Forward with Ford: Windsor & Taylor Get Their Car On.

As I said in my last Founders’ Blog post, our Marketing Services Manager Taylor Chartier and I were sent up to Dearborn, MI a few weeks ago for a Ford conference. While we were there we got to interview Malcom Gladwell. We also got to tour the Ford design facilities!

It was really eye opening to see the amount of research and planning that goes in to every single step in the production of a car. Ford has teams that work on every aspect of car design imaginable, from the obvious aspects like paint color to the less apparent practice of determining the angle at which people of different shapes and sizes step into and out of a car in order to correctly place the seat and the grab bar above the door. 

Here are some pictures from our tour!

Taylor strutting her stuff down the hallway. Their design facilities are so large that they have a walking lane and a driving lane INSIDE – no joke. See the yellow lines that Taylor is walking between? Yep – that’s the walking lane. 

A wall displaying Ford’s “Core Color Palette”. Who knew that it was possible to make so many shades of black?

A man using infared cameras to measure the angle at which he enters and exits different cars. They use the same technology that was utilized in the making of Avitar!

This is a picture of a screen displaying a software that Ford uses to isolate the location of certain sounds. Using this technology, they can locate the source of annoying sounds that might eminate from parts of a car in production in order to improve the driver’s ultimate experience. 

One of Ford’s new all-electric cars. 

They had this car “greenified” in order to display all of the different sustainable technologies and materials used in the production of their newest cars. 

Here we are before touring the facilities. We looked hawt in our safety goggles.