President Biden took the F-150 Lightning for a joyride | GRR
It’s not every day that you get to sit down for a 25-minute chat with the CEO of one of the biggest car companies in the world. It’s even less often that said CEO has a story to tell about the time the President of the United States effectively kidnapped him. Happily, the Goodwood Revival isn’t just any old trio of days, so that’s exactly what we got with Ford CEO Jim Farley, who was here at Revival to race his Ford GT40 in the Whitsun Trophy. Here’s the incredible story of how President Joe Biden got to have a go in the Ford F150 Lightning prototype.
GRR: The Biden thing. What on Earth happened there?
Farley: It was very unexpected. We had many funny things happen during the visit. Bill [Ford] and I love to break all the rules of the secret service and so does he, the President. The President says ‘can I get in the car?’ and I say ‘I insist on it’. The secret service said no... so he got in and then spent longer inside the car.
He actually mentioned his Corvette in his political speech saying, and I’m not joking, ‘my Goodwood green Corvette’. He later said, ‘you know, I’d like to drive that truck’. Everyone laughed, ‘cause he’s not allowed to drive. He then says ‘no I’m serious’. I’m in the audience in the front row, with Bill Ford and the other politicians. Ten minutes later, I get a tap on my shoulder and suddenly I find myself in the back of an armoured swat vehicle with a bunch of military guys and we’re heading to the test track.
I say ‘for what?’, they say, ‘because the President wants to drive your truck’, I say ‘we’ve got to call the track! There’s a 50-car motorcade coming’, they say ‘we’ve already spoken to your security team’. We were doing 100mph the whole time, like holy s**t, with all the roads closed. They say, ‘you’ve never been in a motorcade?’, and I say ‘nope’. They say, ‘yup, this is what we do’.
Farley: The President got there before us and he’s making his way over to the truck and he says ‘well, what do I do?’. I say, ‘okay Mr President, when you get in, you see two pedals...’ he pauses, choking down a laugh.
‘That right one... smash it down to the ground’. He said ‘really?’, I said, ‘oh yeah’. They didn’t let me in the truck because they knew I’d convince him to do things that were dangerous. We watched it and he’s just hammering it. He got up to 110mph.
‘By then, the journalists arrived. He shows up, lowers the window, [Farley steals our sunglasses to do an impression] lowers his Ray-Bans like Tom Cruise in Top Gun and says ‘hello everyone’. He was loving it. He goes ‘Jim! What’s the zero to 60 on this thing?’ and I’m like ‘we haven’t launched the truck, Mr President, we’re not allowed to tell anyone!’. He says ‘it feels about four seconds’ and I say ‘it’s 4.3, but no one can report that!’. Anyway, he hammered it in front of the press, saying ‘watch this’. The whole press is like ‘oh my god, it’s really fast and totally silent!’. He came back and goes ‘this sucker’s fast!’.
When he was taking off the press were asking what I thought and I said ‘best test driver ever!’.
GRR: So a PR’s worst nightmare and wildest dream all rolled into one, then?
Farley: Dream and nightmare. He called Bill Ford from Air Force One and said ‘best day of my presidency’. It was a great day for Ford. We’re sold out now, for two years.
We hope you enjoyed what was the end credits scene of a fun and revealing interview we had with the Ford boss at Revival. More coming soon...
Farley Revival image by Joe Harding.