Here are 10 Ford prototypes you never knew about

Over the years, Ford has unsurprisingly designed hundreds of cars you never even saw. In a new book called The Cars You Always Promised Yourself, former Ford product designer Steve Saxty delves into the unseen world of prototypes, one-offs and cancelled cars.

And we begin our journey with the Capri. There were no fewer than eleven different concepts for replacing it over the years, and this was one of the earliest. It’s a clay model for what eventually became the Capri II, wrapped in gold-coloured material to resemble a real car. When Henry Ford II saw it, he angrily declared: "No Capri will ever have pop-up lights."

And that was the end of that.

The Sierra Cosworth is just as beloved today as it was in the mid-Eighties. However, the earlier XR4i flopped due to its unconventional design. What few people knew at the time was that an even wilder version of the XR4i was being developed behind the scenes. The XR4i Targa was ambitiously envisioned as a high-style car aimed at sunnier markets.

The early-Nineties Escort was a bland, unpopular car, criticised by the press, the public, and even Ford's own engineers. But what if Ford’s execs had chosen this design instead?

The Escort Cosworth was developed offsite at a specialist design studio, away from Ford. This is the clay model, with design sketches behind, showcasing its distinctive twin-spoiler setup. Despite rumours of a three-spoiler design, all the designers and engineers confirm that was never the case. Notably, Ian Callum – famed for his work with Jaguar and Aston Martin – helped finalise the design.

The bland design of the Ford Escort pushed Ford’s stylists to take a 180-degree turn and embrace bold ideas. This concept, so extreme it's hard to believe, is an early design for the Ford Ka. Thankfully, this wasn't the final version.

The facelifted Scorpio featured a grinning, oversized grille. Its origins can be traced back to this clay model, which was split down the middle to showcase two front-end design options. The left side represented the safer choice, but Ford’s design chief pushed for the bolder, more radical look. It shocked people at the time, though today's cars often feature similarly large grilles.

Betty Blue was the nickname given to the first proof-of-concept prototype of the Focus RS. Built by Malcolm Wilson’s M-Sport team for engineer Neil Briggs, the car was created to demonstrate the potential of an affordable RS model. Betty Blue was later tested by Tickford as part of the effort to develop it into a production vehicle. Unfortunately, her journey ended when Betty struck a crash barrier at Ford’s test track.

This was a dream combination: a prototype 300bhp Cosworth engine paired with a modified Jaguar X-Type AWD system, installed by Prodrive. Yes, a Prodrive Focus Cosworth existed, and this one-off prototype featured torque vectoring long before it became commonplace, thrilling everyone who drove it. Unfortunately, due to cost and complexity, what could have been the must-have RS Ford never made it to production.

In 2001, the Italian design house Pininfarina unveiled a proposal for a Focus-based coupe that caught the attention of Ford’s designers. At the time, the Golf-based Audi TT was a massive success, prompting Ford to consider its response. However, with the arrival of Ford’s new product boss, Martin Leach, the direction changed. Being an Essex man, Leach shifted the designers’ focus towards revisiting the idea of a new Capri.

Project S272 was intended to be a full-on reboot of the Capri to take on the Audi TT. This is an early S272 sketch that was later built into a model. Unfortunately, to make the numbers work it had to shrink, stretch and strain over the small body of the (then Ford-owned) Volvo C30. The result was a showcar called the Visos that convinced nobody.