FANTASTIC MR FOX
Geoff Fox isn’t your average ex-Ford employee. While most folk who say they worked for the Blue Oval actually just polished Fiestas in a dealership’s valeting bay, Geoff had hands-on involvement in many of the most iconic Fords of our time.
He was a founding member of Special Vehicle Engineering (SVE), he was there when the RS Cosworth came and went, and he stayed managing sporty projects until ST became a highly-regarded brand.
Yet Geoff is an unsung hero of the fast Ford story, happy to sit quietly in the background while others bask in the glory. Even so, Geoff is still very much a Blue Oval enthusiast, as keen today on engineering as he is to chat about the hybrid Puma’s handling prowess.
Geoff is the quintessential car bloke; and it’s no exaggeration to say that, without his input, the Ford world would have been a significantly poorer place.
Fast Ford caught up with Geoff at his Essex home (at Covid-19’s convenience, of course) to learn more about Geoff’s crucial role in the history of our favourite Fords.
When did you first get involved with Ford?
When I left school at 17, I had seven job offers, and the one that paid the most was at Ford as an apprentice draughtsman, on £3.15 a week.
So in the mid-1960s I was one of the plant resident engineers at Dagenham, in the days of Mk1 Cortina and Zephyr/Zodiac. My background was body engineering, which includes body structure, interior/exterior trim etc. I was part of the team that did the layout (surface lines) development of the Mk1 Escort body – the engineering and design of Mk1 and Mk2 Escorts was handled in Britain – and I developed the inner rear quarter and wheelarch panel, which was the first one-piece body side panel, and at the time was Ford’s most complex metal stamping.
