Cortina Takes the Crown

There seemed to be no good reason for the Ford Motor Co. Ltd. of Britain even to consider a new car. For those who preferred the compact and medium-sized auto, it was already producing Anglias, Consuls and Prefects; for bigger-car buyers, it was manufacturing Zephyrs and Zodiacs. The market appeared to be covered. Then, Ford planners spotted a potentially lucrative gap. To fill it, they created the Cortina, a car in the Anglia price range but with roominess comparable to the Consul's.

The market was more than ready.

Since its 1962 debut, the Cortina has become England's biggest-selling car. Despite a lackluster performance by all its British competitors in this model year, Ford rolled 190,953 Cortinas off the assembly lines before this summer's routine shutdown, which lasted three weeks.

Down to the Spot Welds. The man chiefly responsible for the car's swift success is Terry Beckett, 43, a London School of Economics graduate. Once the decision to design the Cortina was made, Ford began a crash program with an eight-man design and management team under Beckett's direction. With an accelerated production schedule--only 20 months from programming to production v. the usual 30 months--Ford could not tolerate errors. To avoid them, Beckett filled a 400-page "Red Book" with each of the car's 10,000 parts listed according to projected weight and cost. Each entry was personally signed by a team member, so that success became a personal burden.

Beckett's men worked 80-to 90-hour weeks, applying Ford's "triangulation" approach to every aspect of the project. Similar components from a Ford car (Anglia) and two competitors (Volkswagen and Minx) were compared to determine the best possible combination. Says Beckett: "We always analyze the best in competitive products right down to the spot welds--you can always learn something from them."

Red Book Record. In the summer of 1962, Henry Ford II and other company executives attended a sneak preview of the Cortina at Montlhery race track south of Paris. The car was 5 lbs. lighter and $3 cheaper than the Red Book had projected. Only major change in Beckett's schedule, in fact, was the annual-production target, which was raised from 150,000 to 250,000. In 1963, its first full manufacturing year, Cortina production reached 264,332.

Since its introduction, Cortina has had an average annual output of 240,000. In February of this year, Cortina sales moved ahead of the BMC 1100, onetime king of Britain's roads, with 15% of the market against 13%. Overall, Ford cars now claim 26% of domestic sales, while BMC has 31%. But with its 1968 Cortina 1300 model promising even better performance at 34 miles per gallon, Ford expects the average annual rate of Cortina sales to hit a record 300,000 by year's end.

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