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Ford CEO Will Back EVs by Driving 1400HP Mustang Mach-E Up Goodwood Hill Climb

When you become a very important politician - we're talking prime minister or higher - you are essentially renouncing a privilege we all tend to take for granted: being allowed to drive a car.
Ford Mustang Mach-E 1400 9 photos
Photo: Ford
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The risks involved with that are just too great to make sense in the overall scheme of things, and if that's not enough, sitting behind the wheel is also a huge waste of time - time a person of your caliber could spend doing much more important work.

It's pretty much the same with top echelon figures from the corporate world. Not only do managers and board members have permanent designated drivers, but they also rarely travel together. The precaution is meant for worst-case scenarios where something terrible happens so the company won't be left with a huge power gap at the top of its structure that could potentially destabilize its whole activity.

It may sound a bit paranoid, but don't forget these are multi-billion corporations who employ thousands, some maybe even millions of people, so when you look at it as a way to protect everyone involved, the massive scale of the potential implications starts to give it more sense.

Well, things get a little more complicated when your CEO is an avid race car driver who owns and races a Shelby Cobra, a 1966 Ford GT, and a 1978 Lola T298. That's precisely the case for Jim Farley, the Ford Motor Company CEO, and we can only imagine the contract he signed with the Blue Oval last year had a clause that explicitly allowed him to continue his very exciting - but also potentially dangerous - hobby.

What may have started as an indulgence on the company's part is about to turn into an important marketing tool because Jim Farley is set to pilot the absolutely insane Ford Mustang Mach-E 1400 up the Goodwood Hill Climb in the UK. The electric crossover would have probably made quite the impression on itself, but the fact it has Ford's CEO behind the wheel is guaranteed to make even more headlines.

Imagine for a moment the world's most famous CEO of all time, Elon "Two Weeks" Musk, would do the same with the Unplugged Performance Tesla Model S Plaid that Randy Pobst just won the Exhibition class at this year's Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. Come to think of it, he's probably losing out massively by not doing it. Even if he were to crash it or just stroll up the famous course at crawling speed to make sure he doesn't, he'd still give the new model plenty of press. Jim Farley should definitely challenge him.
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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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