The Ford (1908- ) is what people called the only kind of car the Ford Motor Company used to make. You could get it with engines of different sizes, with four doors or just two, with different styling and so on, but it was all the same car.
The Ford has fallen out of fashion, but it is still with us. It is currently known asthe Crown Victoria. In fact, even now it is still the most common car in New York: taxi drivers and the police like it because it is built strong and has a lot of room.
Henry Ford was not interested in making the best cars. He wanted tomake cars that were strong and simple and easy to make, cars he could sell to the common man. Everything about the Ford was designed towards that end.
The Model T came out in 1908. Ever since then the Ford has been a car with the body, engine and transmission all bolted onto a frame, with the engine in front, a solid axle in the back and the transmission in between. Since 1932 that engine has been a V8.
The Ford has grown in size and power over the years. By the 1960s it was three times heavier and ten times more powerful than the Model T. But in the 1970s this proved to be its undoing.
In the early 1970s oil went from $3 to $12 almost overnight. Now the size and power of the Ford worked against it: it was so large and heavy and had such a high-powered – and therefore wasteful – engine that suddenly it became a costly car to have.
So in the years that followed the Ford fell out of favour even as it became smaller and lighter – and got a weaker engine. Only now is it as powerful as it once was in its glory days of the 1960s.
For this line of cars, the last convertible came out in 1972 and the last estate car (station wagon) in 1991.
The Ford through the years:
1915 Ford Model T, 1480 crowns (= 44.4 kg of silver)
engine: 4 cylinders (2.9 L, 15 kW)
1925 Ford Model T Fordor Sedan, 990 crowns
engine: 4 cylinders (2.9 L, 15 kW)
1935 Ford Model 48 Sedan Convertible, 1330 crowns
engine: 221 Flathead V8 (3.6 L, 63 kW)
1946 Ford, 1580 crowns
engine: 239 Flathead V8 (3.9 L, 67 kW)
1955 Ford Fairlane Crown Victoria, 2520 crowns
engine: 292 Y-block V8 (4.8 L, 144 kW)
1965 Ford Galaxie, 2100 crowns
engine: 352 FE V8 (5.8 L, 155 kW)
1975 Ford LTD, 1170 crowns
engine: 400 Cleveland V8 (6.6 L, 118 kW)
1985 Ford LTD Crown Victoria, 2100 crowns
engine: 302 Windsor V8 (5.0 L, 97 kW)
1995 Ford Crown Victoria, 4060 crowns
engine: 4.6 Modular V8 (4.6 L, 142 kW)
2005 Ford Crown Victoria , 3190 crowns
engine: 4.6 Modular V8 (4.6 L, 167 kW)
The prices are given in crowns (a coin with 30 grams of silver – about $13 in current money), engine size in litres (1 L = 61 cubic inches) and engine power in kilowatts (1 kW = 1.341 horsepower).
See also:
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