What does the Customer Want?

Just a follow up to the Designing the ’53 Fords post, I found this smaller article just as interesting. Ford was trying to build the car they felt the public wanted in their dream automobile. They compared the Model T and Model A to 1953 Fords in order to chart how much features and size had grown. Culturally, its also interesting that black was considered a “conservative” color on Fords, slipping in popularity due to women wanting more choices (yet somehow black became the ‘tough’ and/or ‘cool’ color choice years later, and up till today). The photo with 88 paint combinations was beautiful, too- Imagine if you could order a new car with that many choices!

The most telling bit about the time period of this article was that the words “Passenger Safety” and “Fuel Economy” had absolutely nothing to do with one’s buying decision for a car 57 years ago. When absolute design style, with a wide array of colors was the number concern, and everything else fell behind that.

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