TICKFORD CONVERSION

The conversion from standard to Racing Puma was carried out by Tickford at their Daventry factory. Most customers never saw the 1.7 they ordered as they were dispatched to Tickford directly from the Neihl plant for conversion and the customer then received their fully converted Racing Puma, often this means that the date of first registration can often be up to a year after the original build date.  

 

To get around the homologation rule what people actually bought was a standard 1.7 Ford puma with a Racing Puma option pack for sake of a description.

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Cars came off fords production line with several item deletions eg. they sported (disposable) steel wheels etc. The donor cars crossed over in timing with a minor upgrade at Ford so early cars have different brake servos, airbags etc and a few other little items.

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Ford had planned on Tickford converting 20 units per week.  The proposed plan was to allow customers to come to Tickford to view their car at any point during the conversion. It was planned that 1 day per week would be allocated for customer visits.

 

Below is a drawing plan of the proposed factory floor layout, the arrows outline the movement of the cars as they passed through the conversion stages. 

 

The facotry layout shows the paint booth and paint mixing room in the top left hand corner, assembly stores and secure storage area in the bottom right.

 

Soon into the conversions it became clear that having weekly customer visits was not going to work and halted production to frequently so the idea was soon scrapped. Although several customers did visit the factory at various stages. Photos are in the Tickford Image Gallery.