Welcome to one of the first (and fingers crossed, last) Special Guest Editions of Cold Start! Jason is busy enjoying the largesse of Hyundai (and copious amounts of cocktail shrimp, no doubt) as he test-drives the new Ioniq 6, so yours truly, Pete the Social Media Guy, has volunteered to pen the latest installment of your favorite Autopian morning-starter. Never mind that it’s actually the third or fourth story posted today. So really, it’s a Warm Start.
I’ll make no attempt to cop Jason’s inimitable style, but I will lean heavily on a vintage brochure, as Cold Start frequently does. And what a wonder it is: Behold the 1985 Ford EXP, a delightfully frog-eyed, front-wheel drive coupe absolutely brimming in mid-80s goodness befitting a car from the exact middle of the 80s.
What drew my eye most were the drawings (whoops, awful pun. I’m leaving it in), and their wonderful hand-penned warmth. The artists were striving for an earnest high-tech look, of course. But viewed through the lens of modern digital design, they’re charming gems of a bygone era when markers, pencils, pastels and airbrushes deposited ink and paint and flecks of pigment onto hearty sheets of plate-finish Bristol board.
I particularly enjoy these little space-fillers, which assure the viewer that the EXP has essential features like seats and vents, and Ford engineers have definitely thought about them. The images aren’t captioned, but still they speak:
“Sure, we could have put the heater controls above the glovebox, but then we remembered your arms don’t go that far easily. All of the EXP’s controls are in the Blue Arm Zone.”
“When you buy an EXP, rest assured the vents blow out. So they won’t suck away the precious atmosphere you need to survive. Maybe Chevy does that. Not Ford.”
“What’s inside the seats? Foam. See? And they recline. Go ahead, take a nap in your EXP.”
Nothing says “high tech stuff” like cutaways, and these illustrations send a powerful message that the EXP has The Good Stuff. Will the casual car buyer have a clue how a turbo actually improves performance, even with the helpful caption? Probably not, but it’s a turbo, which you need. And don’t sleep on the traction-enhancing front-wheel drive and rack-and-pinion steering. These must be cutting-edge features, seeing how Ford bothered to have artists draw them.
That MacPherson strut drawing is suitable for framing, but all is not illustration with the EXP brochure. It is 1985 after all, and the customer deserves photographic proof of the latest innovations. The EEC-IV computer, looking about as complex as the inside of an AM radio. A mood-lit engineer working on a CAD representation of the EXP, via a table-sized screen, apparently? I guess that was how they did it. “But does Ford have nerds?” You bet Ford has nerds, and customers need to know.
…and that’s enough of me and the EXP brochure, methinks. Because you don’t want to get me started on these wheels.
The tone and “engineering, but simplified” diagrams here remind me of the BLATANTLY obvious “this is a chick’s car, we gotta advertise it in VOGUE magazine” stunts pulled by the motor industry at the end of the previous century.
Seriously, go take a look at a 1990s “women’s” magazine and if you can find a car ad, it’ll be in this style. Sure, they’d moved on from “lots of space in the back for your shopping; ask your husband to buy you one!” but not too far…
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I am all about the Torch and can I say this was a worthy, lovingly-penned and humorously detailed take worthy of Torchiness. Kudos and I look forward to more!
Obviously these drawings are showing the base model. Only blowing air out of the bottom five vent holes. That’s standard. You want more air from those top two holes? You want more blue arrows, jagweed?! Then pay for the Premium Estate package!
Always liked these. It’s a shame those phone dial wheels are a stupid size. I think there was later models that had a proper 15″ wheel.
The overhead drawing of the person reaching (to the left of the “vent venting” image) reminded me of a weird thing about the EXP: its shift lever is much further forward than you would expect in a “normal” car (like 4-6 inches forward).
My theory is that when Ford dropped the EXP interior on top of the Escort chassis they found the shifter location was not optimal but they were unwilling to spend to reposition it, hence the extended arm in the illustration.
Best part of the EXP’s seats were that there were only 2 of them.
Yep, b/c Ford decided we’re going hard on the sport coupe nature of this thing, it didn’t have a backseat, just an extended cargo area.
There’s a sorta ballsy, if ultimately misguided, purity to that choice. How often do domestics trade easy utility for a purist approach?
And yet it was heavier than the 4-seater Escort hatchback.
The 1/32 scale Monogram model kit of the EXP has a back seat molded into the interior tub, which looks like an authentically scaled Escort one. That makes me wonder if the real car’s lack of one was a last-minute decision.
Pete, this is fantastic. Hat tip for the:
“When you buy an EXP, rest assured the vents blow out. So they won’t suck away the precious atmosphere you need to survive. Maybe Chevy does that. Not Ford.”
Loved it.
Your shitbox rescue career won’t be complete until you find one of these. Why, I’d even accept a ZX2, the (spiritual) final version of it.
tipping my hat to the glorious technical illustrations…I used to live for this kind of stuff in car brochures & ads
The drawings and brochure are very cool. The exp looked cool but was not. At least non turbo automatic version. My wife’s sister had one in college known as the silver snail.
That seat cutaway got me thinking if any carmaker ever made seat heating via coolant hoses or a radiator or something in the seat bottom? Lancia maybe? Or Cord? 🙂
The usual electric ones are just so boring (they’re cheap and almost always work and certainly don’t leak)
Yes, BUT! Your sunroof can leak on them and break a whole bunch of stuff that makes exciting lights happen on the dash. Ask me how I know
Had one short out and burn a hole through the leather without a leak surprised no butt burn
My girlfriend (now wife) burned her butt on her Jetta’s seat heater. I laughed heartily!
Not completely same thing, but I know a guy that invented kinda clever way to keep himself warm while driving a moped around at winter here in Finland (where we have actual winters with snow, ice, freezing temperatures etc.). He duct taped a garden hose at the exhaust and wrapped that hose around his body under his jacket. So not water heating, but taking use of the exhaust gas warmth.
Aww, this is just supercalifragilisticEXPalidocious .
Those aren’t Ford nerds, that’s Mr. Spock and Tuvok determining the most logical way to make quality job 1. For some reason I always like the Ford EXP. I had an AMT/Ertl/Monogram model kit.
Me too on irrational fondness for them. Friend had one and it was the reliability joy of their reputation, but I still always liked that Ford was at this point ALL IN on coupes – EXP, Probe, and Mustang. That’s quite the lineup of impractical cars.
Im sad we don’t get illustrations in brochures and print material anymore. Especially cutaways. There are still a few out there, but not nearly as many examples.
Yeah, I love cutaways. Definitely a lost art.
I did a cutaway of a supercharger for the owner’s handbook about ten years ago. I did it on CAD though, so nothing like the skill required to do a real one.
Much less frustrating in CAD when they see the first draft and ask you to move the twin helixes a few inches. If I were still using pens I’d have stabbed someone with them by now.
I’ve met a few owners and not one has ever read the handbook. Still, it must have paid for 0.01% of my mortgage payments that year, so I should focus on the money and not the soul-emptying pointlessness.
Hi Patrick!
OOooo, TRX tires/rims are Satan’s own. Who the fuck thought this was a good idea? “The Betamax of the automotive tire industry”.
Ha Ha TRX. They literally tried to re-invent the wheel.
Sorry, but betamax was a far superior product. Sony was the one and only seller of betamax and they were not cheap. VHS came along and cut the cost by close to fifty percent for a home video playing machine. Betamax and it’s superior playback, pause, frame forward was excellent (great for teenage me to carefully study the brief footage from particular movies scenes from that era).
VHS was spotty at best for such scenes, like watching scrambled HBO on cable at the time.
I have no opinion about TRX tires.
All of these are vague memories so my thought process could be muddled.
Why can’t we get cool unique wheels anymore? All three of those are cool and different.
Trust me, you don’t want tires/rims that are THAT different.