Steve Cropley: Ford's Jim Farley is a model CEO
While overhauling Ford's approach to electrification, Farley still found time to construct a miniature GT40
This week, Steve muses on the eccentricities of Ford's CEO Jim Farley, reflects on the sophisticated crudeness of the Mitsubishi L200 Barbarian and explains why the Artura is, a week before it's reveal, already shaping up to be the best-looking McLaren yet.
*Sunday*
Ford has had its share of unusual characters in a century of leaders, but its CEO today, Jim Farley, must surely be among the most remarkable. While busily changing Ford’s whole fabric to embrace electrification (at a mighty cost to the bottom line, hopefully temporary), this incorrigible car nut, racer and Twitter jockey never loses a chance to boost his troops or spread the word that cars are good. Farley chose the night that the rest of America was glued to the Superbowl football final to post pictures of his latest project (below). When requested, he sent word that you and I can get our own model GT40s by investing £295 plus six weeks of painstaking after-hours effort, just like he did. Amazing bloke.
*Tuesday*
Driving 25 miles from home to get ‘the jab’ provided an unchallengeable opportunity for some miles in the Mitsubishi L200 Barbarian pick-up truck that I’ve been enjoying more than I should admit. I discover that simple appreciation of a fundamentally crude vehicle encourages you to reflect on the real-world qualities, picked from the usual suite of road testers’ strengths and weaknesses, that you really care about.
Forgive me, but I still like a strong, rattling diesel engine that starts pulling in the basement of its rev-range, especially when it’s bolted to an ultra-smooth automatic gearbox.
I’m never going to tire of an elevated driving position, nor the bulletproof trim, controls and switchgear, of a Japanese mainstream product. (In the right places, the hard plastic that many road testers affect to hate actually implies ageless durability to me).
I can also look past the jolting ride because, like many body-on-frame vehicles, the L200 creates remarkably little road noise – one reason people fondly remember their Mk3 and Mk4 Land Rover Discoverys. And the steering works well around the straight-ahead, where you would expect it to be lacking, so I can handle a bit of wheel-winding.
What’s special, though, is how quietly the L200 takes ruts and bumps compared with cars. It may not be smooth, but it feels tough enough to win the war. I like sitting on top of that.
*Thursday*
Putting the finishing touches to our McLaren Artura news story involved having an enjoyable chat with design chief Rob Melville, who reminded me that he has now been doing McLarens for a dozen years. You can see this car is extremely tightly packaged, yet for me, it’s the best-proportioned, most beautiful McLaren yet.
My main curiosity was to understand how designers maintain the freedom to shape a car as they think it should be while under continual pressure to accommodate very specifically positioned scoops, lights, shutlines and a whole suite of aerodynamic bits. Melville’s remarks about the project starting as “an invisible jigsaw” and ending as a prime example of “one-team mentality” reminded me firstly how eloquent great designers are and secondly that owning a car like this isn’t just having something expensive and fast: it’s a chance to appreciate up close the fruits of many outrageous talents.
*Friday*
Wonderful moment as a healthy-looking 1948 Ford V8 Beetleback appeared for sale on the Car & Classic website – the first I’ve seen since I owned a £50 example in outback Australia as a schoolboy. Manufactured either side of the war, the car was a failure commercially speaking, but for me and my friends, it was a glorious success, teaching us how to slide a tall, huge, heavy and crudely suspended car with six turns lock to lock on rough dirt tracks and how to manage a sloppy column-change (‘three on the tree’) gearbox with a non-existent synchro. The ad says the car might be purchasable for £13,000 to £18,000, but I fear that the moment has gone. I hope the new owner doesn’t hot-rod it, though; these cars are rare.
*And another thing...*
I’ve just learned from Twitter’s @365daysmotoring – a fantastic car trivia resource – that it’s exactly 68 years since Volkswagen changed the Beetle’s rear screen from a split design to an oval. I’m so glad that I now know that...
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