Deep underground at Ford’s Product Development Center, a large studio has been converted into an “immersion room,” its temporary walls papered with endless PowerPoint slides. Normally, vision boards like this are a clear indication that both imagination and inspiration were snuffed out of the project three months in.
But then something caught my eye—a slide titled “Winning Will Not Be Driven by Compliance.”
Below the headline were four cars: a BMW i3, Nissan Leaf, Chevy Bolt EV, and an electric Ford Focus. Although I strongly dislike the poor-driving i3, have forgotten about driving the Leaf as many times as I’ve driven it, and imagine that a small battery shoved into a Focus would be ho-hum, I genuinely like the Bolt. We voted it our 2017 Car of the Year. So why was it on this slide? Then it hit me: As good as the Bolt might be, Chevy’s electric hatchback looks just as dorky as the other three compliance vehicles.
Back in 2014, Ford saw the writing on the wall; the decision was made to go electric. We were shown a quarter-scale clay model of an equally dorked-out, front wheel-drive CUV that was set to go into production right around now. Luckily for car enthusiasts, smarter and cooler heads intervened.
Instead of delivering an electric car that Ford didn’t want to build to dealers who didn’t want to sell it to customers who didn't want to buy it, in a decision that went all the way up to Bill Ford, the Blue Oval decided to put a pony on its first proper, mass-market electric vehicle.
Meet the newest member of the Mustang family, the Ford Mustang Mach-E.
This story is from the February 2020 edition of Motor Trend.
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This story is from the February 2020 edition of Motor Trend.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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