These books are from my stash of books that I have, the bottom 4 books are mostly about *my * favorite car, "The Taurus, and I blogged about that car a lot". The book "American Icon was about the Boeing CEO coming on to Ford in 2006 when Ford started doing their restructuring without government bailouts to save their company. He brought the "Taurus" nameplate back after it was was cast out in 2006 when my plant closed down. His question was "Why would y'all do that? that name had a history behind it?" it wasn't the cars fault that it got relegated to rental car darling from the juggernaut that saved the company in 1986. Ford had focused too much on SUV's and trucks and let the bread and butter sedans languished and they had a CEO named Jac Nasser*Hoc,Ptui*, who started forming a premiom automotive group, Lincoln, Austin Martin, Volvo, ete,ete and he let the Ford blue collar cars get the short stick. I believe that he was responsible for killing the "Ford Taurus SHO", couldn't have a mere Taurus beating the snot out of the high end cars mind you... well anyway Here is my T-bird Article. I clipped it from...crap I can't remember.
This was a pic of a mustang that looked like mine in Germany. I was shocked to see the picture in the internet. My Mustang had that dark sage color and it was unique and at the time I didn't think anything of it. I loved my Mustang, but I traded her in when I came back to the world in 1991 for my F150 in the hopes of slowing me down......Nope still collected 4 speeding tickets. I say that to say, I loved the Thunderbirds from that time, I thought they were really cool and to me they were the perfect autobahn cruisers.
I pulled this pic of a "ThunderChicken" off the internet. I always liked the cars, I owned a '94 back in 2009, with the 3.8. I was bringing the car up from the junkyard status I had gotten her. She had a lotta Lincoln Mark VIII interior parts like seats, consoles,visors and door panels when I had gone junkyarding. She was a project car, I enjoyed "wrenching" on her. I had repaired the door fits, trunk fit, the automatic antenna, and so forth. Was planning on painting the car after some more repairs. But the 3.8 was notorious for bad heads and mine fell into that category. I didn't have the money to repair her and wound up scrapping the car. Now I have the money, but back then I didn't. Bummer.
Back in the mid-1980s, Ford’s decision to seek inspiration from European marques was netting significant returns. The one big motivator came from Ford’s own operation in West Germany, as the 1982 Ford Sierra dropped shock and awe into the mid-size family car category. Pairing that moonshot success with the lackluster sales of the 1980-82 Fox-body Ford Thunderbird flagship, Ford designers were given a corporate mandate that gave them freedom and flexibility. It became one of the few times in automotive history that the people who make cars had the ability to make ones they actually wanted to drive.
The first vehicle to benefit from this mandate was a sleeker and slimmer Fox-body ‘Bird for 1983, and its high-performance Turbo Coupe stablemate with a mandatory manual transmission. The latter was paired with multi-port fuel injection, turbocharging, and a genuine fanbase for coupes with aggressively contoured bucket seats and firm suspension tuning.
Ford went as big as its modest budget allowed, picking on the BMW 635CSi with its Foxy Turbo Bird. The 1980s kept looking up, so why not use all this new money, advanced technology, and freedom to make a BMW M6 killer for a fraction of the price? After all, the 1986 Ford Taurus’ success amongst loyalists and foreign-car intenders alike became a case study in case studies. Perhaps lightning could strike twice.
And so an all-new manifestation of the personal luxury genre (which Ford invented in 1958) appeared in the mid-80s. The new platform had a new name, MN12 (Midsized, North America), and Tony Kuchta was its leader. According to Comeback: The Fall and Rise of the American Automobile Industry, he had an executive mandate to make “BMW fighters” of which the Blue Oval could be proud. Kuchta didn’t mince words when speaking to the press about the GM’s personal luxury prospects. The General had just come out with the GM-10 coupe in 1988, so he knew that the Oldsmobile Cutlass, Buick Regal, Pontiac Grand Prix came to the MN12’s gun fight with a butter knife.
“They are nothing cars.”
“They are losers because they aren’t giving the customer what he wants.”
Perhaps this wasn’t a hot take, as Kuchta’s thoughts were shared by others in the car business. And he got away with it, as he was working on an American 6 Series with near-Taurus levels of cash in his coffers.
With Dearborn’s blessing and thanks to Kuchta’s tenacity, the MN12 platform was bigger (in overall size and V-6 engine displacement) and bolder in performance than any front-wheel-drive coupe from GM. There wasn’t a V-8 engine (yet), but the multi-link, fully independent suspension, shockingly long wheelbase, extra standard features (no more crank windows!), and near-silent interior likely made Kuchta consider the personal luxury side of the Thunderbird’s equation sorted. (This platform had more interior room than a Taurus, which could have helped sell the base Thunderbird/Cougar and the posh LX/LS models.)
The Super Coupe (Mercury still had the XR7), not the Thunderbird Turbo, took up the mantle of “BMW fighter,” ditching the buzzy, boosted four-banger for a twin-screw, balance-shafted, supercharged V-6 with a respectable 210 horsepower and a shocking 315 lb-ft of torque. The outgoing Turbo Coupe’s adjustable dampers remained, as did the ABS brakes. But its firmer suspension and limited-slip differential were traditional, mechanical tweaks that could make the new MN12 an independently sprung, legitimate threat to BMW.
Motorweek sampled the Super Coupe’s (SC) distinct blend of European tuning with American proportioning alongside its Mercury Cougar XR7 sister ship, and referenced BMW and Mercedes from the get-go. You even see a touch of BMW’s Hofmeister kink in the SC’s aggressively aerodynamic shape, but its 0-to-60-mph time of 7.5 seconds was almost a second slower than that of an American-spec E24 M6.
The lead foots at Hot Rod magazine put down numbers in an SC that’d scare the Bavarian brute, but made note of Ford’s self-imposed handicap: A disturbingly tall 2.73:1 rear gear. If Ford put the SC automatic’s 3.27:1 differential in all examples, this 3800-lb coupe could have chased legitimate sports cars, laughed at BMW’s all-new 8 Series, and started hunting for Buick’s defunct Grand National at the stoplight grands prix.
Even with a long-legged demeanor, the need for control with this kind of power was crucial. Motorweek suggested the SC had “glued down handling that is akin to Europe’s best.” Hot Rod also addressed the imported competition head-on, suggesting the Super Coupe is “formidable competition for these world-class performers while still maintaining its unique American-built character.”
That should be enough to ensure that Kuchta’s disdain for the GM-10 platform rings true, but the reality of personal luxury demands two more cylinders from their owners. Enter the introduction of the V8-powered MN12 for 1991 … with dark clouds and ominous music in the background.
By this point everyone in Detroit knew Ford executives had changed their tune on the MN12. It was now deemed too large, too heavy, and too expensive to make. There was no mea culpa in front of the media, but glaring omissions like the dual front airbags from its 1989 Lincoln Continental cousin were hastily resolved before production. You see the slapdash fix in the curiously thick steering column, and the shallow, roll-top storage nook where a passenger air bag was intended.
Less obvious is the air-bag warning light in the 1989 Thunderbird gauge cluster, which reached dealerships without a light bulb behind it. What was perceived as an accolade-laden vehicle made production as a tragic also-ran, and the tone from upper management signaled Ford’s intent to make this platform’s short life as difficult as possible. (There was chatter about adding the MN12’s independent rear suspension to the new 1992 Crown Victoria … until there wasn’t.)
Customers still demanded a personal luxury vehicle with a V-8, so Ford splashed the cash to wedge a 5.0-liter small-block under the MN12’s impossibly sleek hood line. Adding more salt to the gaping, self-imposed wound was Motorweek’s modest, 9.2-second sprint to 60. There’s good reason why the 5.0 HO (high output) motor from a Fox-body Mustang did so poorly in the Thunderbird. Ford installed a smaller/shorter intake and a truly awful exhaust system (with at least one 90-degree bend) to shoehorn it into the MN-12’s cramped engine bay. While the personal luxury enthusiast got what they wanted, perhaps this resolution’s impact is best explained by Eric Dess of AeroCats.com, a Mercury Cougar-centric website for owners and history buffs alike:
A traditional V-8 was almost always offered on the Cougar, so that’s what the customer wanted with the MN12 cat. It took two model years to re-engineer the 5.0 to fit under the hood, and millions of dollars were spent in the process. Sales did not take off, although the V8- option was popular enough. Perhaps the reality is that the fix was too little, too late.
If I am being honest, even if the V-8 was available from the start in 1989, it still probably wouldn’t have saved the MN12 from being the financial disaster it was. Spending $2 billion and bleeding all the way is not a great way to launch a car!
Eric’s points are not only valid; they also show that Ford needed to abandon the “BMW fighter” mandate of a previous regime. There’s been chatter that Ford’s new management openly asked why this wasn’t intended as a “two-door Taurus” from the start. We may never get an answer to their question, but the fact that Ford neglected the MN12 even after nearly a million Thunderbirds (and over 500,000 Cougars) sold suggests a sinister problem amongst Dearborn’s ranks.
This tale is actually about two companies managing a single platform. There was one Ford Motor Company that planted an MN12-shaped tree hoping it would bear Germanic fruit, which we see in the Thunderbird SC’s performance. Another Ford Motor Company eventually cut this tree down for firewood.
Even as the company sought rear-wheel-drive kindling, it still made improvements. Ford upgraded the compromised 5.0 to its new Modular 4.6-liter V-8 in 1994 to prove it. Speaking of modularity, the creation of the 1993 Lincoln Mark VIII on this platform likely ensured a handful of fastidious upgrades over time. Perhaps there was instead a give and take, best seen in how the Thunderbird SC experienced a shrinking of sway-bar sizes over time.
Too bad there was another Ford product that turned these corporate machinations into the textbook definition of a moot point. Enter the 1991 Ford Explorer.
The 1990s weren’t about chasing Cutlasses or scaring the living daylights out of BMW 6 Series drivers. In a move that nobody could anticipate, the act of tarting up a Ford Ranger truck into the Explorer SUV reaped sales and market share that no MN12 Thunderbird could fathom. Forget about moving goal posts—let’s just move to a new, SUV-shaped stadium!
In a further twist of irony, Ford added the 5.0-liter V-8 engine to the 1996 Explorer and sales ticked up significantly. We may never know when the V-8-powered SUV appealed to fans of personal luxury, but trucks like the Escalade assured us of this reality. Ford had one winner in the 1990s, and it wasn’t on a bespoke platform with an independent rear suspension.
Star-crossed from day one Job 1, Ford’s MN12 platform likely never had a chance. It’s an unfortunate ending mired in internal struggles and changing consumer sentiment, but perhaps we all see it in hindsight.
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