Jim Farley, president and CEO of Ford, has simply certified thirteenth.
It’s 2pm and we’re on the 81st Goodwood Members’ Meeting, the place the Ford Mustang 289 V8 that Farley is sharing with Britain’s Steve Soper, the previous BTCC ace, has completed within the prime half of a stellar 30-car subject in qualifying for the inaugural Ken Miles Cup.
It’s a particular one-make occasion staged to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Mustang’s launch.
Farley’s lap occasions are a second or so behind Soper’s and he isn’t happy, even though that is really prodigious efficiency. At 62, Farley is driving an unfamiliar and really potent automotive on a really quick monitor that he has tackled solely as soon as earlier than. And though he loves racing, Farley actually doesn’t have a lot time for it, on condition that his day job is to steer a £180 billion Detroit-based firm whose 177,000 workers construct 4.4 million vehicles a 12 months.
The following day, in a 50-minute, two-driver race, the Farley/Soper automotive will cross the road in thirteenth place in a congested and action-packed contest stuffed with present and former greats, and not using a single mark on its gleaming blue bodywork, though a lot of the notchback Mustangs round it have had some type of ‘tap’. Again, it’s a creditable efficiency.
Today, nevertheless, sitting behind the pits in a folding chair, comfy in his driving gear, Farley’s thoughts could be very a lot on the Mustang’s industrial features and particularly its future.
He is deeply happy with the truth that the mannequin has been such a spine of Ford progress (“not many things in this industry last 60 years”) and particularly of the truth that a dangerous determination to globalise Mustang gross sales, made round 2015 initially of Farley’s personal two-year stint as president of Ford of Europe, has resulted in far more prominence and success for the historically American pony automotive.
Despite the truth that Ford has many big-volume electric car programmes underneath means, starting from the large American F-150 Lightning pick-up truck to Europe’s compact Explorer crossover, which is able to quickly be launched, Farley needs to emphasize the significance of the Mustang, which in future will seem in quite a lot of new iterations – doubtlessly together with a four-door model – however all of them with the identical “performance and attitude” of present variations.