Vintage Ad: The Peanuts Gang Guest-Stars In The World’s Wordiest Ford Falcon Ad

The 1960 Ford Falcon was a runaway hit right out of the gate. Combining sensible size and commendable economy with orthodox styling and engineering for a very modest price, the Falcon was the car many Americans had been looking for, and for a while, it seemed set to become the automobile equivalent of the McDonald’s hamburger. As early sales crossed the quarter of a million mark, Ford celebrated by taking out a two-page ad in Automotive News to crow about the Falcon’s success. It might be the single wordiest car ad I’ve ever seen, with a massive wall of text broken only by … a Peanuts cartoon?

In advertising and marketing, there’s a school of thought that says less is more — that the best ads are ones with a single memorable idea, summed up in a few words and a single striking image. The classic examples are the famous early ’60s Doyle Dane Bernbach ads for Volkswagen, with their distinctive visual style and irreverent headlines (“Think small” and “Lemon” being the most famous).

This, obviously, was not one of those ads.

Advertising, like most everything else, goes through changing fads and fancies, but there’s long been a cold war between ad creative people and their clients over how much text a good ad ought to have. At least since WW2, creative executives have often preferred to minimize extraneous copy; clients, conscious of the very high cost of major ad campaigns, have tended to fret about every millimeter of neutral space that isn’t working overtime to sell the product.

The Falcon ad shown above is text, text, text — which is a little curious, because in context, it wasn’t exactly selling anything. This ad appeared in Automotive News, one of the trade journals of the auto industry, and is part of a category of trade journal advertising I think of as “the self-congratulatory screed.” Trade journals are read mostly by people in the trade — the average consumer or enthusiast might glance at them occasionally, but is unlikely to find them very interesting — so most of their advertising is “B2B” (business-to-business): companies trying to sell each other their services, or bragging about their recent achievements.

When this ad appeared in the spring of 1960, Ford had a lot to brag about. “Six months ago the Ford Falcon was introduced as the World’s Most Experienced New Car,” proclaimed the headline. “In the most fabulous automotive success story of our times, 250,000 Falcons have already been sold.” Rather than even show a picture of the product, the ad sought to explain, “Why the Falcon is winning the battle of the compacts.”

(The “Most Experienced New Car” line was an odd Falcon tagline that’s better-explained in the 1960 Falcon brochure. It referred to the pre-launch testing program, which Ford called “Experience Run, U.S.A.,” and which involved driving Falcon prototypes “over every mile of numbered Federal Highway.” That made sense, but the phrase was very awkward.)

The first big block of text explains:

THE QUICK ANSWER is in the numbers. The Falcon seats six.

The Falcon has the finest new short short-stroke, six-cylinder engine on the road.

The Falcon gets up to THIRTY miles per gallon of gas.

The Falcon goes FOUR THOUSAND miles between oil changes.

The Falcon is lowest priced: Up to ONE HUNDRED FIFTY FOUR dollars less than other six-passenger compacts.*

The Falcon’s brilliant Diamond Lustre Finish never needs waxing. That’s ZERO for polish costs.

The Falcon’s aluminized muffler lasts up to TWICE as long as ordinary types.

Falcon owners are paying up to FIFTEEN per cent less for insurance. In most places, licensing costs less, too.

The Falcon has over TWENTY-THREE cubic feet of trunk space.

The Falcon seats are set at a scientific TWENTY-THREE degree angle for posture-perfect comfort.

The Falcon was proved in Experience Run, U.S.A, over every mile of U.S. numbered highways—covered
more than TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY THOUSAND miles in all, and averaged TWENTY-EIGHT POINT FOUR m.p.g.

That little asterisk after the “lowest price” claim refers to a footnote on the facing page that says “Based on a comparison of manufacturers’ suggested retail delivered prices.”

If you read ad copy for complex products, you occasionally get hints that the copywriter was less familiar with the product than some of the readers, selecting a grab-bag of facts from some engineering or product planning communique without necessarily having a strong grasp of their significance.

Some of these listed facts were very relevant to the success of the Ford Falcon. It WAS a six-passenger, six-cylinder car priced to compete with four-cylinder imports (many of which might seat four with a little understanding and mutual cooperation). Ford DID boast that the Falcon could return up to 30 mpg (although they were always rather vague about under what conditions — an owners report in the April 1960 Popular Mechanics suggested that low 20s was more likely). I hadn’t previously seen the claim that the Falcon was 15 percent cheaper to insure, but that seems like a decent selling point for a cheap-wheels car. But “zero for polish costs” with Diamond Lustre no-wax finish? Uh, okay, sure, if you say so.

With so much text, I’m kind of surprised that they didn’t use a few of these lines to mention a few of the other interior dimensions: The 1960 Falcon actually had almost the same headroom and front legroom as the much bigger 1960 Ford Galaxie. The Falcon was inevitably narrower than the full-size car and had a couple inches less rear legroom, but its overall packaging efficiency was excellent.

The copywriters could also have bragged about the Falcon’s light weight. Ford vice president and future secretary of defense Robert McNamara, who oversaw the development of the Falcon as group VP of the Car and Truck Group, enforced an extremely draconian program of weight control (which became the subject of at least three different SAE papers). The 1960 Falcon wasn’t really that small, and it had a 2.4-liter cast iron six and a conventional front-engine/RWD powertrain, but the shipping weight of the lightest Falcon sedan — 2,259 lb, per the AMA specifications — was actually 11 lb LESS than the lightest 1960 Chevrolet Corvair 500 coupe, which was a bit smaller on the outside and had a rear engine that needed neither driveshaft nor radiator.

Anyway, such quibbling notwithstanding, there was no arguing about the results, as explained under the second heading, “The Full Measure of Success”:

More than one quarter of a million — TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND Falcons have already been sold in only six months since introduction.

More than TEN THOUSAND American families buy a Falcon, or a Falcon wagon, each week, and this rate is jumping every week.

Fleet owners, toughest car-shoppers of all, are buying Falcons by the fleet-load TWO-to-ONE over competitors.

This is clearly the most fantastic all-time success of all cars in automotive history. No new car ever sold so many so fast.

Ford had built more than 100,000 Falcons before the end of 1959, and 1960 calendar year production eventually topped half a million cars. 1960 model year production totaled 435,676.

Ford had done bigger numbers than that on new product launches past, but this was a brand-new second-line model (the Falcon was supposed to complement rather than replace the existing “full-size” Ford car), in a size range Ford hadn’t really offered in the U.S. since the days of the Model A. The Falcon was the clear bestseller among domestic compacts, and its success contributed significantly to the first actual DECLINE in import car market share in six years. So, it hit its commercial bullseye in nearly every respect.

The ad copy next asked, “How did the Falcon become America’s most-loved compact car?”

Some economy cars deliver some economies — but only Falcon delivers them all.

Falcon took all the confusion out of the compact-car field simply by becoming the standard — the New Standard of the American Road.

From its introduction, Falcon ran right past the imported foreign economy cars which offered good gas mileage, but with room and power inadequate for most Americans.

Then, as thousands of Americans shopped and compared, Falcon pulled far ahead of all the new compacts. Some American cars imitated imported cars, but didn’t have the gas economy, the built-for-people comfort, or the dependable performance of the Falcon.

Finally Falcon sailed far beyond the older-type economy cars, some of them with years in the field, but which offered old-fashioned style, several hundred pounds more deadweight than the Falcon, and could not promise Falcon’s all-around economy.

One reason was that Falcon proved that economy doesn’t have to be ugly, that economy can be beautiful, comfortable, and dependable.

I think the crack about “older-type economy cars” with “several hundred pounds more deadweight” was probably aimed at the Studebaker Lark, which had been a hit in 1959, but lost ground to the Big Three compacts in 1960 and beyond. The Lark was a cut-down version of the earlier, bigger Studebaker sedan, so it was over 300 lb heavier than the featherweight Falcon.

Judging by the Popular Mechanics owner responses, even economy-minded Falcon buyers didn’t think its power was quite adequate. A manually shifted Falcon had better acceleration than many smaller imports, but it was kind of a slug by American standards, and the optional two-speed automatic left the 144-cid engine with a bad case of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. A stick-shift Valiant was notably more spry.

While I don’t know how many early Falcon owners would have gone so far as to say “economy can be beautiful,” buyers did find the Falcon’s looks easier to take. The Corvair was more chic (it made a big splash in Europe, as Paul has previously chronicled), but the Falcon was sensible, unpretentious, and uncontroversial, and people seemed to like that.

Despite the later complaints of Lee Iacocca, the 1960 Falcon wasn’t entirely without style — it was very basic, but it was tastefully finished, and ordering the $65.80 Deluxe Trim Package filled out its basic amenities. As the late ’50s downswing in auto sales had demonstrated, there were quite a few Americans who had had their fill of needless size and senseless glitz, and those buyers found the simplicity of the Falcon a breath of fresh air. I think that was also part of why the early Falcon later had a revival as a collector car for 21st Century hipsters: It was a straightforward “Why don’t they build them like that anymore?” car that wasn’t trying to look like a rocket ship or a race car.

The NEXT block of text (deep breaths, we’re into the final stretch now) basically sums up the Ford thought process during the initial development of the Falcon in 1957–1958. Ford had originally approached the project as a four-passenger car with a four-cylinder engine before deciding that a 2,400 lb six-cylinder model was “the optimum economy car.” The ad copy explains:

SUPPOSING YOU WERE DESIGNING A NEW COMPACT CAR…

Would you make it bigger than a Falcon? If you did, you couldn’t get up to 30 miles a gallon.

Why make it bigger? Are you trying to seat seven people?

If you make it bigger, the price will be bigger than the Falcon price.

If you make it smaller, you won’t seat six—and you probably won’t get more than 30 miles to the gallon. For one thing, only Ford makes the Falcon’s already-famous 90 h.p. short-stroke engine.

If you make it much more powerful, you must add weight. And if you make it heavier, you won’t get gasoline economy — because weight uses up gas. You also lose Falcon’s sport-car-type cornering and roadability.

If you make it smaller, you lose Falcon’s really luxurious comfort, you lose luggage space. Every inch less than a Falcon means cramping discomfort.

If you add chrome, and hang useless ornamentation on it, you add weight and lose economy — while raising the price.

In short, if you deviate from the Falcon standards either way — larger or smaller, cheaper or costlier, heavier or lighter — you’re in trouble; trouble with people, or trouble with people’s pocketbooks.

THE NEW STANDARD IN PRICE

That’s why Falcon has become the standard. Any compact can say “bigger,” or “smaller,” or “more powerful,” or more this or less that. But only Falcon has it all in one car. You can go to your Ford dealer’s and get one right now, absolutely sure you’re getting everything in the right proportions plus the great Falcon price advantage.

Now, if you’ve read Lee Iacocca’s 1984 memoir, you probably recall that he complains that the Falcon did basically everything right except look good and make a profit. Iacocca, who had to sell the Falcon after he became Ford Division general manager late that year, was frustrated with the limited margins on the Falcon, and annoyed that its no-nonsense, sensible-shoes basic-transportation vibe didn’t encourage buyers to load it up with profit-boosting options.

There WAS a profit margin built into the wholesale delivered price of the early Falcon (which was $1,578 for a basic 1960 Falcon two-door sedan), and its suggested list price (which was $1,746, not including handling and federal tax) did leave some margin for the dealer even on a stripped base car, but a typical Falcon sale wasn’t a very lucrative proposition. While the 1960 Falcon may have been “the Easiest Car in the World To Own,” as the last line of the ad copy proclaimed, it wasn’t the most appealing car in the world to sell.

Like I said at the outset, Ford spent all this money for a two-page ad spread and didn’t even find space for a single picture of the car it was talking about. However, they did offer this Peanuts comic strip:

I think this strip might have marked the beginning of the licensing deal between Ford and United Features Syndicate, which published Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts strip. Some comic strip artists, like Gary Trudeau, creator of Doonesbury, and later Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes, have been wary of this kind of licensing; Watterson, who had been an advertising artist, wanted no part of it, despite considerable pressure from his syndicate. Charles Schulz apparently didn’t mind, and Peanuts licensing has never ceased, even more than 25 years after the strip ended in 1999.

As far as I’ve seen — and commenters can feel free to correct me if I’ve missed something — the Ford/Peanuts deal seemed to be specific to the Falcon, and ran through 1965. The above page is from the 1961 Falcon brochure.

The 1962 brochure contained more Falcon-specific cartoons, including this punny gag. (If you’re not an old movie buff, How Green Was My Valley was a very successful 1941 John Ford film about life in a Welsh mining village in the early 20th Century, adapted from a Richard Llewellyn novel. I’ve never cared for John Ford and find the film heavy-handed and overly sentimental, but it was well-remembered hit that had won five Oscars. Pub trivia fun fact: One of the paint colors Lincoln-Mercury had offered on and off since the ’40s was “Valley Green.”)

Falcon brochures continued to feature the Peanuts gang through 1964–1965 — the page above is from the 1964 brochure — but they were downplayed by 1965, and as far as I’ve seen, they were gone by 1966, when the Falcon became basically a cut-down Fairlane with dowdier styling. The disappearance of Charlie Brown and friends from Falcon ads and brochures seemed to coincide with the end of any enthusiasm Ford Division had for the compact Falcon as a product (although it lingered through the beginning of the 1970 model year, and for much longer in Australia and Argentina). The popularity of Peanuts certainly didn’t wane in the late ’60s, so maybe Ford just didn’t want to pay the licensing fees anymore.

A last point: The famous DDB “Think small” ad for Volkswagen, shown above, is actually a whole lot wordier than I had remembered. The copy presents a whole set of odd facts (18 NYU students squeezed into one car; economy run drivers got up to 50 mpg, but you won’t; a new front fender cost $21.75 and a new cylinder head only $19.95; etc.), rather haphazardly strung together. However, unlike the verbose Automotive News Falcon ad, the VW ad did find (a little) space for a picture of the car, and the picture and headline are all anyone remembers today.

Related Reading

Vintage Motor Life Review: 1960 Ford Falcon – The Resurrection of the Model A (by Paul N)

Curbside Classic: 1961 Ford Falcon – Simply Original and Just Right (by J P Cavanaugh)

Vintage Car Life Road Test: 1962 Ford Falcon – 144 & 170 Six, Manual & Automatic – Who’s The Slowest Falcon Of Them All? (by Paul N)

Ford Falcon Memories: The 1960s Everyday Car In Vintage Photos (by Rich Baron)