page_title: Ford P7
section_title: Facelifts and upgrades
hierarchical_section_title: Ford P7 / Evolutionary design and a lukewarm reception / Facelifts and upgrades
caption_attribution_description: English: A blue four-door Ford Taunus 17M 1700S.
context_page_description: The Ford P7 is a range of large family saloons/sedans produced by Ford Germany between autumn 1967 and December 1971. The P7 was marketed as the Ford 17M, Ford 20M and Ford 26M.
  At launch, the 17M was available with four different engine sizes, ranging from 1.5 to 2.3 litres. The more lavishly appointed 20M was also offered, but only with the larger two engines. The range was subsequently broadened further, and from 1969, the 26M joined the range, featuring the same body, but a larger engine, automatic transmission as standard, and various other luxury features.
  The Taunus 17M name had been applied to a succession of family saloons/sedans from Ford Germany since 1957, but the introduction of the 1967 car coincided with the removal of the “Taunus” name. Nevertheless, for the avoidance of confusion, the 17M and 20M models introduced in 1967, as well as the 26M introduced in 1969, are usually identified, in retrospect, as the Ford P7. It was the seventh newly designed German Ford to be launched after the Second World War, so it was from inception known within the company as Ford Project 7 or more simply as the Ford P7.
context_section_description: The emergency face-lift of 1968 left the overall silhouette of the P7 little changed, but a number of the fussier elements disappeared. The cheese-grater grill was replaced by a set of thin parallel bars and at the corners the meeting points between the  lights and the bumpers were tidied up. The bumpers themselves were redesigned, with a new profile. The fake scoop on bonnet on the 20 TS was dropped, and also the "TS" name. Elsewhere various bumps and creases disappeared from the body work including a kink outlined in the panel below and slightly ahead of the C-pillar, which was one of the decorative features that had been criticised for what was seen as a sign of excessive Anglo-American influence. What was left was a simplified form that in some ways left the car looking larger than ever, but the overall impression was calmer.
  The Marketing Department researched their files and retrieved for the Ford P7b a slogan coined for Bahnsen’s innovatively styled 1960 Taunus P3, „Linie der Vernunft“ which loosely translates as “rational form”. This they now applied to the P7b. Now, as ten years earlier, the intention was to point up an aesthetic contrast between a newly simplified 17M model and an over-decorated predecessor.
caption: Ford 17M 1700S P7a, showing the early horizontal taillights
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