Retro Stories by David Burrell
The startlingly shaped L’Avion could have been Ford’s first compact sized car in the USA, two years before the Falcon.
It was championed by Lewis Crusoe, who was vice president in charge of all of Ford’s car and truck divisions. In 1955 he commissioned the L’Avion as a small Mercury.
It was styled by Buzz Grisinger, who gave the car its name. Grisinger created the distinctive wedge side styling and borrowed the reverse angled rear window from the Mercury D528 concept car. You might have seen the D528 in the Jerry Lewis movie, The Patsy, where it was called the Beldone.
One of the issues with the L’Avion was its styling. All of those angles and indentations meant the car would be expensive to manufacture. But, given it was to be a Mercury, it could be priced higher than a Ford, and that premium would cover the additional manufacturing costs.
Then some problems arose. Crusoe suffered a massive heart attack in October 1956 and had to relinquish his job. His successor was Robert S. McNamara, who was keen on small, cheap cars, but not the L’Avion. From McNamara’s perspective the L’Avion was too costly to build and could not be priced low enough to generate mass sales.
Meantime, the Edsel had just been released to an underwhelming reception. With Ford needing to save money, there was no way it was going to invest in something like the L’Avion. The project was halted.
And so, McNamara pivoted to a cheaper, simpler small car project that was in development. This project became the 1960 Falcon.
But the design theme of the L’Avion did not go to waste. Its overall styling theme was transferred to the UK where it was simplified and enthusiastically applied to the 1959 Ford Anglia and 1961 Consul Classic. The irony is, that the Anglia was the cheap small car that McNamara was aiming for.
