Ford's Faces for 1972

In my e-book "How Cars Faced the Market" I note that prestige brands tend to maintain front-end features over the years as a means of providing identity.  Rolls-Royce grilles are a prime example.  Moving down the hierarchy, grille designs become less consistent.  Perhaps a theme such as Ford's early 1950s spinners might be used for a few years and then dropped.  In other cases, a grille theme might last for only a couple of model years.

Though there were some mid-1930s exceptions, through the 1950s an American brand's grille design was used for all of its various models from entry level to the most expensive car offered.  This was because those models usually used the same basic body.  (General Motors' Oldsmobiles and Buicks often used more than one of GM's A, B and C bodies, but retained the same basic grille designs.)

Then around 1960 Detroit's Big Three carmakers introduced "compact" and shortly later "medium / intermediate" bodies to supplement their "standard" body lines.  At this point, brand continuity began to suffer across sub-models as well as over time.

The present post presents grilles used by the Ford brand for model year 1972, where thematic variation was considerable.

Unless otherwise noted, images below are of cars for sale or whose primary Internet source was unidentified.

Gallery

Ford Galaxie, one of three standard-size Ford models (others: Custom, LTD) that used the same grille theme.  Image from Ford sales material.

Ford Pinto, Motor Trend image.  Pinto was Ford's compact model.  A much smaller car than the Galaxie, too small to use the same grill theme.

Ford Maverick, not quite as small as a Pinto.  Its headlight assemblies and general grille shape echo the Pinto's, though the grille bar pattern and turn-signal light shapes differ.

Ford Mustang, the sporty car.  Its front end is totally different from the standard Ford's and those of Pintos and Mavericks.

Ford Torino, a "medium" size car.  It grille/frontal theme also differs from the others.

Ford Thunderbird in a publicity photo.  It shared its body with the Lincoln Continental Mark III.  Its grille theme is somewhat like the Galaxie's because both designs were created under the influence of Ford's short-time president Bunkie Knudsen, who favored prominent "noses" on cars.
In some respects, these various Ford models might as well have been separate brands, because they functionally were such.  But to make that official would have required legal/contractural steps regarding dealers as well as expensive signage, plus likely additions to the corporate bureaucracy along with possible hiring of more advertising agencies.  Calling these diverse models Fords kept things simpler, and the general pattern holds today for most automobile manufacturers.