‘Scorpio. It’s another world.’ A throwaway line from the cover of the 1995 brochure for the much-maligned Ford Scorpio. Other proposals included ‘Scorpio. It’s got a great sense of humour,’ and ‘Scorpio. It’s got a bubbly personality.’ Few punters would have taken the Scorpio on a date for its good looks – a big issue in a market obsessed with styling and image.
It's just as well Tinder wasn’t a thing in the mid-nineties, because the press began ‘swiping left’ even before the Scorpio had hit the market. ‘Hopes were dashed when Autocar magazine snapped pictures of an undisguised prototype and – not believing it to be the final car – tried retouching the image to show what a production version might look like,’ explains Steve Saxty in the excellent Secret Fords: Volume Two. ‘In an episode of spectacular shooting itself in the foot, the PR team decided to set the magazine straight. Rather than wait a few weeks for the carefully chosen ‘heights and angles’ shots to be selected, the PR crew sent a photographer to Boreham to snap a set of ‘leaked photos’ – not an uncommon practice. The results only made things worse.’ Steve goes on to say that one despairing designer said: ‘My god, they’ve made it look like a frog!’ A harsh assessment of the car, but I’m prepared to leap to its defence.
Ford could have played it safe. Armed with a multi-million-dollar budget, the designers and engineers could have given the styling a light tickle, tinkered with the dashboard and focused their efforts on ride, handling and refinement. Chief Program Analyst, Steve Shield, said: ‘We had enough money for three of the four parameters – one: exterior restyle; two: improved dynamics and refinement; three: powertrain upgrades with electronically controlled automatic transmissions; or four: interior styling improvements.’ Because the Granada’s instrument panel had been updated for the 92½ model year, the team elected to leave the dashboard alone, focusing instead on a new multiplex wiring system. Steve Saxty’s book shines the light on the eleventh-hour decision to fit a new dashboard, following the arrival of Jac Nasser as Ford of Europe’s chairman at the end of 1992. You can insert your own gag about Nasser’s claim that ‘a customer saw more of the inside than the outside’ of a car. Saxty explains that the ‘Nasser-dash’ made the Scorpio the only Ford to three receive dashboards during its production run. Designer Simon Spearman-Oxx points out that the dashboard ‘was covered in a plastic wood called Timberlex that was so obviously fake that we naturally called it Timbollocks’.
Unsatisfying wood and a face only a blind mother could love weren’t the only weaknesses on the Scorpio’s SWOT analysis. In a 1998 survey of 29,000 owners of N-registered cars, the frog-faced (not my words, etc) Scorpio was left floundering in the shallow end along with the Galaxy and Vauxhall Vectra. The BBC article on the subject is notable for a reference to Quentin Willson as ‘Quention Wilson’. That’s my next non de plume sorted.
Never one to miss a used car bargain, Quention would have been quick to extol the virtues of buying a secondhand Scorpio. Anyone unfortunate enough to have dropped the best part of £25,000 on a ‘bells and whistles’ Scorpio with a 2.9-litre 24-valve engine would have seen it depreciate at a rate of £1,000 a month before it hits its first birthday. That’s enough to make anyone feel uncomfortable, even a corporate bigwig sitting in the opulent luxury of a seat swathed in optional ruched leather. ‘Timbollocks’, ruched upholstery, more toys than Hamleys and a stonking six-cylinder engine under the bonnet – I miss the days of big-engined Ford saloons and estates.
The tragedy of the Ford Scorpio is that there was a thoroughly good car lurking behind the challenging styling. Ford went to extraordinary lengths to breathe new life into an ageing car, knowing that it had a lifespan of around four years. Contemporary reviews describe a car that was good to drive, comfortable and spacious. But more than that, it looked and felt like a new car, not just another facelift of an outgoing model. Shall I pretend that the ‘pantomime horse’ styling is easy on the eye? Oh, no I’m not, but it’s not the end of the world.
This article first appeared in issue 11 of Classic.Retro.Modern. magazine.
