Opel business. In April 1962 the 17M became the first mainstream production car in Germany to offer, as an option, disc brakes on the front wheels. Just over a year later front disc brakes became a standard fitting on all models. 1962 was also the year when the car acquired an "automatic starter" which reportedly made the traditional manual choke unnecessary. Optional extras Options available at extra cost included velour carpeting, grab handles for the passengers in the back, whitewall tires, a two tone paint finish and even a "make-up mirror" cleverly incorporated into the sun-visor on the passenger's side. Advertising The 1960s was a period of rapid expansion in Europe both for the auto-industry and in the world of advertising. Ford tended to be ahead of the field in this aspect of marketing, even if some of the resulting slogans appear stilted fifty years later. The style of new Taunus 17M was advertised as representing a „Linie der Vernunft" which loosely translates as a "rational form" offering an implicit rebuke to the by now unfashionably elaborate styling of the old Taunus 17M. The car was advertised with the balanced and pithy slogan "Zum Fahren geboren. Zum sparen gebaut" (Born to drive. Built to save/economise). <div style="float: right; margin: 0 0 0.5em 1em; width: 29.5em; text-align: right; font-size: 0.86em; font-family: lucida grande, sans-serif; line-height: normal;"> <div style="border: 1px solid #999999; background: #ffffff; text-align: left; padding: 1em 1em; text-align: left;"> Ford Taunus 17M (P3) production (units): 1960 29,944 1961 168,430 1962 193,378 1963 164,646 1964 97,658 Most of the cars produced were sedans/saloons, but the total of 669,731 also included 86,010 estate/kombi (Taunus 17M Turnier) bodied cars and (evidently not included in these data) approximately 15,000 other vehicles including pick-up truck conversions for customers in Greece and South Africa along with cabriolets and coupés, converted from sedans/saloons by the Cologne based coach-builder Karl Deutsch. </div></div> Steel bodied station wagon equivalent models based on mainstream sedans were rapidly gaining in popularity. Giving the Taunus 17M station wagon a special name, "Turnier", intended to be unique to the Ford brand also showed the Ford marketing department ahead of the German owned competition. The Opel Rekord station wagon had already been dubbed by Opel a "CarAVan" in 1958, but market leaders Volkswagen would not find their equivalent label until the launch of the Volkswagen 1500 Variant in 1962. Commercial The boldly styled and regularly