Paint sprayers attached to the wheels and body show how well the Ford F-100 absorbs bumps.
This week’s Throwback Thursday video comes to us from the Dante Rolando Silva Gutiérrez YouTube channel and it features an interesting commercial for the 1966 Ford F-100. Back then, Ford marketed the F-100 as having the world’s smoothest ride and to showcase this smooth ride in a way that television viewers could see, they used a pair of paint sprayers and a huge canvas.
Preparing the Truck
Before the 1966 Ford F-100 heads down the rough test track, engineers in lab coats attached a pair of commercial paint sprayers to the truck. One is attached to the driver’s side front wheel and the second is attached to the driver’s door. While we have sensors today that could measure the difference in movement between the wheels and the cab, automakers didn’t have such advanced technology back then and what they did have was hard to display to television viewers.
However, a couple of dark lines on white canvas tells a very clear story.
The Ford Advantage
Back in 1966, the Ford F-100 featured an independent “twin i-beam” suspension setup that allowed the front wheels to move freely of each other. This afforded the F-100 a much smoother ride than a comparable truck with suspension setup that didn’t allow the wheels to move independently of each other, making the Ford the world’s smoothest riding truck.
To display this, the engineering team turned to those paint sprayers. As the truck drove over the rough test track, the front wheel with the sprayer moved a great deal, painting a zig-zag line on the canvas. On the other hand, thanks to the twin i-beam suspension, the sprayer on the door barely moves at all, painting a nice, straight line on the canvas.
This commercial was introduced 52 years ago, but it still displays the advantage of the Ford suspension and the smooth ride of the 1966 F-100 in a way that we can all appreciate.
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