Much like it was for Chrysler, the late 20th century into new millennium was an inventive time for Ford design. Not every idea knocked it out of the park, mind you — this was the Ovoid Taurus era, after all — but at least the automaker wasn’t afraid of taking risks. That ultimately led to design victories, like the New Edge series. Today we’re paying tribute to Dearborn’s most daring show cars that kept the spirit of the concept car alive throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.
Long before the Mustang Mach-E came the Mach III, a strange roadster that looked unlike any pony car before or certainly ever since. Ford design was fighting two extremes heading into the mid-’90s: the aggressive compulsion to turn everything into a bar of soap, and the New Edge motif that ultimately won out, with its prominent cutlines and triangular motif. The Mach III is certainly more Taurus than GT90, but it still looks relatively lean and purposeful in profile. It’s almost like a Viper RT/10 crossed with a ’Stang, which is probably why I’m such a fan.
Plenty of ’50s revival concepts have fallen flat over the years, but Chip Foose’s Forty-Nine, which debuted in 2001 at the Detroit Auto Show, paid homage to the past while still keeping modern with a simple, timeless elegance. Like the Ford Thunderbird, the Forty-Nine was said to feature one of Jaguar’s AJ-V8s under the hood — though the coupe couldn’t actually run. That can be forgiven though, as the Forty-Nine made a statement enough standing still. The rear-quarter angle is easily my favorite on this car; the way the canopy melts into the rear deck, Foose’s clever incorporation of the taillamps into the wraparound cutline and of course those wheel spats conspire for a sinister-but-chill-about-it look that’s aged stunningly.
There’s nothing to critique about the Messenger, a Mercury concept from 20 years ago that flirted with giving the brand a true enthusiast flagship. The Messenger merged Ford’s 4.6-liter Modular V8 with classic front-engine, rear-wheel-drive sports coupe proportions, and wheels pushed as far to the corners as possible. Had Ford gone through with it, the automaker might’ve had a real competitor to the Chrysler Crossfire with unquestionably better styling and two more cylinders — a certain point of credibility for any American fastback.
Try, if you’re able, to put the image of the S197 Mustang and all the baggage it may entail out of your mind and focus on this, the Mustang GT Concept. If you were around for its reveal 20 years ago, it was revelatory. The 2003 show car demonstrated a path forward for Ford’s tried-and-true flagship that was hip and forward-looking while still offering a nod to history. Ford’s designers always were the best at that, and the Mustang GT was them at the top of their game, moving away from the fourth-gen’s aged and forgettable look (pre- or post-facelift, it doesn’t matter) for something unique to the original pony car.
The eventual production version wasn’t quite as aggressive of course, and the rear styling and taillight design was an unquestionable step down, but all told Ford executed a solid conversion bringing this concept to the road. Also, the logo for this thing, visible on the license plate in the pic above, was excellent, and I’d be remiss not to point out that the ’03 show car was a standout star of Sega GT Online.
Australian industrial designer Marc Newson was behind the Ford 021C, a concept that bowed at the 1999 Tokyo Motor Show and garnered mixed reactions. Critics took issue with the show car’s simplicity and unseriousness, while fans likened it to Apple’s products; this was the age of the Bondi Blue iMac G3, after all. I happen to adore the translucent iMac, so you could say I’m a little biased. Thankfully, automotive journalists have warmed up to Newson’s vision in the decades since, and recognize it today as the masterstroke of fun, positive, anti-aggressive motoring the industry has always desperately lacked.
Ford’s 2004 reimagining of the Shelby Cobra was a showstopper no doubt, but the following year’s GR-1 concept — the Daytona Coupe to the earlier roadster — remains timeless. Once again, the automaker took a classic silhouette and modernized it, but the key here is that the GR-1, like the Cobra concept on which it was based, actually ran and was undergoing serious evaluation for production by the automaker as a potential successor to the GT. That never came to pass, though fabricators Superformance did attempt to build and sell their own examples a few years back, until regulatory hurdles supposedly stymied the project.
You can’t go wrong with a Supervan, and although this midengine Mark 3 Transit isn’t technically a concept in the same way other cars on this list are, it certainly deserves a spot in any list of late 20th century Ford moonshots. The Supervan 3 originally utilized a 650-horsepower Cosworth V8 designed for Formula 1, before that was decommissioned in favor of a Cosworth Pro Sports 3000 V6 with less than half that output in 2004. A bit disappointing, though the Supervan 3's C100 sports-prototype race chassis and aggressive aero kit allow it to make the most of any powerplant. Ford’s still at it with the Supervan today, having recently rolled out an electric version with Pikes Peak in its sights.
Ford never dreamed quite as big as it did in the mid-’90s, and the Indigo concept is proof of that. Once again, the subject didn’t merely look stunning and otherworldly; it was built to run, with a Reynard-sourced monocoque, suspension system and transmission as well as a six-liter V12. The Indigo didn’t merely look the part; it really was the closest anyone could get to a road-going American open-wheel racer. Anyone who played Need For Speed II or Project Gotham Racing 3 back in the day hasn’t forgotten it.
There aren’t enough superlatives in the English language to laud on Camilo Pardo’s original Ford GT40 concept that debuted at the 2002 Detroit Auto Show. This was the apex of Ford’s ability to revive the past in new products, and headlights and rear bumper aside, the transition to series production was as seamless as it could possibly be. Perfect execution — from a design standpoint, anyway. Manufacturing mistakes were made.
It was honestly tough not to hand No. 1 to that original GT40 concept, but you knew heading in — the top spot was never going to be awarded to anything other than the GT90, right? Ford left nothing on the table here. Not the engine: a quad-turbocharged V12 derived from the Modular V8 family that generated so much heat, the engine bay was lined with insulating tiles to keep the rest of the car from melting, as Jim Conrad famously told us in Need For Speed II. Not the body: a spaceship with wheels, built of repeating triangles like some sort of secret society artifact, or an Evangelion Angel.
Even the GT90's interior was weird, bathed entirely in blue with an inscrutable, arcane font used to label everything — the same type used for the car’s logo and carved into its tires. It was simply too alien for Ford, which earnestly considered production but decided that there was no place for anything so exotic, ambitious or extreme in the brand, particularly not at a time when Dearborn also ran Jaguar and Aston Martin. Ironic; some us of a very particular age grew up believing the GT90 was Ford.
That’s our ranking of Ford’s seminal pre- and post-millennium concepts. Why not tell us what we missed or what you would have given the highest honors to in the comments below?