Here’s an awesome look behind the scenes with the production crew that created the television commercials for the 1956 Ford lineup.
Here at Mac’s Motor City Garage, we enjoy including original commercials in our classic car coverage. The vintage clips do an excellent job of showcasing the cars, just as the producers intended. And more than that, they also provide a historical context—they allow us to spend a few moments with the vehicles in their own time. For us, it’s an entertaining and educational way to approach automotive history. And needless to say, it wouldn’t be possible in a print format.
And now, courtesy of Ford Heritage at the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu, UK, we have this awesome little color film showing how car commercials were created back in 1956. Check out the car-to-car action shots, the beach setup, the detail closeups. The equipment is considerably more advanced today, but the techniques haven’t changed much at all. The subjects in this shoot are the convertibles in the Ford lineup for ’56: the Ford Fairlane, Thunderbird, Mercury, and Lincoln—from the entire Ford family of fine cars, as they say. Enjoy the video.
After I graduated from high school in 1974 I wanted to work for a year or two before I went to college.My dad didn’t really like the idea but he eventually acquiesced. My dad knew a lot of people in the automotive business. He told me to go to DST, (Dearborn Steel Tube), and maybe they could find something for me to do. Being niave I didn’t know that my dad knew the president. Anyway, DST was a kind of a “skunk works” for Ford. They actually did the Thunderbolt in 1964. Something else they did was to build prototype vehicles in the winter and in the spring send them to L.A. and Palm Springs for photo shots and commercials. Spent quite a few hours on the film site for the commercials. Only stayed a little over a year before I decided to go to college. One of the best years in my life and I’ll never forget it.