At nine feet tall, more than 800 pounds and unable to move, this dude wasn’t quite as nimble as C-3PO, nor as small. But for several years throughout the late 1960s and early ’70s, Freddie Ford was nonetheless a crowd favorite at the Michigan State Fair and auto shows around the country. The robot was built almost completely out of Ford auto parts: The original Freddie had oil pans for feet and brake shoes for hands; his ears were made of radiator caps with car antennas attached; his eyes were parking lights from a Mustang; his mouth was the backup light from a Thunderbird. Best of all, Freddie could talk, although his programmed recitations were limited mostly to a handful of corny jokes with an embedded Ford marketing push. What’s that, Freddie? Why do you have disc brakes for hands? “They grip faster and better and 55 percent easier than manual brakes. For 1970, power front disc brakes are available on all models and standard on some,” Freddie would say. In robot land (and in some car circles), that’s what they call pillow talk.
Source : Found Michigan, April 4, 2014.