TV sets made by: Philco-Ford

[TV-collector]

Hi,

Over the years I saw that in the 60s Philco-Ford Tvs were made.
-Whats`s the story?
-Where an why they were made by/with Ford?
-Are they different to standard Philcos? Or is it only a batch?

Thanks to everyone who put a little light on this case.

TV-collector

[old_tv_nut]

Philco was bought by Ford, hence the products were called Philco-Ford.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philco

"Philco Corporation by 1960 had applied for bankruptcy protection and on December 11, 1961, Ford Motor Company purchased Philco and continued to offer consumer products, computer systems and defense related projects. The company continued to provide Ford with car and truck radio receivers and consumer product investments were made to color television production, appliances and audio console systems with high quality "Mastercraft" cabinet making. The company branded Philco products as "Philco-Ford" in 1966, and efforts were made to lower costs of production with a plant in Taiwan to produce consumer electronic items."

[zeno]

Philco-Ford went on till the mid 70's then was bought by GTE
who made Sylvania & soon used Sylvania chassii. During the
Ford years the TV's especially colored sets improved but never
sold well. They did make a few excellent B&W sets at the end.
The last color sets were basically a copy of RCA sets with added
unreliability. All & all they were a bit different than most sets
& added a nice diversion from the common sets you saw
day after day.

73 Zeno

Philco also made home appliances too. At the time other US car makers had consumer appliance divisions, GM had Fridgidaire, American Motors had Kelvinator, and Chrysler had Airtemp. Each of them contributed a lot of profit to their parent companies in the post-war consumer boom years. Ford always felt like they were missing out. Also, in the 50's Ford management believed the only way for them to beat GM was to be more like GM. So they went shopping and bought several companies in the late 50's and early 60's. Philco, Ford thought, had the added benefit of making electronics and could also save them money by making car radios. Philco also had a huge NASA contract they were just starting on and Ford already had an aerospace division.

Another funny thing that may be true is that Henry Ford II loved alliteration. That's why so many Ford cars of the time had names starting with "F" such as Falcon, Fairlane, Futura, etc. Supposedly, he liked Philco because the "Ph" sounds like "F" in english and he liked the sound of Philco-Ford.

I've read that Philco never made a profit for Ford the whole time they owned it. Ford tried pumping loads of money into advertising and product development and nothing worked. They had huge quality issues too.

The final straw came when Philco had gotten a batch of bad components from Motorola that were assembled at Philco's Brazil plant into circuit boards, that were then shipped to the US for final assembly. Apparently nobody along the chain bothered to test things and about three months worth of Philco TV production had to be brought back into the factories to correct the problems. It was so costly that Ford management decided to sell Philco at a loss if necessary. They sold the rights to the Philco name and the Taiwan plant to GTE, and the US plants to Zenith.

[TV-collector]

Many thanks! I am learning something more!

TV-collector

[Olorin67]

They did put out some interesting products, like the 4" hip pocket records and record players, and I think they even sold a fancy console with the amazing VM 1700 series professional record changer, that paused the turntable while slowly lowering the records instead of dropping them.

[jr_tech]

Very interesting! I had never heard of these hip pocket records before... for grins, I started a thread in the antique phonograph section for members' comments on this product... perhaps somebody here collects them?

jr

[earlyfilm]

Originally Posted by old_tv_nut

. . . Philco Corporation by 1960 had applied for bankruptcy protection and on December 11, 1961, Ford Motor Company purchased Philco . . . .

The 1940's and pre-Predicta 1950's sets were fairly well built and reliable sets that could easily be serviced.

However, many of their cabinets had less charm than a rutting moose, and this hurt Philco's sales.

Philco decided to upgrade profits by designing beautiful cabinets, without regard to serviceability and then sticking in the cheapest possible, flimsy and prone-to-fail parts. They also attempted to maximize company profits by forcing the customers to use Philco Service shops when their sets went out, so they charged the independent service shops full list price for replacement parts plus shipping, and Philco took about two weeks to fill the order.

Consequentially most TV shops quit servicing the Philco sets where generic parts were not available, and this left the set buyers up the proverbial creek in the smaller towns, where there were no Philco repair shops. Once bitten by an unrepairable product, most customers picked another brand for their next TV.

With that said, I got out of TV service in late 1960 and am unaware if Ford continued this policy or not.

James

[sampson159]

the tube and hybrid sets were reasonably good.i had a hybrid that had a fine picture,comparable to any zenith or sylvania of the day.exceptionally good.we bought a roundie in early 1966.it lasted at least 10 years with 11 to 12 hours use daily.it was still working when we let a neighbor have it.by the time sylvania bought them,philco was just a memory.i worked on many of the ford car radios and they were good performers.

[wa2ise]

My parents had a Ford Philco fridge.

[holmesuser01]

My mom had a Philco-Bendix front-load washer-dryer combination in 1961. It ran until 1968. I still have the transmission unit from it.

I remember a local Western Auto store that had sold Trutone electronics suddenly started selling Philco-Ford stuff.

Working on them, I remember many compactrons that they used.

[walterbeers]

I have a Philco double door console with the 2 chassis, model 52-T2157 Chassis 42. Were these made by Philco-Ford? Sams photofact is 186 Dated 11-52 Just wondering.

[holmesuser01]

Originally Posted by walterbeers

I have a Philco double door console with the 2 chassis, model 52-T2157 Chassis 42. Were these made by Philco-Ford? Sams photofact is 186 Dated 11-52 Just wondering.

Ford bought Philco around 1961 or so. Your console is a real Philco product. They were hot stuff in the radio days, and early TV.

[walterbeers]

Just thought I'd share some pictures of my old Philco TV. It does have a picture but needs to be worked on, recapped, etc. CRT is a little weak but usable.

Model is 52-T2157 Philco

PS, The Sylvania Halolight next to it works perfect and is not for sale. One of my treasures.

[DaveWM]

Philco Ford roundie color

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cKYVXqaZ_c

Cheapest "full size" color set you could buy think dates to about 1970, trying to use up the stockpile of round CRT, can you imagine that a STOCKPILE of rounde color crts.