Ford Modular engine

The Ford Modular engine is an overhead camshaft (OHC) V8 and V10 gasoline-powered small block engine family introduced by Ford Motor Company in 1990 for the 1991 model year. The term “modular” applied to the setup of tooling and casting stations in the Windsor and Romeo engine manufacturing plants, not the engine itself.

The Modular engine family started with the 4.6 L in 1990 for the 1991 model year. The Modular engines are used in various Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury vehicles. Modular engines used in Ford trucks were marketed under the Triton name from 1997–2010 while the InTech name was used for a time at Lincoln and Mercury for vehicles equipped with DOHC versions of the engines. The engines were first produced at the Ford Romeo Engine Plant in Romeo, Michigan, then additional capacity was added at the Windsor Engine Plant in Windsor, Ontario.

Origins

In the early 1980s, then-Ford Motor Company chief operating officer Donald Petersen challenged Ford's vice-president of design, Jack Telnack, and his staff to come up with new vehicle designs to replace the boxy styling that had dominated Ford products for years. The result was the adoption of sleeker, more aerodynamic designs like that used for the highly successful Ford Taurus. In the second half of the 1980s, Petersen, then chief executive officer, sought to update Ford's decades-old V8 architectures, challenging Ford senior engineer Jim Clarke to develop a new V8 engine that would surpass Ford's earlier V8s in every meaningful way, from power and efficiency to emissions performance and smoothness of operation.

Clarke and his engineers studied engine designs from major European and Japanese automakers and sought to develop a technologically advanced, power-dense, dependable, low maintenance V8, with no major service required before 100,000 miles (160,000 km) of use.