(EXPANDED FROM 3/31/2023)
Compacts and personal coupes generated an outsized amount of media attention during the 1960s, but the most important emerging market segment turned out to be mid-sized cars. Sales rose steadily to the point where they ran neck and neck with full-sized, low-priced cars in 1968 — and by 1972 mid-sized cars were consistently outselling them.
The Ford Motor Company could be credited as being an early entrant into the mid-sized field. In 1962 the automaker shifted the Ford Fairlane and Mercury Meteor onto a new platform sized between its compact and big cars.
Nevertheless, Ford still ended up getting pummeled by General Motors in the mid-sized field — and even outsold by the Chrysler Corporation through much of the 1960s. To add insult to injury, Ford’s entries appear to have cannibalized the sales of its other passenger cars.
That raises two questions: Did Ford’s early entrance into the mid-sized field end up backfiring? And should the automaker have jumped in at all?
Those questions in turn, raise a broader question: Were there negative consequences to the cat-and-mouse game that Ford played with GM in the 1960s?
What I mean by that is after Ford’s disastrous late-50s expansion efforts in the premium- and luxury-car fields, it stopped competing model for model against GM. Instead, Ford tried to throw GM off balance by jumping into a succession of “new” markets, such as with the hot-selling Mustang.
That did indeed succeed in putting GM on the defensive, but Ford’s product-proliferation spree was expensive — and GM had deeper pockets.
Ford took a page from Studebaker and Rambler
Ford didn’t invent mid-sized cars so much as it helped to bring the field into the major leagues.
The 1939-52 Studebaker Champion was arguably the first American mid-sized car, although I have also described it as a “family compact” (go here for further discussion). Unfortunately, in 1953 Studebaker re-embraced Detroit’s holy trilogy of bigger, glitzier and more powerful – and not so coincidentally fell into a death spiral.
In 1956 American Motors partially filled the resulting void left by Studebaker with a larger Rambler. That car proved to be pivotal to AMC’s success in the late-50s and early-60s, which culminated in Rambler ousting Plymouth as the third-best-selling brand for 1961.
The Rambler’s exterior dimensions were similar to higher-priced compacts introduced in 1961 by Ford and GM. However, for many buyers the Rambler’s unusually tall, spacious design and upscale features made it a better compromise between an entry-level compact and a full-sized car than the Mercury Comet or GM’s so-called Y-Body compacts — the Buick Special, Oldsmobile F-85 and Pontiac Tempest.
Note that for 1962 Studebaker reentered the fledgling mid-sized field with a stretched Lark. However, the automaker was too weak to become a major player. Lark output surpassed 93,000 units that model year but slid downward until U.S. production stopped in late 1963.
Ford and Chrysler jockeyed to define mid-sized field
Ford wasn’t alone in entering the mid-sized field in 1962. That year Chrysler downsized its big Plymouth and Dodge. The new B-Body Plymouth Savoy was seven inches shorter, 3.6 inches narrower and more than 600 pounds lighter than a Ford Galaxie but had only had 2.5 inches less rear hip room.
Ford’s mid-sized cars were about as long as the Chrysler twins but were narrower by 4.3 inches. This translated into roughly two inches less hip room. The Fairlane and Meteor were also somewhat lighter.
Both the Ford and Chrysler twins were referred to as “intermediates” — the awkward term given to mid-sized cars — but they played different roles in their automaker’s lineup. The mid-sized Fords were a step up from the automaker’s compacts but meaningfully smaller than its bread-and-butter big cars.
In contrast, the Chrysler twins were originally intended to be a more efficient substitute to a traditional full-sized car. Contrary to one myth, their bodies were not based upon the automaker’s compacts (go here for further discussion).
By 1964 an upsized senior Rambler and GM’s Y-Body compacts grew in dimensions and weight to somewhere between Ford and Chrysler’s mid-sized cars. And as the decade progressed, everybody’s entries got bigger and heavier on the outside — although interior space often did not increase much.
List prices for Ford’s mid-sized twins were somewhat lower than Chrysler’s, but they still significantly overlapped both compact and full-sized, low-priced entries. The graph below, which compares 1963 and 1968 prices, shows that this was an ongoing issue.
Ford’s 1962-63 mid-sized cars had mixed success
The Fairlane’s output wasn’t bad in its first two years — roughly 297,000 units in 1962 and almost 344,000 the following year.
Richard M. Langworth and the auto editors of Consumer Guide stated that most of the Fairlane’s sales “represented additional business that didn’t come at the expense of other Fords” (1987, p. 213). However, Aaron Severson (2009) quite rightly pointed out that Ford’s total sales “remained almost flat” despite the addition of the Fairlane and Falcon.
The stacked graph below illustrates Severson’s point. The Ford Division’s passenger-car output grew by only 5 percent between 1959 and 1963. You can also see how the Fairlane did not achieve the high sales of the early Falcon and Mustang.
How much did the Fairlane cannibalize the sales of other Fords? In 1962, full-sized Ford volume was off by 11 percent and Falcon by 16.5 percent. Meanwhile, total Ford output increased by only 10 percent. Subtracting out the Thunderbird’s slightly increased production, Ford gained an extra 132,000 units from the Fairlane. That was 45 percent of the nameplate’s output.
Also see ‘1962-64 Plymouth: The odd case of prescience interruptus’
So is the glass half full or half empty? I would tend toward the latter view because the Ford Division’s market share in the low-priced field fell six points in 1962. This primarily reflected Chevrolet’s output increasing from roughly 1.3 million units in 1961 to over 2 million the next year.
Might Ford have better kept up with Chevrolet’s dramatic growth if it had invested in updates to its existing high-volume entries rather than coming out with a mid-sized car that took sales away from them?
Why did the Mercury Meteor fail?
Ford spent a meaningful amount of money on the Meteor. Whereas the Comet shared door sheetmetal with the Falcon, the Meteor’s were distinct from the Fairlane’s.
Not that it helped. Meteor output for 1962 barely hit 69,000 units — and sank to under 51,000 the next year. Why did the car do so poorly when the Tempest, F-85 and Special sold better when they were upsized in 1964?
Styling may have been part of the problem. The best-selling mid-sized models from GM’s premium-priced brands were high-end, two-door hardtops. The Meteor offered a sporty S-33 model and added a hardtop in 1963, but these cars did not possess the panache of a LeMans, Cutlass or Skylark.
Perhaps more importantly, unlike its GM counterparts, the Meteor had internal competition. The Comet outsold the Meteor by more than two to one during 1962-63. Note that this was a very different experience than Dodge’s, whose compact Dart and mid-sized Coronet were both strong sellers even after the brand added back a full lineup of big cars in 1965.
The Meteor appears to have cannibalized sales of the Comet and the full-sized Monterey. Despite a 28-percent jump in U.S. auto production in 1962, the Comet fell by 16 percent and the Monterey by 11 percent. Yet the addition of the Meteor increased Mercury’s total output by under 8 percent.
The Meteor was discontinued for 1964. Two years later the Comet was shifted to Ford’s mid-sized platform and became a fancier Fairlane. Comet sales rose 3 percent to more than 170,000 units. That was right up there with the glory days of the compact Comet.
However, after only one year mid-sized Mercury sales collapsed — and then struggled for years. This raised the question of whether the Comet’s upsizing was a smart move.
General Motors responded with shock and awe
Perhaps hastened by Ford and Chrysler’s entry into the mid-sized field, GM jumped in with both feet in 1964. The automaker’s new platform was a bit larger in size and weight than the Fairlane’s. Perhaps most importantly, four out of five of its divisions were given an entry – and each had distinctive sheetmetal and a broad range of models. All three Y-Body compacts were upsized and Chevrolet was given a new nameplate, the Chevelle.
GM’s approach was substantially different than with the 1961 Y-Body. Back then, the Special, F-85 and Tempest shared some sheetmetal but offered an unusual diversity of technical features for a single platform. In 1964, engineering prowess became passé and an emphasis was placed on styling. Exotic features such as a swing transaxle fell by the wayside as each of GM’s entries instead were given unique looks.
The main way GM economized was by placing its entire mid-sized lineup on the same 115-inch wheelbase (aside from longer-wheelbase wagons for Buick and Oldsmobile). So unlike with GM’s big cars, you didn’t get more passenger room when you moved up its brand hierarchy.
This was an important move for GM. I can think of few other instances where the automaker mounted such an aggressive attack on a new market in a single year.
GM dominated the mid-sized field in 1964-65
The shock-and-awe strategy worked brilliantly. In 1964-65 the Chevelle outsold the Fairlane and each of the former Y-Body nameplates saw their volume soar.
Ford clearly wasn’t ready for GM’s 1964 counterattack. Part of the problem was that it now had only one entry to GM’s four. But just as importantly, the three-year-old Fairlane looked decidedly frumpy compared to the GM cars.
The Fairlane four-door sedan was 1.6 inches taller and 2.4 inches narrower than the equivalent Chevelle. The Ford’s utilitarian uprightness was accentuated by lack of curved side glass, unlike mid-sized cars from GM and American Motors.
Matters did not improve in 1965. Ford management was concerned enough about the Fairlane’s competitiveness to take the unusual step of giving it a reskinning that lasted only one year. Yet output dropped by 19 percent and Ford fell to last place in mid-sized market share — even lower than American Motors.
The Fairlane’s sales decline could have partly reflected cannibalization by the Mustang. After all, the Falcon’s output fell even further. However, the new styling wasn’t so hot. The angularity of its fenders served to accentuate the car’s overly tall, narrow and boxy body.
Chrysler also saw a sales decline in 1965. That may have been partly because its mid-sized cars only received facelifts, but the biggest factor could have been the return of a full-sized Plymouth and Dodge.
Meanwhile, all of GM’s mid-sized entries saw production increases. The Chevelle was up by almost 15 percent but the Tempest/LeMans saw the biggest increase — almost 31 percent. This resulted in GM capturing almost 56 percent of the mid-sized market.
Ford and Chrysler play catch up in 1966
Ford was not ready to roll out a full response to GM’s mid-size juggernaut until 1966. The Fairlane kept its comparatively upright body but received a major restyling that included curved side glass and a mild coke bottle look. Meanwhile, the Comet became an upscale sibling of the Fairlane with unique sheetmetal.
Perhaps most tellingly, the Falcon was moved to the Fairlane’s wider and heavier platform. The evolution of Ford’s compacts deserve their own article, but for now what’s noteworthy is that Ford stepped away from the compact field to a greater degree than GM or Chrysler even though Ford had dominated it in the early-60s.
In 1966 Chrysler also tried to catch up with GM in the mid-sized field. A restyled body included curved side glass and a less esoteric look, but the cars continued to be slightly wider than the competition.
Ford did better in 1966-67, trading place with Chrysler for second place in market share. However, GM continued to grab more than half of the market — and would do so for the rest of the decade. The biggest loser was American Motors, which was sliding into irrelevance in the mid-sized field.
Mid-sized field again a key battleground in 1968
In 1968 each of the Big Three gave their mid-sized cars another major reskinning after only two years. Most entries also received additional models and adjustments in their nameplate hierarchy.
Despite intensifying competition, the mid-sized field was becoming increasingly conformist. A 1968-69 Fairlane four-door sedan was strikingly similar in dimensions to a Belvedere and Chevelle. Each had the same wheelbase (116 inches) and similar length (201-202.7 inches) and width (74.5-76.4 inches). However, the Ford was still the tallest, narrowest and lightest of the Big Three.
GM continued to overpower the rest of the field. Output in 1968 hit a peak of 1.24 million units — more than twice as many as second-place Chrysler’s roughly 550,000 units. GM’s lowest selling mid-sized offerings, from Buick and Oldsmobile, together bested Ford’s 493,000 units.
Chrysler beat Ford in 1968 even though Fairlane/Torino production hit an all-time high of roughly 372,000 units — a third higher than the Plymouth Belvedere and Satellite. However, Dodge’s Coronet and Charger vastly outperformed the Mercury Comet/Montego (almost 310,000 to 121,000 units, respectively).
Although Ford output finally surpassed Pontiac’s in 1968, Chevrolet maintained a solid first place in the mid-sized field throughout the 1960s. Only in the early-70s did the Fairlane/Torino come close to matching the Chevelle.
Should Ford have not entered mid-sized field in 1962?
Now that we’ve walked through the data at a fairly high level, let’s circle back to one of the questions we raised near the top of this post: Did Ford make a mistake by entering the mid-sized field in 1962?
If Ford had not, the only major players would have been Chrysler and American Motors. Chrysler sales were disastrous in 1962. However, Rambler did pretty well — and might have sold even better if Ford had not entered the field in 1962 or 1963.
My guess is that General Motors would have eventually moved into the mid-size field regardless of what Ford did. GM was too wedded to bigger cars to avoid upsizing at least some of its compacts.
The Y-Body was a particularly likely target given its mediocre sales in 1961-63. The main variable might have been timing. If Ford had not entered the mid-sized field in 1962-63, might General Motors have waited an extra year to do so? That would have given the Y-Body’s 1963 reskinning a two- rather than one-year production run, which would have been more typical of cost-conscious GM.
Did Ford need a distinct mid-sized platform?
If GM, Chrysler and AMC were all in the mid-sized field by 1965, Ford would have been hard pressed to avoid joining the fun. The main questions would have revolved around timing and what platform to use.
The conventional approach would have been to come out with a distinct mid-sized platform. However, that would not have avoided the cannibalization that undercut Ford’s economies of scale.
For example, the Mustang undercut the compact Falcon — which hindsight suggests that Ford needed to help hold back the imports in the late-60s. The Falcon was then shifted to the mid-sized platform, presumably because management thought Ford was overextended with too many platforms.
By the same token, when the Cougar was introduced in 1967 it appears to have cannibalized the sales of it Mercury siblings. For example, the Comet saw production fall by a catastrophic 52 percent. And even with a name change to the Montego, sales continued to be among the lowest in the mid-sized class until a major redesign in 1972.
In other words, for all of Ford’s fancy footwork, it ended up with a messy assemblage of entries that did not result in more than short-term growth spurts. This raises the question: Might Ford have done a better job of maximizing its sales and profitability by not coming out with a distinct mid-sized platform?
One alternative could have been to attack the mid-sized field from the bottom and top. For example, the Falcon and Comet could have kept their existing market position on an updated compact platform more closely aligned with the Mustang while the mid-sized Fairlane and Meteor were introduced in 1964 or 1965 and based on a strunken 1965 big Ford platform.
Instead, Ford stoked Detroit’s platform proliferation fever. That may have given the automaker temporary victories, but it ultimately put Ford at a disadvantage to a much larger — and deeper pocketed — GM.
NOTES:
This story was originally posted on Feb. 12, 2021 and expanded on March 31, 2023 and March 7, 2025. Production figures, prices and dimensions came from the auto editors of Consumer Guide (2006), Gunnell (2002), the Automobile Catalog (2021) and the Classic Car Database (2021). The “Second-tier mid-sized brand production, 1960-71” graph includes under Mercury the Comet and Meteor in 1962-63 and under Dodge the Coronet and Charger in 1966-71.
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Auto editors of Consumer Guide; 2006. Encyclopedia of American Cars. Publications International; Lincolnwood, Ill.
- Automobile Catalog; 2021. “Search Automobile Catalog.” Accessed Jan. 27.
- Classic Car Database; 2021. “Search for specifications.” Accessed Feb. 3.
- Consumer Reports; 1963. “Auto Buying Guide for 1963.”
- Gunnell, John; 2002. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised 4th Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Langworth, Richard M. and auto editors of Consumer Guide; 1987. The Complete History of Ford Motor Company. Beckman House.
- Severson, Aaron; 2009. “How Big Is Too Big? The Midsized Ford Fairlane and Mercury Comet.” Ate Up With Motor. Posted May 30.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- autohistorypreservationsociety.org: Ford Fairlane (1965); Mercury Meteor (1962); Rambler (1960); Studebaker (1950)
- oldcaradvertising.com: Chevrolet Chevelle (1964); Dodge Coronet (1966); Oldsmobile Cutlass (1967); Plymouth Satellite (1966)
- oldcarbrochures.org: Buick Skylark (1964); Chevrolet Chevelle (1968); Dodge (1962); Dodge Dart (1967); Ford (1962, 1965); Ford Fairlane (1966, 1969); Mercury Meteor (1963); Oldsmobile F-85 (1964); Plymouth Satellite (1969); Pontiac Tempest/LeMans (1964, 1967); Rambler (1963)
One of Ford’s spokesmen noted in 1970 that Ford had developed indulged in model proliferation over the decade yet after 10 years and after all that effort it sold the same number of units as in 1959. He wondered why they had bothered.
I’m paraphrasing, but he made it sound like it hadn’t benefitted Ford very much.
Quoted in Motor Trend.
Excellent article.
I would argue that it did help Ford – in an indirect way. Mainly, it forced GM to respond in kind, which ultimately resulted in each division except Cadillac offering a full range of cars from el cheapo subcompact to full-size luxury land yacht.
There were subcompact Buicks that looked and felt as cheap as economy Chevrolets (or, even worse, were simply badge-engineered versions of Chevrolets – see the 1975 Buick Skyhawk and Chevrolet Monza). At the opposite end of the market, the Chevrolet Caprice Classic was as plush as an Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale Brougham.
That accelerated the downfall of GM.
It also accelerated the end of the mid-price and premium cars.When you could buy a Caprice or LTD with pretty much everything an Olds or Mercury has except wheelbase, which was mostly forward of the cowl, anyway. Now as the article touched on, in this era component sharing led rapidly to badge engineering making mid price and premium brands superfluous. Bill Mitchell’s Pay a little more,get a little more still was valid. Now you’re moving up from a Vega to Malibu instead of from a Chevy to a Pontiac. Are you going to jump to a visually and mechanically indistinguishable with a marginally plusher interior for a significant price inrease just for not so visable cachet?
Sometimes you have to keep running just to stay in place. If Ford did not make the Fairlane, sales wouldn’t have gone to Galaxie or Falcon, but to Chevelle or Rambler.
I think after the Ford E-car debacle, the success of the Falcon in 1960 indicated that resources be allocated the next step, which was the new 221 / 260 / 289 cu.-in. V8 and a larger car to put it in, i.e., the Fairlane and the Meteor. When I first saw the Fairlane, I saw a 1957 Ford 300, with better trim. Mercury was back to being a deluxe Ford with a few Mercury styling cues, and the combination of the Comet and the Meteor made sense. I do think the 1963 restyle of the big Mercury doomed the Meteor. I, for one, believe the 1965 restyle of the Fairlane was the worst styling of the 1960s, tied with the 1961 Plymouth Fury (“The Car that ate Tokyo”).
I would like to add this thought: Chrysler created a superior car in terms of engineering with the 1962 Plymouth / Dodge Dart, except the Chrysler intermediates did not rectify the bizarre styling issues until 1964. While Ford’s Fairlane / Meteor were very good for 1962-1963, why Ford stuck with the original Fairlane platform until 1968 shows why Lee Iacocca did not always do his best for Ford: In fact, Ford was ambushed by four G.M. intermediates and two Chrysler intermediates with mainstream styling in 1964. I would have loved to been a fly on the wall in the Hank The Duece’s office when the media unveilings of the 1964 cars occurred in the summer of 1963. I shall bet that he was not very happy. No wonder Henry II chose “Bunkie” Knudsen to replace Arjay Miller in the fall of 1968 to be Ford’s President instead of Iacocca.
James, I suspect that Ford stuck with the first-generation mid-sized platform for so long because of the power of the beancounters. Iacocca apparently took big political risks to pressure Henry Ford II to approve the Mustang, so perhaps he didn’t feel like he could afford to spend the political capital necessary to advocate for a more substantial redesign of the mid-sized body. Or perhaps Iacocca’s priority was to maximize Mustang sales in 1965-66 and didn’t care much about cannibalizing the Fairlane and Falcon.
My sense is that Ford’s mid-sized cars used the same platform from 1962-71. Perhaps the biggest change was in 1966, when the bodies were given curved side glass. The 1968 and 1970 models appear to have been reskinnings. This is most obvious by looking at the wagons, which shared the same greenhouse from 1966-71.
I thought of the same thing, I guess the Fairlane/Torino/Comet/Montego wagons didn’t sell in enough numbers to justify a bigger reskinning for 1968 and 1970 hence why they kept the same greenhouse from 1966 to 1971.
The father of my high-school best friend, a long-time Chevrolet buyer, traded his 1966 Chevelle 300 sedan for a heavily optioned 1969 Ford Torino GT sedan. Charlie was a manufacturer representative for fastener supplier Service Supply of Indianapolis (“The House of a Million Screws”) and traveled all over Indiana daily meeting the customer, thus putting thousands of miles every week on his cars. He never complained out his Chevies, but he said that hands-down, the Torino was the worst car he ever owned, replacing it with a 1971 Chevelle 300 sedan. G.M. intermediates of 1964-1972 were perhaps the very best car platform ever made.
In ’62 a neighbor of ours who owned a nice boat and a bigger car, got a rather plain new Fairlane 2-door, perhaps for his wife. Of course l wondered WHY he didn’t buy a nice Lark?!
Our family had recently bought a beautiful black ’62 Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk, and the generic-looking Fairlane was at the opposite(poor) end of my teenage automobile ratings list. My thoughts were vindicated when later in the fall a very good-looking lady down the street bought a beautiful white ’63 Gran Turismo!
Here’s an observation: l think that perhaps the majority of “Studebaker families” were more favorably disposed to GM or Chrysler than Ford products after Studebakers were no longer available. The Chrysler mechanical reputation was an attraction to x-Studebaker owners, as was the good GM styling. Main-stream Fords seemed (right or wrong?) generically styled (not T-birds, of course) and had a cheaper, less attractive look. l’m not sure where the new loyalties went to from former AMC fans, but it would be interesting to speculate.
The cars that really broke the back of Stude and AMC were the competition from the new GM intermediates like the Chevelle, not the early Fairlanes.