"[Philip Caldwell] would come into the studio and ask, 'Are you sure you reached far enough?'" Telnack remembered.

Following the success of the Taurus, Telnack was elected a corporate vice-president to head Ford's global design organization. He spent another few years working on Ford's next big project, the 2002 Thunderbird, which was actually hatched in the mid-1990s when Telnack challenged Ford's global designers to come up with a winner that had the same soul as the 1955 Thunderbird.

"That, to me, is market research," Telnack said. "That tells you if you have a winner... I'd like to think I've had a few."