In winter 1987, worked in the Ford Design Studio where the finishing touches on this body were being done.
Remember visiting Body Engineering building to look at a wood mockup of the rear 1/4 of the vehicle.
I was shocked to see that they made an exact model of the car out of wood from the trunk back.
Every part (tail lamps, bumper, etc.) was there, but in wood!
I asked my supervisor why they did this & he said they did it to make sure that all the details of the lamps, trim, etc. coming together were right after all the data had gone through the drawing process.
The wood parts were made from the "final" drawings.
So if the wood mockup is right, then the drawings (which had the surface on it by sections) are right.
Seems outrageously labor intensive to me.
It must have been the end of the old process.
There were many large CRT monochrome monitors being used to do drawings, but they still had all the full size drafting tables around.
Transition period... I happened to "drop in" at just that time of transistion.
Also in 1987/1988, drove these as "pool" cars at Ford (in Dearborn).
I remember them being "nice cars" but certainly not my type of car at the time (not light weight, not efficient, not precise, not super high quality of design and build, not communicative...).
What it did do well is to have good NVH, soft seats, soft ride, isolation from the road...
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