Ford's "New Edge" Design

Starting in the mid 1990’s and continuing into the first half of the next century, the Ford Motor Company , looking to create something new and exciting that would also be favorable to their production needs, created an innovative styling technique known as “new edge.”

The basis for this name came from the use of adding sharp angled lines, arcs, and curves on a vehicles body surface that collided with one another to create the effect of highlighting and shadow. Not only was this technique aesthetically pleasing, but because the parts of the body were assembled by piece to create such lines in the design, it made it more labor easy and cost effective to produce. Ford initially utilized the styling technique in several of their concept cars which never fully came to fruition, such as the GT90 in 1995. However, the design was first publicly featured and produced in Europe with such models as the Ford Ka in 1996, and most notably the Ford Focus in 1998. In 1999, the Ford Mustang’s 4th generation pony car became the first North American vehicle to feature the new edge design, followed shortly by the introduction of the Ford Focus into the North American market in 2000.

Although other popular Ford vehicles followed suit by having particular new design elements added to them, Ford has yet to produce another fully new edge designed vehicle since they switched gears to the new “kinetic” styling technique.


Posted By: Rob Goodman

Sources:

Krebs, Michelle. (1997). New Designer To Take a Seat at Ford’s Drawing Board. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/28/automobiles/new-designer-to-take-a-seat-at-ford-s-drawing-board.html.

Winter, Drew. (1998). Living on the Edge: New Ford styling trend isn’t too tough, stampers say. Ward’s Auto World. Retrieved from http://wardsautoworld.com/ar/auto_living_edge_new/.

Image retrieved from http://www.carprices.co.uk/models/Ford/fordfocus