Hahaha...took a tour of the engineers room at Ford about 12 years ago. Real good stuff. Got to see the engineers at work designing future vehicles on computer, the clay room (gone now I suppose), prototypes, etc., all back-door stuff. Well, I also got to talk personally with a few engineers and the lead designer mentioned that in the next 5-10 years (1997-2002), Americans will all want cars the look the same. Any type of strange or out-of-the-ordinary vehicle will be turned down. That is the mood of the near future and one we intend to capitalize on. I almost crapped my pants. Of course, I wasn't going to say anything against that as I was a lucky guest in the inner sanctum, but boy did it shock me!
I saw it in action a few years later when the Ford Taurus, Escort, Contour, and ZX2
all had the same shape, design, and body panels. It was very difficult to tell those four apart. I couldn't believe it. Well, they were mostly panned by the press and public alike, everything but the Taurus was dismal in sales, and discontinued. The next year, the Focus arrived.