Ford Taunus 17M P3 by aRi F. Huber

About "Ford Taunus 17M P3"

by aRi F. Huber

About the artwork

Baroque Taunus is out, from 1960 onwards only the current form with the "joy of driving" and by "lines of reason" according to the marketing department of the Cologne Ford -Werke. This meant smooth, clear surfaces without lavish chrome ornamentation with large, oval headlights at the front, plenty of space inside, very good all-round visibility and considerably better petrol consumption of only 9 litres/100 km, the latter, however, being rather a subordinate issue at the time.
And so it happened that the replacement of the tail fin era quickly gave this aerodynamic body the nickname "bathtub" due to its curves. The model name Taunus thus in the 3rd generation and 17M basically stood for the 1700cc engine, which was also the most ordered. But there were also some with 1500 cc and only 55 hp up to 1758 cc and 75 hp for the Ford Taunus 17M TS with 154 km/h top speed. Completely new was also the huge choice between standard 27 colour combinations, twelve basic colours, in addition bumper horns, rear headlights, wheel trim rings and whitewall tyres given and some more, which then but for the then rather very small list in contrast to today at extras still so gave.
In 1960, 6,485 DM were due for the 2-door sedan with 55 hp and for the few convertibles converted by the coachbuilder Deutsch, at least 10,600 DM were due.

The courage of this completely new design, at a time when the entire automobile industry still adhered to the angular trapezoidal line concept of Pininfarina, it was a huge success with almost 670,000 units sold, 86,010 of which were station wagons, in only four years and Ford Germany achieved a market success of 10.5 %.