Slipped Through Ford's Fingers

[Fawnbuster]

Hi Mike,

That is it! It was cordoned off in the Exec Garage so we could only look at it and could not touch it. Then next day it was gone and we never saw it again...left with the dark of night.... If I recall correctly, it was code named MiniMax.

best,
Phil

Hi Phil! Great story as usual! I wonder where it went to. Might become a garage find someday

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[P. A. Schilke]

Hi Phil! Great story as usual! I wonder where it went to. Might become a garage find someday

Hi Mike,

Some of these concept vehicles made it to the Henry Ford Museum storage barn. Never knew what happened to this concept vehicle

best,
Phil

 

[BettaRanga]

That beats the current minivan designs…

 

[NotBudule]

Hi Folks,

Henry Ford II did not like it or Lee Iaccoca and fired him. Ford lost out on being the leader due to the clash of two super EGOs!
Phil

They tried to touch on that a little in the Ford vs Ferrari movie , were you privy to any of that ? Any accuracy in the movie ?

 

[AdamHarris]

Yes, the History program “The cars that made America” indicated that Lee was rather hurt by being let go at Ford. Pretty sad to lose a talent like that over ego.

 

[P. A. Schilke]

They tried to touch on that a little in the Ford vs Ferrari movie , were you privy to any of that ? Any accuracy in the movie ?

Hi NB,

We were aware of the friction between Iaccoca and HFII and then his firing by The Deuce... No details of that though....

Best,
Phil

 

[P. A. Schilke]

Yes, the History program “The cars that made America” indicated that Lee was rather hurt by being let go at Ford. Pretty sad to lose a talent like that over ego.

Hi Adam,

Iaccoca story. He was not happy with the fake wood grain accents in the interior of the cars and trucks. In a rant he pounded his desk and said the the wood should look like my desk. His desk was made out of Cocobolo wood. So, it was arranged to photograph Iaccoca's desk and hand out the edict to the entire Ford upper management and its associated trickle down to the lowly Design engineers in both Car and Truck. My friend was steering system design engineer for all Light trucks and this edict affected him as the XLT horn pad at this time was fake wood grain. It had to be changed to cocobolo. Body Engineering had to redo trim in the interior to match as well...thus for many years after Iaccoca's firing the cocobolo pattern wood would reflect his edict.

Best,
Phil

 

[9zero1790]

hmmm i guess they decided to finally build it (mach E mustang)

ohh wait. thats not the mustang mach E its a windstar... oh well close enough...
not sorry lol

 

[9zero1790]

Hi Folks,

I found this old photo of what was going to be the next Magic Mustang success and Lee Iacocca next idea....a minivan. Henry Ford II did not like it or Lee Iaccoca and fired him. I saw this vehicle in the Truck Operations Executive Garage one day in the Mid 1970's A two tone concept vehicle. Iaccoca took this concept that HFII (The Duce) nixed and made the Chrysler Mini Van the hit it was! Ford lost out on being the leader due to the clash of two super EGOs!

I thought this was a winner at the time and sad when HFII canned it!

Best,
Phil

i like it. if i could get it without the faux wood and have 4x4 id be in.

 

[P. A. Schilke]

hmmm i guess they decided to finally build it (mach E mustang)

ohh wait. thats not the mustang mach E its a windstar... oh well close enough...
not sorry lol

Hi Mark,

In my back stories I explain why we called this the Windlemon from the first Prototype where my engineer ripped the rear axle out of the $2 million prototype vehicle...

Okay...can't find it... So here it is again.

I was in CAE and Product Verification at the time and I had Chassis CAE. Included was obtaining Program Loads for new vehicles. I got one of the first Windstar prototypes, which we shipped off to Instrumentation where there were about 200 channels of load transducers, stress and strain, displacement movements were instrumented. It takes about 3 months to get the whole vehicle instrumented at that time. So the Windstar (Windlemon) was completed and the Instrumentation Lab took the vehicle out to the pot hole course to check out all the channels where this huge unbilical cable was attached to a follow beside Instrumentation Van. During the slow speed drive down the pothole course a catastrophic failure occurred where the whole rear axle, wheels and tires were ripped out of the vehicle. My engineer Nand K was shocked and came into my office with the worried look of what are we going to do. We headed over to the test track and there was the axle, wheels and tires and trailing arms, parking brake cables and brake line laying in two potholes and the axleless vehicle sitting in the next set of potholes on its rear bumper. Shit hit the fan in Windstar design and by the evening I was called to a meeting to understand what happened. I reminded the higher ups that I had no involvement in the CAE as the "best and brightest CAE engineers" were taken for the program. The Chief engineer was really upset (pissed!) and ordered me to get involved NOW!

Next morning I approached my top CAE analyst and told him to drop everything and go over and review the CAE analysis of the rear axle brackets attached to the body. I had an 11 am meeting to report findings so pressure was on. About 10:30 am I got a call...He had found the problem with the CAE analysis. The "best and brightest" used a rear axle weigh of 1 lb. It should have been 130 lbs, so the body attaching brackets were made of tin foil to what would really be needed. I walked into the 11am meeting and all eyes were on me. I cut to the chase and relayed the info on this huge mistake that could have killed people driving the prototypes (think driving prototypes is exciting???) What followed was a set of edicts from the Chief Engineer. Halt prototype build, Phil will oversee all CAE, Program Chief engineer will head up fixing the problem of getting the prototype build back on schedule and so on... CAE can be garbage in equals garbage out, which was the case and these book smart people had on concept to just look at the fabricated brackets as too flimsy.

Some sleepless nights and crash program to get back on track resulted in robust brackets and I got the test data we needed for further CAE analysis. The chief program engineer announced his retirement toward the end of the fiasco and some of the "best and brightest" were reassigned to other tasks and were career ending as a result. Several quit Ford.

Okay, I hope this makes sense...it was in later years a great war story of the Windlemon.

Best,
Phil

 

[Trigganometry]

hmmm i guess they decided to finally build it (mach E mustang)

ohh wait. thats not the mustang mach E its a windstar... oh well close enough...
not sorry lol

Think it was early 90’s had a couple of Mercury Villagers. With leather they were a nice family hauler

 

[BS67]

With leather they were a nice family hauler

 

[Trigganometry]

Now you know where Ricardo micro buns came from…

 

[lazynorse]

The camping/overlanding crowd is too small to influence Ford decisions, but here's a van I'd like to see:

Full size, 4wd, body on frame.
Pop up roof, roof rack ready.
North/south oriented bunks that fold up against each van side. When folded down to a bed position, its height leaves a 'garage' space below it.
Minimalist camp interior - cabinet/cubbies ready to slide in a 12v fridge and a couple 5 gall water jerry cans.

 

[Trigganometry]

The camping/overlanding crowd is too small to influence Ford decisions, but here's a van I'd like to see:

Full size, 4wd, body on frame.
Pop up roof, roof rack ready.
North/south oriented bunks that fold up against each van side. When folded down to a bed position, its height leaves a 'garage' space below it.
Minimalist camp interior - cabinet/cubbies ready to slide in a 12v fridge and a couple 5 gall water jerry cans.

You planning to escape from NY? ?

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