The Shelby American (Fall 2021)

The SHELBY AMERICAN Fall 2021 5 Ford vice president of design Moray Callum retired this past spring. His name might not mean too much to you but his last two projects certainly will. He was responsible for the 2015 Mus- tang and the 2016 Ford GT, two of Ford’s most successful modern de- signs. He was also the designer of the 1999 Super Duty pick-up, the 2011 Ex- plorer, 2015 F-150 and the new Bronco. Callum, a native of Scotland, spent 38 years in the business, more than half with the Blue Oval. Before mov- ing to Ford he spent time in design studios at Peugeot, Chrysler, Ghia and Mazda. He served two tenures at Ford, from 1995 to 2001 and 2006 to 2021. He was promoted to his current role in 2014. transpired in the ten minutes since they last checked. These Luddites are proud not to be teth- ered to an electronic device like everyone else. Most of them are older and tend to be set in their ways; they have no interest in being dragged into this new world. This is the way it will be with high performance electrics. We all accept that the comparison be- tween our performance cars of the 1960s and today’s latest genera- tion is pointless – like comparing apples to watermelons. The newest cars do everything better – and why shouldn’t they? They’ve had fifty years to evolve. Cobras, GT350s or GT500s are frozen in time. We’ll keep our Cobras and Shel- bys. We may drive them less but every time we do they remind us that they have soul. They come alive and talk to us when we mash that right pedal down. Do these new electric cars have any soul? It’s too early to tell. Electric vehicles still have some major problems to overcome. We have to wait until technology catches up and in most cases the technology has yet to be invented. But we are told that it’s right around the corner – just be pa- tient. The main downside of the EV seems to revolve around bat- teries. Current lithium-ion batter- ies limit cruising range to about 400 miles and take up to an hour to recharge. Technological ad- vancements may improve this, but they are still in the future. A single electric car battery weighs about 1,000 lbs. Producing one requires digging up, moving and processing more than 500,000 lbs. of raw materials, most of it outside of the U.S. The alterna- tive? Maybe use gasoline and ex- tract one-tenth as much total tonnage to deliver the same num- ber of vehicle-miles over the bat- tery’s seven-year life. But let’s not go there; it may upset the equation that the greenies believe in. Mustang and Ford GT Designer Retires