The Ford Trio, also referred to as the Ghia Trio, was a concept microcar built by Ghia and shown at the Geneva Motor Show in March 1983. Described at its debut as the smallest four-wheeled passenger car ever to carry the Ford badge, it was a three-seat, three-door urban concept car measuring just 2,408 mm (241 cm) long and 1,362 mm (136 cm) wide. Its name referred directly to its unusual three-person seating layout.
The defining feature of the Trio's design was its central driving position, with the driver seated in the middle of the cabin and two passenger seats set slightly back on either side in an arrowhead arrangement. This staggered layout allowed three adults to be accommodated within the car's narrow overall width, a solution to central-seating packaging that had been explored intermittently in car design history, including earlier individual vehicles built by Pininfarina in the 1960s. The Trio's design brief emphasised minimal use of road space alongside strict economy of construction and operation, an approach reflected throughout its engineering.
Weight-saving measures ran through the entire car. A tubular frame served as both chassis and structural support for the aluminium body panels, while the floor of the passenger compartment was built as a honeycomb sandwich of glass fibre and kevlar. Seat frames were made from aluminium and glass fibre, upholstered in orange suede material with fawn contrast panels. The side and rear glazing was made from metacrylate, a scratch-resistant plastic said to be stronger yet lighter than glass, and all windows were fitted flush with the bodywork. Each side window contained only a small hinged drop-down section, intended for tasks such as paying parking tolls, which allowed the doors themselves to be built extremely thin. This thinness created space alongside the driver for soft shopping bags. Additional storage came from two padded compartments beneath the windscreen, a lidded box between the passenger seats, and a wide shelf at the rear, together giving the Trio over 1.5 cubic metres of luggage capacity, with the parking brake concealed beneath the rear parcel shelf.
Propulsion came from a rear-mounted 250 cc two-stroke, two-cylinder engine driving the rear axle through a centrifugal clutch and a continuously variable belt transmission supplied by BMA. Operation required only two pedals, with a forward/reverse selector lever ahead of the driver replacing a conventional gear shift. The Trio could return fuel economy of less than 4 litres per 100 km and had a top speed of 80 km/h. Wheels were fitted with 4.80 x 400 tyres. With a kerb weight of only 337 kg, the small two-stroke engine was considered sufficient given the car's intended use for urban driving alone. Dimensions included a wheelbase of 1,650 mm, front and rear tracks of 970 mm and 1,154 mm respectively, and a height of 1,345 mm.
The Trio's exterior used a two-tone color scheme and featured large rectangular headlamps curved into the front flanks, along with Ford-style air intake slats, giving the small car a distinct appearance. Its interior, trimmed partly in orange, was designed to match the exterior in visual appeal. At Geneva, the car's flanks carried a small marking reading "CD 0.27," referencing its aerodynamic drag coefficient of 0.27. Ghia Operations Managing Director Filippo Sapino explained that the Trio's layout was based on the observation that urban vehicles carry only the driver most of the time, while still offering extra seating for short trips with passengers. The Trio remained a concept vehicle and was not put into production.
