Car Design Review X: Anthony Lo, Ford

Car designers are self-motivated and love problem-solving. That’s what we do every day. Globally we announced several vehicles this year, but the accomplishment I’m most proud of is the Mustang GTD, which we showed at 2023’s Pebble Beach, along with another car I can’t yet talk about.

The GTD is like nothing we’ve done before. It’s the most powerful street-legal Mustang with many components taken straight from our GT3 racing programme. It was created by a small team in a separate building and was very much a ‘skunkworks’ project. It’s something we were all very passionate about and design was involved from the very beginning. I love that we are able to do projects like this, considering our global scale and the challenges the industry is currently facing.

Meanwhile, we still have our daily work to do. We continue to develop our vehicles under different divisions, with EVs falling under Model E, and ICE vehicles under Ford Blue. But there is no formal separation in design. I like to make sure each designer has a chance to work on everything.

I’m excited about the new electric cars we are doing, and very proud of how the team is managing to do something unique. With our Blue products, we are still working on a more traditional architecture. For a short time, maybe a few years, you’ll continue to see distinctly different looks and proportions between our EV and ICE vehicles.

But at one point this will merge. When we move to the next-generation architecture, we will need to think smartly about how to do something that works well for both. When I was 19, Giorgetto Giugiaro told me that you have to be a good engineer to become a car designer. And I said, “You have to be a better engineer than the engineer most of the time.”

One thing I think about is the future of our iconic nameplates. I have the privilege to explore what’s next for the Mustang, whether this will be the ultimate interpretation of a high-performance vehicle like the GTD, or an EV like the Mach-E. My daily driver in Paris is a Mustang Mach 1 and people take photos and videos of me driving all the time. The young kids know the Mustang very well from video games, but maybe don’t see one in person very often. So I love that experience. On the other end of the spectrum you have the Bronco. There’s so much love for that nameplate, but I don’t think you can do the exact same shapes and just put an electric platform underneath. So these are interesting problems to solve, how to keep looking forward but not forget the past.

Another major development is that we are nearing completion of our new two million sq ft Dearborn campus. There will be multiple functions, but it is built primarily around our future design centre. It was created to be the office of the future, with a lot of flexible and collaborative workspaces where teams can come together. We will have six studios, at 40,000 sq ft each, which will all have direct access to a new showroom.

Every studio is arranged like an arc, so you can just open the door and push your models straight into the showroom and the courtyard. The design was being finalised when I joined the company and one thing I fought for was enough space to see the cars from a long view. Many of us have stories about working in cramped little studios, and for me it’s very important to look at a car from various distances.

Like every company, we are experimenting with artificial intelligence. In the beginning we were all a bit skeptical, but it’s something we should try to understand. Ultimately though, you still need to have creativity to come up with a good design. The tools can help you get there faster, but no tool will help you design a car better if you don’t have the ideas. Of course, we use the typical tools for 3D visualisation such as Gravity Sketch and Unreal, but at the end of the day, I still think you need good traditional skills from the design team, like sketching on paper. We also do a lot of clay modelling because you still need the human touch to get things perfect. So we continue to invest in that as well.

Right now there are many forces pushing for change. But we can’t just make drastic changes, whatever challenges we face. The work we’re doing today will come out in three or four years, so certain things need to stay constant. Sometimes, programmes don’t go smoothly. You may have to go stop, start, or change direction. It’s nothing unusual in the car industry, especially in design.

As leaders, we need to stay focused and stay the course sometimes with a longer-term vision. Look further ahead, not just to the next year or two. Plan that out, define what success means and create a vision we can use as our guiding light. Just as important, we need to build a strong culture where people can be creative and contribute and not be afraid of making mistakes.