The Scout: designed in Fort Wayne, built in Fort Wayne

1960 – 1980

The design, and where it happened: The Scout is the one Fort Wayne vehicle whose design is as local as its manufacture, and the attribution was tested rather than assumed. Ted Ornas, the Scout's chief designer, was recruited from a Detroit design partnership to join International Harvester in Fort Wayne, where he founded the company's first industrial design department; the record of the program, including Hagerty Magazine's Fall 2013 account, places the styling department at the Fort Wayne plant. In early 1958 Ornas was directed to develop a competitor to the Jeep. His engineering manager, a man named Reese, gave him the brief in one sentence: "design something to replace the horse." Ornas's first flat-sided sketches failed with the executives. The contoured design that won approval was dashed off on a piece of scrap mat board at his own kitchen table. A program to build the body in plastic with Goodyear was cancelled on cost in July 1959; the design was converted to steel; the full-size clay was finished late in July 1959 and approved that November. The whole development took about twenty-four months, and when it began, the company had neither an in-house engine nor a manufacturing line for the vehicle. Ornas died in March 2009.

The vehicle and its run: Production ran in a plant adjacent to the truck works from November 1960 to October 1980. The first Scout rolled out of Door #11 on 1 December 1960. The total, on the History Center's figure, was 532,674. The line ran in three generations: the Scout 80 of 1961–65; the 800, 800A, and 800B to 1971; and the Scout II of 1971–80, joined from 1976 by the longer Terra pickup and Traveler. Engines ran from a 2.5-litre four — offered for a time in turbocharged form — through a six to V8s above five litres. The sheet metal stayed essentially unchanged to the end. Beside the plant, Custom Vehicles Inc. (CVI) built special dealer models in 1979–80, the marque's last flourish. The last Scout was built on 21 October 1980. The Scout was among the first of what the industry would later call sport-utility vehicles, and it was Fort Wayne's from the kitchen-table sketch to the last unit — designed here, tooled here, and built here for twenty years.

Sources:

1. Hagerty Magazine, Fall 2013 — Ted Ornas recruited to International Harvester in Fort Wayne, founder of its first industrial design department, and the program's history; with Curbside Classic's account of the styling department's establishment at the Fort Wayne plant.
2. Ted Ornas's own account of the program, as carried in the Hagerty and Scout literature — the 1958 directive, Reese's "design something to replace the horse," the rejected flat-side sketches, the mat-board sketch, the Goodyear plastic-body cancellation of July 1959, the clay of July 1959 and approval of November 1959, and the twenty-four-month development.
3. The History Center, Fort Wayne, and ACGSI, International Harvester in Allen County — production November 1960 to October 1980 in the adjacent plant, 532,674 built, the first Scout out of Door #11 on 1 December 1960.
4. Scout production record — the model succession (80, 800 series, Scout II, Terra and Traveler), the engine range, Custom Vehicles Inc.'s 1979–80 dealer specials beside the plant, and the last Scout of 21 October 1980.