DESIGNS ON YOUR BODY
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This summer Ford plans to launch the eye-catching body styling kit for the P100 pickup which made its debut at last year's Birmingham Motor Show.
• Motor manufacturers often complain that the Motor Show provides small boys with the opportunity to romp all over their expensive new vehicles. That may in part be true, but the manufacturers are also to blame, unveiling exciting prototypes to whet the appetite of even the most unenthusiastic visitor to the show.
Often a prototype vehicle is no more than a styling exercise. Sometimes it is a toe-in-the-water attempt to gauge the public's reaction. For Ford, the decision to display the P100 Sierra-based pickup at last year's NEC with a body styling kit was prompted by the success of similar vehicles in the United States.
Sales of sporty pickups across the Atlantic have risen by 60% in the past two years and Ford feels the recent fashion for four-wheel-drive utility vehicles in Europe could also extend to pickups.
Instead of using its own design department to develop the P100 body kit Ford, however, made the unusual decision to give the work to Coventry Polytechnic's Transport Design Department. Ford collaborated with vehicle parts manufacturer P4 from Huntingdon to sponsor the exercise, in which all 52 firstyear students were asked to come up with a detailed design. Robin Gibbons, from Ford's Special Vehicle Operations division at Basildon, says: "There were designs from every first-year student, and there was not a bad one in the lot."
The students were briefed to design a body styling kit as a dealer-fitted option. No complicated structural alterations were allowed, and students had to ensure their designs did not attract additional tax.
Most of the designs featured a glassfibre tonneau shaping the rear of the cab over the load bed, and carefully matching sills to link front and rear spoilers. Some proposals were fitted with aerofoil wings to exaggerate the vehicle's metamorphosis into a sports car. The designs of Emanuel Rohr, Steve Everitt and Robert Kelly were awarded first, second and third places respectively.
ATTRACTIVE DESIGN
Gibbons explains: "The design we actually picked to develop was the second-placed entry, from Steve Everitt. We chose that because it was the easiest to produce and was a very attractive design. The design that took first place was very high quality, technically."
Everitt's design was displayed at last October's Motor Show (on Motor Panels' stand) with such a positive response that it was quickly presented to Ford dealers and customer seminars in a series of shows in the UK, France, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Ford is now convinced there is a strong demand for such a styling kit. Gibbons says the plan is to offer the kit in modular form so that it can be added in affordable steps. The company hopes to be able to offer the entire body styling kit, including alloy wheels, for a retail price of under 21,000, but Gibbons warns that: "That is going to be very difficult."
The styling kit will not noticeably affect the P100's performance, says Gibbons. Owners can, however, convert the vehicle's engine to the RS2000 power unit. This would boost the P100's power from 57kW (77hp) to 78kW (105hp), and top speed to 185km/h (115mph). This version of the engine is fitted in the P100 racing vehicles which competed in a series of races at Brands Hatch last year.
It has yet to be decided whether P4 or Ford's own parts operations will supply the body parts: in any case the awardwinning body styling kits should be brightening up our roads this summer.
E by Richard Scrase and Brian Hatton.