Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, is once again talking about building an off-road supercar he says is a one-of-a-kind machine. We’ve covered this topic before and all the speculation about what such a vehicle might be like.
Shooting at a dragstrip leaves one teen dead.
The latest talk about the future super off-roader came from Farley during Bloomberg’s Hot Pursuits podcast recently. During the conversation, he claimed nobody else has “built a supercar for gravel, high-speed sand, dirt.”
But he’s wrong.
Apparently Farley doesn’t realize the Singer ACS exists, or any number of Porsche 911 Safaris, not to mention the 959 Paris-Dakar.
There’s also the Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato that’s designed for driving on dirt pathways. Sure, with its 1.7-inch lift it’s not exactly a rock crawling monster, but Farley isn’t talking about something you would take on Metal Masher in Moab.
Instead, it sounds more like a supercar that would run the Baja 1000. So what would make it different from a trophy truck? A more luxurious interior? Better packaging? Then how would it be different from the Raptor R?
But this idea seems to be some pet topic for Jim Farley, because he keeps bringing it up. Likely he’s facing pushback inside Ford about making it, so he’s trying to drum up public support for an off-road supercar.
His dream includes the vehicle pushing over 1,000-horsepower from a hybrid powertrain. It would also be “totally digitally enabled” which could mean all sorts of things. The point is he wants it to be over-the-top to show off what Ford can do.
Most likely, the halo model would be more of a vanity project, not a revenue-generating venture, at least not directly. That’s also true of programs like the Mustang GTD and GT supercar, as mainstream automakers usually lose money on exotic rides.
Will Ford actually build this off-road supercar? And if it does, will other automakers try making their own?
Image via Ford
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