Design
At the beginning of production, the Fairmont was sold as a two-door and four-door sedan along with a five-door station wagon. During the 1978 model year, the model line was supplemented by a specialty coupe with a different roofline known as the Futura, a name which first appeared in the Ford Falcon line 17 years before. The Fairmont Futura featured an unusual two-piece vinyl roof with an upswept central roof band, borrowed from the larger Ford Thunderbird of the same time period, originally inspired by the 1955 Ford Crown Victoria. While retaining a conventional rear-wheel drive platform, the Fairmont was efficiently packaged and offered excellent passenger and cargo room for its size. Contemporary reviews uniformly praised the Fairmont and it was favorably compared with contemporary Volvo and BMW models. Rack-and-pinion steering gave the Fairmont much better handling and roadability than its Maverick predecessor and despite its roomier interior, lightweight components were used which gave the Fairmont better fuel economy than the Maverick.
The front fascia of the Fairmont differed from that of the Mercury Zephyr at the time of introduction. While the Zephyr always had four headlights, the Fairmont had only two, with the exception of the Futura coupe. As part of a minor facelift for the 1981 model year, the entire Fairmont lineup received the four headlight treatment as well.
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Famous quotes containing the word design:
“Humility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a more calculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“For I choose that my remembrances of him should be pleasing, affecting, religious. I will love him as a glorified friend, after the free way of friendship, and not pay him a stiff sign of respect, as men do to those whom they fear. A passage read from his discourses, a moving provocation to works like his, any act or meeting which tends to awaken a pure thought, a flow of love, an original design of virtue, I call a worthy, a true commemoration.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Delay always breeds danger; and to protract a great design is often to ruin it.”
—Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616)