I'm a little biased but, Ford has always been forward thinking. They saw the writing on the wall and prepared for bad times before the bailouts. That's why they took the least hit. Also, back in the 60s ford came out with a 427 cammer motor that would have destroyed nascar and did destroy the dragstrip. BUT chrysler bitched about it being an ohc motor and the motor was banned before even ONE race. Also, ford was designing the aod back in the 60s but didnt put it into production until mid 80s i believe. The cleveland style motors are along the same thinking of what the big three are building their motors around (small displacement/big heads), the reason they weren't successful was because the camshaft tech at the time wasn't advanced enough to use the "big" heads on the Cleveland efficiently. Ford jumped the gun on the OHC 4.6 motor (not enough displacment/head flow imo). But they are getting better and will eclipse the pushrod motors.
I'm a little biased but, Ford has always been forward thinking. They saw the writing on the wall and prepared for bad times before the bailouts. That's why they took the least hit. Also, back in the 60s ford came out with a 427 cammer motor that would have destroyed nascar and did destroy the dragstrip. BUT chrysler bitched about it being an ohc motor and the motor was banned before even ONE race. Also, ford was designing the aod back in the 60s but didnt put it into production until mid 80s i believe. The cleveland style motors are along the same thinking of what the big three are building their motors around (small displacement/big heads), the reason they weren't successful was because the camshaft tech at the time wasn't advanced enough to use the "big" heads on the Cleveland efficiently. Ford jumped the gun on the OHC 4.6 motor (not enough displacment/head flow imo). But they are getting better and will eclipse the pushrod motors.
I would argue that it wasn't "seeing the writing on the wall" so much as it was they had the worst management of the big 3, and hit the wall several years before the other 2, resulting in a fire sale to save FoMoCo. To their credit, they managed to do it without government help, and seem to have done it by putting out a good product.
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