The Ford Taunus 17 M is a middle sized family saloon/sedan that was produced by Ford Germany between August 1957 and August 1960. The Taunus 17M name was also applied to subsequent Ford models which is why the car is usually identified, in retrospect, as the Ford Taunus P2. It was the second newly designed German Ford to be launched after the war and for this reason it was from inception known within the company as Ford Project 2 (P2) or the Ford Taunus P2. Because of its unusually flamboyant styling the first 17M also acquired various descriptive soubriquets of which "Barocktaunus“ is probably, today, the most widely used. During a three-year production run 239,978 Taunus P2s were manufactured. Development and launch The early sketches for Ford's new middle class sedan date from early in 1955. Originally it was intended that the car be powered by the 1498 cc ohv engine installed in the Taunus 15M which went on sale in the same year. The design for the body quickly grew too large and heavy for the 1498 cc unit, however, and so the company developed a bored out 1698 cc version of the engine, now producing . At the end of the summer of 1957, memorably, the car was launched at an upmarket Cologne restaurant by the singing star Gitta Lind. Lind's singing style was not one with wide appeal in most of the US or the UK, where she may be chiefly noteworthy as a great niece of Beethoven’s piano teacher. The singer’s own compositional talent was on display with the song she wrote for the occasion which was entitled "Fahren auch Sie den neuen Taunus 17M" ("You too [should] drive the new Taunus 17M"). The next month the Ford Taunus 17M itself appeared as one of the stars at the Frankfurt Motor Show. Fashion statements In addition to the relatively mild "baroque“ insult, Ford's new middle-weight quickly gained other informal names including "Gelsenkirchener Barock“ and "Fliegender Teppich“ (Flying carpet). Gelsenkirchener Baroque, a term frequently applied to the Taunus P2 in press reviews, was a style more generally associated with heavy furniture in the newly confident German empire during the closing decades of the nineteenth century. The style, which contrasted with the uncompromised functionalism more usually associated with German design in recent decades, enjoyed a brief revival in the 1950s. Competitor automakers at this time also emulated US