size side-view airbrush concept renderings, along with smaller-scale detailed package drawings.
Dennis the Menace cartoonist Hank Ketcham supported “MacMinn Day” at Art Center with this illustration.
An article in the October 1973 issue of Road & Track magazine, authored by Mac himself, described the design intent for each of our final concepts, suggesting that this new generation of car designers was more than ready to meet the industry’s evolving regulatory challenges with new and exciting styling concepts.
A later Art Center project challenged our readiness to face the inevitable real-world compromises involved in bringing a design concept closer to reality. This time, GM’s cross-town rival, Ford, was the auto industry sponsor. Two Dearborn designers visited the Los Angeles campus to provide us with a design brief, along with multiple-view engineering package drawings of a transversely-mounted Honda CVCC engine and transmission.
The Honda engine that could have powered the Pinto… (globalhonda/en/heritage)
Yes, it’s true, as David Halberstam noted in The Reckoning, his exhaustive “master class in navigating the minefields of executive egos” (Amazon). Ford, under the leadership of its then-President, Lee Iacocca, was seriously considering the use of Honda’s clean, modern, and efficient four-cylinder CVCC powertrain in their late-1970s Fiesta subcompact, and potentially in other vehicles as well.
Ford and Nissan, the two automaker subjects of Halberstam’s book, would both endure further reckonings after its 1986 publication.
(Sidebar: Iacocca saw Ford’s potential purchase of Honda powertrains as a way to reduce the cost of developing new small cars for the U. S. market. However, CEO Henry Ford II -who served as a U. S. naval officer in World War II- rejected the idea, reportedly saying “No car with my name on the hood is going to have a Jap engine inside,” despite the fact that Ford had been importing Mazda compact pickup trucks and selling them as Ford Couriers since late 1971.)
Like our earlier GM-focused project, our design brief envisioned the use of the Honda powertrain in a practical small Ford family car, as well as in a sportier derivative, thus the project’s “Two For the Road” overall theme. Though most of my early idea sketches have been lost to time over the past five decades, one snapshot depicts a certain future car designer standing behind his one-fifth-scale clay model of a Honda-powered subcompact station wagon. Barely visible on the wall is the requisite sporty car alternative.
A student’s handiwork, a small hatchback wagon and a sporty two-door.
(Sidebar II: The head of Art Center’s Industrial Design department in those days was a soft-spoken gentleman named Keith Teter. An ex-Ford stylist, he had been responsible for the exterior design development of the Ford Maverick, and drove a butterscotch-colored (“Freudian Gilt”) example to school on the days he taught Advanced Transportation classes. On one such day, he brought in what was ostensibly one of his early concept sketches for the Maverick. The rendering occupied one corner of the vellum sheet on which it was drawn. After our reverent examination of the sketch, one of our classmates asked Mr. Teter if the production Maverick would have been a bigger car if the sketch had instead been centered on its page. Barely repressing laughter, we waited nervously for Teter’s response. Luckily, he accepted the comment with good grace and a slight smile…)
Keith Teter in his element at Art Center.
Of course, Ford elected to rely on its own resources for small-car development in the 1970s, using its European 1.6-liter four-cylinder as the Pinto’s base powerplant, and dusting off its ancient Falcon platform to underpin the Maverick/Comet compact-car siblings. One can only speculate on how the use of Honda powertrains might have improved the buff-book perceptions of Ford’s ‘70s small cars, to say nothing of their customers’ impressions of quality.
(Sidebar III: Detroit wasn’t hiring new designers when I graduated from Art Center in September 1974 – the Big Three were all reeling from the combined effects of the first energy crisis, a severe economic recession, and the increasingly stringent safety and emissions standards their products were now obliged to meet. I probably would never have been hired by Dearborn anyway, since during my pro forma interview with Ford designer Art Querfeld and one of his colleagues, I presented a few sketches I had done in an attempt at modernizing Ford’s long-lived C-Series cab-over trucks. Leafing through my drawings, I casually ventured my opinion that the C-Series was one of the most antiquated-looking medium-duty trucks on the road. At that point, the second designer- whose name I’ve mercifully forgotten- turned to Art Querfeld and said “Art, you designed that truck, didn’t you?”)
So much for that $725/month salary and those chances for advancement…
Getting traditional pushrod-engined Ford mechanics servicing especially those Honda CVCC engines was a pipe dream. Even Honda mechanics weren’t all able to get those strange Keihin carburetors to run right
Well, I had a ‘78 Fiesta and then a 1982 Civic. Maybe by ‘82 Honda had figured things out, but as much as I loved the Fiesta the drivability, power and fuel economy of the Civic were all much better.
Yes, I think you’re right about Honda “had figured things out” by 1982. As in, forget the CVCC, just put a catalytic converter on it and get on with life. I had a ’76 Civic, ’79 Accord, and test drove a ’79 Fiesta. Between head gaskets, lousy driveability, and weak synchros, I wish I had bought a Fiesta instead. But then, maybe it’s me, you had far more success with a Vega than I did.
Yeah, I had forgotten that there was no more CVCC by the time I had my Civic. But there were still a LOT of vacuum lines.
WE missed out on the vacuum spaghetti monster but my owners manual had a schematic for it
The 1600cc Kent engine in my Fiesta was the best part of the car. 2V Weber carb gave it plenty of pep, even in California emissions tune.
Stephen, your tale is getting more engrossing with each chapter. I’m very much enjoying this.
Lovely bit about a member of the greatest generation not being so great.
Just two years later I interviewed with Ford, first on campus in Berkeley and then a full day in Dearborn. I got an offer for an entry test engineer position, but I turned it down. As I recall it was for $1200-1300 a month. The job I took in California paid “only” $1150 but I didn’t want to move to the land of rust.
I interviewed for an entry-level manufacturing engineering position at Ford prior to graduating from college in 1979; first with an on-campus interview, then a day and a half on-site interview in Dearborn. The job that I interviewed for was based at the (then) relatively new casting facility in Flat Rock, MI.
A few of interviewees and I went out to dinner with a couple of young Ford engineers at the end of the first day. The Ford guys basically told us — “don’t take the job, this place is a mess”. They said that newly hired engineers were put on a schedule that rotated between day shift and evening shift, so we could count on not having a life. They also told us that the animosity between management and union employees at Ford made their jobs a living hell.
Needless to day, after receiving an offer from Ford, I took their advice and turned it down.
I only had the workday interview so maybe I didn’t get the true story. But some of the endorsements from the lower-level engineers I met with weren’t very compelling:
– “We don’t have to wear ties on Fridays. As long as we have a nice sport coat, dress shirt or turtleneck only”. In my engineering internship the preceding summer, in California, few of the engineers wore ties, even though dress codes were still more formal back then in 1976.
– “Management lets us bring in our own shared coffemaker in the office area”.
– “The employee car discount is really good”, told to me by the engineer who drove me over to another building … in his brownish-gold Maverick. With vinyl top.
I’m enjoying this journey through a different world. Your hatchback wagon looks good.
The Honda engine was certainly a possibility for the Fiesta, but not for the 1971 Pinto, as Honda’s Civic did not appear until MY 1973, and then only with a 1200 cc engine.
Aaahhh…the good old daze at ACCD!
Being a rabid GM fan at the time, with a ’69 Nova 6 and my beloved ’56 Chevy 150 with its ‘327 as our 2 cars, I was in a “discussion” during our morning break while standing in line in our little ACCD cafeteria. At any rate we were discussing the pros and cons of the Nova vs the Maverick; I was busy denigrating the Maverick.
I finally-duhh-realized WHO was behind me: Keith Teter! OOPZ! Fortunately he took such student opinions with apparent casual good grace! 🙂 Sometimes being 6’4″ with a opinionated mouth was not a good thing with someone @ 5’6″ standing behind! DFO
I know just how you felt, Dennis. I’ve had a few similar experiences. Sometimes not realising what my mouth got me into until years later…..
Am I the only person who thought that the Maverick was in no way better (and in some ways significantly worse) that the Falcon from which it was descended? For me, the Falcon was open and airy with a reasonably roomy rear seat, while the Maverick made me feel like I was sitting in a bucket with almost no outward visibility and a mostly vestigial rear seat.
No. And I think I’ve made that pretty clear here over the years.
Ford Australia thought so, and went their own way for a Falcon replacement.
…only to come up with a car that was like being in an enormous bucket, with almost no outward visibility!
The Maverick was sportier looking, almost like a smaller Mustang (at least the 2 door). But knowing what I know now, I would have dropped my childhood Ford fanboy cloak and gotten a Nova or Duster instead had I been in the market back then….
These stories of the inside world of design school are really interesting to me! I would have loved to have taken this route in life, and but for my total lack of artistic talent may have done so. 🙂
Yes, well, if my grandmother had wheels she’d have been a bike, but I understand your yearning and lack of means, because I share it entirely.
A Guy I know got to go to the ACCD, when he graduated he got a job with Chrysler doing their show cars .
Now he has his own design company and does contract jobs for other, pretty sweet if you have the talent .
For Mavericks were underwhelming but they were designed to do a job and fit a budget, they did both satisfactorily .
-Nate
One of my sister-in-laws bought a new 1970 (Keith Teter) Maverick as her first car; it was replaced within 2 years by a 318 Dodge Challenger!
Attached is a not very clear photo of my ’56 Chevy 150 on graduation day from the old ACCD in Jan., ’74. My wife was holding my diploma by the car’s back lite and my former mother-in-law was behind the car.
My ’56 had her final paint job by then: 1972 Chevy Mojave Gold. I’ll never stop regretting selling my ’56…. 🙁 DFO
These posts are indeed interesting, and thankyou for them.