Was Ford right to kill the front-wheel-drive 1963 Cardinal/Redwing?

(UPDATED FROM 12/8/2021)

Did Ford make the right move by pulling the plug on a US-built subcompact slated to be introduced in the fall of 1962? The car, initially called the Cardinal but later renamed the Redwing, was a front-wheel-drive economy car intended to compete against the Volkswagen Beetle. The US version of the car was cancelled at the last minute but a German version — called the Taunus P4 and P6 — was built from 1962 to 1970 (Wikipedia, 2021).

I am writing this post in response to comments made about Indie Auto’s story about Lee Iacocca, who reportedly played a central role in killing the Cardinal (go here). Paul Niedermeyer (2018) has already done a deep dive, so I would like to put some additional thoughts on the table to move the conversation along.

I see this topic as breaking out into three questions:

1. In the 1960s should Ford have built a subcompact in the United States?
2. If so, was it better for Ford to use front wheel drive rather than a traditional design?
3. If you answer “yes” to both of the above two questions, was the Cardinal worth producing?

Addressing each question in turn can avoid the confusion that can result from conflating them.

1: Should Ford have built a US subcompact in the 1960s?

Popular Mechanics summarized the reasons Ford gave for not building the Cardinal in the United States. A decline in the demand for smaller economy cars resulted in Ford no longer being able to “justify the cost of setting up assembly lines and channels of distribution for cars and parts.”

Another factor was supposedly that the appearance of Detroit’s compacts in the used-car market could further erode the viability of a subcompact. “Detroit Listening Post” writer Jim Whipple insisted that the cancellation was not because Ford management feared a “buyer reaction to front wheel drive” (Whipple, 1962; p. 72).

Also see ‘If you ran VW in 1959 how would you prepare for Detroit’s compacts?’

Ford’s excuses made some sense. By 1962 smaller economy cars were beginning to be eclipsed in sales by larger and sportier models. This shift was symbolized by Rambler, that paragon of compact probity, who was bumped out of third place in sales by Pontiac in 1962. Even so, American compacts had succeeded in cutting import market share.

With the luxury of hindsight we know that the imports would be held in check only temporarily. The market share of foreign cars and trucks would shoot up from under 5 percent in 1963 to almost 14 percent in 1970. A key reason why this happened was arguably because all of the American automakers shifted their attention to bigger, glitzier and more powerful models.

For example, Iacocca not only killed the Cardinal, but he moved the compact Falcon to a mid-sized platform in 1966. That led to the nameplate’s sales falling substantially, although for a time it was compensated for by the sporty Mustang.

Also see ‘Lee Iacocca got lucky with the 1964-66 Ford Mustang’

Eventually Ford would respond to rising import sales, first with the strippo compact Maverick in mid-1969 and then with the subcompact Pinto for 1971. Of course, General Motors would also come out with its first US-built subcompact called the Vega.

The problem with waiting so long to directly compete with the imports is that Detroit arguably let the cow out of the barn, never to return. Volkswagen sales eventually tapered off as the aging Beetle lost its luster, but other imports saw surging sales. By 1981 — a decade after Detroit unveiled the subcompacts that were supposed to drive the imports back into the sea — foreign automakers had captured 25 percent of the market.

I would suggest that American automakers would have had a much better chance of holding back the imports in the 1970s if they had entered the subcompact market in the previous decade. And of the Big Four automakers, Ford was in the best position to do so. During the 1960s General Motors was too successful in the upper reaches of the market to take the subcompact field seriously. Meanwhile, Chrysler and American Motors were arguably too small to field a viable entry.

Not only did Ford have adequate scale, but while Robert McNamara was an upper-level executive he championed practical economy cars. Indeed, the Cardinal was initially approved when he was company president (Kisiel, 2003).

2: Should front wheel drive have been used?

One can reasonably argue that front-wheel drive was not ready for prime time in the 1960s. Even in the early-70s rear-wheel drive still predominated among leading entry-level imports. A big reason why was that FWD reportedly cost more than a traditional drivetrain layout — which could be particularly problematic with entry-level cars that already had thin profit margins.

As a case in point, stories about the Cardinal invariably mention a Ford cost analysis that found that the British Motor Corp. sold early Minis “at a substantial loss” (Severson, 2013).

That may well have been true, but it is also only one data point. What about the front-wheel-drive economy cars offered by other European automakers in the 1960s, such as Renault? And if the technology was so prohibitively expensive, why did it become so widely used by the mid-70s?

Also see ‘1966 Oldsmobile Toronado: Just another shiny thing from General Motors’

Ford presumably would have done fine if it had introduced a US-built subcompact in 1962 that had a traditional layout like the English-built Cortina. The development costs — and thus the price points — would likely have been lower because the car used simpler, more off-the-shelf technology.

That said, over time Ford could have plausibly developed a profitable front-wheel-drive platform if it was kept around long enough — and the automaker was clever about coming up with variants that sold for higher prices. For example, the layout was ideally suited for a minivan. In addition, the drivetrain lent itself to a mid-engined sports car. Indeed, the Mustang 1 two-seater concept car used Cardinal components (auto editors of Consumer Guide, 1981).

A downside of a front-wheel-drive platform was that by 1962 Ford had already invested in a broad line of compact vehicles. Thus, a subcompact minivan would likely have taken sales away from a Falcon-based van. Concerns about cannibalization might have reduced the number of variants offered on the subcompact to the point where its profitability was less viable.

3: Warts and all, was the Cardinal worth producing?

One could reasonably answer “yes” to the first two questions but say “no” to this one. As Niedermeyer (2018) noted, the car’s styling was weak, it had mechanical quirks, and the cost to produce it was reportedly higher than the Falcon’s.

Of those three issues, the styling was arguably the least problematic. The Beetle was popular despite being ugly. And even if the Cardinal’s looks did depress sales, a routine reskinning could have taken that issue off the table.

By the same token, most of the car’s biggest mechanical issues could have been fixed, such as by improving handling and acceleration.

Whether the Cardinal could have achieved profitability is a murkier subject. A big part of the problem is that we don’t know what assumptions were used by the Ford staff member who concluded that the car cost more to build than the Falcon. What we can say is that even if the Cardinal didn’t sell well in its first few years, by the second half of the 1960s it should have benefitted from a booming subcompact market.

Also keep in mind that a platform’s initial cost can be mitigated by a longer production run. By the beginning of the 1971 model year, the Cardinal would have been in production eight years. Along the way any changes made to the car would not have been nearly as expensive as its initial development.

Another consideration in the Cardinal’s favor was that by the time Ford decided to kill the car, $35 million had already been spent on its development (Halberstam, 1986).

Also see ‘What if GM and Ford were broken up in the 1960s?’

It should also be noted that the total price tag for the Cardinal was reportedly only $45 million (Niedermeyer, 2018). In contrast, the Mustang reportedly cost around $75 million (Halberstam, 1986). One can quibble with whether those figures can be compared in an apples-to-apples way, but they also suggest that the Cardinal was hardly an Edsel-scale financial risk.

Another good reason to have gone ahead with the Cardinal was because it would have given Ford experience with a “world car.” A key reason the automaker lost competitive ground to the imports in the 1960s and 1970s was because its US arm maintained a “not invented here” attitude.

Also see ‘Late-1960s Ford car design film shows US automakers losing it’

The worst thing that could have happened with the Cardinal was that Ford didn’t begin to make any money on it until the late-60s. Would that have been such a bad thing if the Cardinal had given the automaker a foothold in the subcompact class with a car that helped Ford to better utilize its global economies of scale?

This is a long way of saying that I would agree with Geeber (go here and here) that Ford would likely had done better both sales-wise and financially if it had introduced a Cortina-type subcompact in late 1962. However, if the choice was to do nothing or launch the Cardinal, the latter strikes me as the more promising option.

NOTES:

Market share figures are from Wards Auto (2017). Note that these figures look somewhat different from those typically used at Indie Auto because they are for sales of cars and trucks of all types. Production figures were calculated with data drawn from the following sources: Auto editors of Consumer Guide, 2006; Gunnell, 2002, 2004) and Wikipedia (2020). 

Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.

---

RE:SOURCES

• Auto editors of Consumer Guide; 1981. “Ford Cardinal: Dearborn’s Would-Be World Car.” Prototype Cars: Cars That Never Were. Published Feb.: pp. 46-49.
• ——;  2006. Encyclopedia of American Cars. Publications International, Lincolnwood, Ill.
• Gunnell, John; 2002. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised 4th Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
• ——; 2004. Standard Catalog of Volkswagen, 1946-2004. KP Books, Iola, WI.
• Halberstam, David; 1986. The Reckoning. William Morrow & Co., New York, NY.
• Kisiel, Ralph; 2003. “Iacocca shot down the Cardinal.” Automotive News. Posted June 16.
• Koch, Jeff; 2008. “MK I and MK II Ford Cortina (1963-’70).” Hemmings. Published March issue.
• Ludvigsen, Karl; 2021. “Corvair Stories: Gone but by no means forgotten.” Collier Automedia. Unknown posting date; accessed Dec. 6.
• Niedermeyer, Paul; 2018. “Automotive History: The Real Story of How the American Ford FWD Cardinal Became the German Ford Taunus 12M – From Dearborn With Love.” Curbside Classic. Dec. 18.
• Severson, Aaron; 2013. “Party Downsize: The Ford Fiesta Mk1 and Mk2.” Ate Up With Motor. Posted Nov. 27.
• Whipple, Jim; 1962. “Ford’s Cardinal is no dead pigeon. Look for new shapes of old compacts in ’63.” Popular Mechanics. June issue: p. 72.
• Wards Auto; 2017. “U.S. Total Vehicle Sales Market Share by Company.”
• Wikipedia; 2020. “U.S. Automobile Production Figures.” Accessed March 28.
• ——; 2021. “Ford Taunus P4.” Page last edited Nov. 18.

ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:

• oldcarbrochures.org: Chevrolet Corvair (1960); Ford Cortina (1963, 1965, 1971); Ford Econoline (1962) Ford Pinto (1971)

PHOTOGRAPHY:

• Banner image is a 1965 Ford Taunus P4 taken by Berthold Werner via Wikipedia Creative Commons 2.0. Photo has been lightly edited to reduce background shadows.