Towards the end of his time at Ford, Telnack and his stylists came up with a visual theme they called New Edge. It was mostly used on some European brands, though an echo found on a later USA Ford model. So the theme never really caught on. It was not seriously continued by Telnack's successor, J Mays.
New Edge is difficult to explain verbally, so view the factory-sourced images below for examples.
A dash of New Edge can be found on the Ka's front where the upper grille frame curve is carried over into the turn indicator lights and the hood cut line passes along the inner edge of the headlight assembly..
Here the theme seems to be expressed in the hood cut line and headlight assembly.
Focus sedans for the U.S. and Canadian markets received bustle-back rear ends instead of fifth-door rears that for some reason were not popular here.
A faint echo of New Edge styling in Ford's J Mays era can be seen in the shape of the Five Hundred's grille.
Ford did sell two and four door hatchback versions of the Focus in the US in addition to the notchback and also a station wagon. A later odd decision was to do a whole body facelift (I doubt that many buyers noticed that it wasn't an all new car) on the original when the next version came out in Europe. There were no hatchbacks or wagons in that US version.
ReplyDelete