Trained as an aeronautical engineer, Mr. Lunn designed brawny cars that flew (literally, in one case) off the track, hurtling along highways and racecourses and giving Ford worldwide bragging rights in the late 1960s as a four-time winner of the glamorous endurance sports-car racing crown at Le Mans, France.
Mr. Lunn went from apprenticing as a 14-year-old machinist to designing and driving racing cars, and then to engineering more functional vehicles.
One of his team’s creations, the lightweight 1983 Jeep Cherokee, with its integrated chassis and bodywork, fostered a huge market for the family sport utility vehicle. Another, the American Motors Eagle, introduced in 1979, was the first four-wheel-drive car mass-produced in the United States.
Still another of his projects, the short-lived Cardinal, Ford’s first front-wheel-drive vehicle, was reintroduced in Germany and developed into today’s Taurus.