The three-box car body format would soon become mainstream, but when the Ford Taunus 12M appeared in 1952 competitor manufacturers including Opel, Volkswagen and Auto Union were still competing with models based closely on designs originating in the 1930s.

Several aspects of the car's development reflected the advantages and the disadvantages of running a business with management decisions necessarily split between two continents at a time when even international telephone calls needed to be pre-booked.

The original plan for the strikingly modern design came from Ford in the USA who drew up a proposal based on the ponton format Champion model introduced to the US auto-market a few years earlier by Studebaker.

By the time the half globe was removed from the car's nose, 247,174 of the 12M version had been sold along with 127,942 of the subsequently introduced Ford Taunus 15Ms.

[3] That Ford were still powering their entry level Taunus P1 with a sidevalve engine ten years later, in 1962, would leave the model looking badly outclassed under the bonnet/hood.

Individually suspended front wheels marked a contrast with the approach taken with the original Taunus, but in 1952 the rigid rear axle was all too familiar to Ford's existing German customers.

In the early years all the cars, regardless of equipment level, and whether saloon/sedan, or cabriolet bodied, came with a single bench seat across the full width of the car in place of the individual front seats fitted by most European manufacturers: this was a matter in respect of which the Taunus 12M was seen to reflect its manufacturer's North American parentage and thereby conferred a certain glamour at a time when the United States was a widely accepted role model across much of Europe and especially in West Germany.

A cabriolet version had been offered since December 1952, being the result of a conversion by a coach building specialist based, like Ford, in the Cologne area and called Karl Deutsch Poor workmanship on the early cars was a source of some disappointment.

[4] Nevertheless, fairly soon (and in the absence of much direct competition during its early years on the German market) the Ford Taunus 12M, with its roomy modern body came to be seen as a high quality product, but on launch it was 37% more expensive than the 1952 price of the predecessor model.

And for only forty marks extra, the buyer of the basic car could upgrade his gear-change mechanism to the coveted column-mounted device.

Hitherto the Ford Taunus 12M had competed as a large (if rather underpowered) car in the sector increasingly led by the Volkswagen Beetle.

Its size had always invited comparison with larger cars such as the Opel Olympia Rekord, the Borgward Isabella, the Fiat 1400 and the Peugeot 403.

Various luxury features hitherto unavailable or else offered only as optional extras were included in the price for buyers of the Ford Taunus 15M de Luxe.

These included items such as the windscreen washer, reversing lights, tubeless tires, vanity mirrors in the sun visors and a headlamp flasher.

Many of these will have been regarded as relatively mainstream in North American cars, which will have added trans-Atlantic glamour to the Taunus 15M in a country where, especially in the south of Germany, the continuing presence of large numbers of US troops enabled Ford's customers to be far more up to date than most other Europeans with trends in the US auto market.

Having lost its defining globe mascot, the smaller Taunus acquired a thick painted stripe down each side, slightly below the level of the car’s waist.

By this time, the Ford Taunus 12M's twenty-five-year-old underpinnings were becoming uncomfortably obvious,[citation needed] and the car was having to compete largely on price.

[4] As Ford's management had feared, the arrival of newer models from competitor manufacturers was leaving the once fashionable Taunus 12M languishing in the sales charts.

Its once broad niche between the small relatively cramped Volkswagen and the growing class of middle-weights was under increasing pressure from entry-level versions of more recently introduced models from Opel, Fiat and Peugeot.

In September 1959, with the 15M itself deleted from the range, Ford responded to the intensifying competition by offering the larger 1.5-litre engine from the 15M in the 12M for a supplementary payment of only 110 marks.

By 1961, despite its three-box body shape, the Taunus 12M had become outdated and outclassed, with an engine, suspension system and gear-box which still followed pretty closely their original 1935 designs.