Jim Farley (CEO of Ford)
2023-08-31 01:28:42
Hi, I’m Dax Shepard, and I love talking to people. I am endlessly fascinated by the messiness of being human, and I find people who are vulnerable and honest about their struggles and shortcomings to be incredibly sexy. I invite you to join me as I explore other people’s stories. We will celebrate, above all, the challenges and setbacks that ultimately lead to growth and betterment. What qualifies me for such an endeavor? More than a decade of sobriety, a degree in Anthropology and four years of improv training. I will attempt to discover human “truths” without any laboratory work, clinical trials or data collection. I will be, in the great tradition of 16th-century scientists, an Armchair Expert.
Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Mike Douglas and I'm joined by Katherine Hepburn. Hello! Do you do a, Katherine Hepburn?
Yeah, it's the one I do.
No, I don't. But I was Audrey Hepburn for Halloween, once. You were?
Mm-hmm. Did you work on any voice, vocal training? Or you just looked like her? You didn't attempt to sound like her?
It's one of those weird things when you're a minority.
Yeah. You were kind of going in whiteface, is that what you're saying? I didn't.
You always feel so? obviously not the person. Yeah. Because you're a different color. It's hard to get over.
Although the cast of Hamilton, they did not let that stand in their way. They own those roles.
Everyone's doing it, though. Mm-hmm. And when you stand out as a brown, Audrey Hepburn...
Would it help if I went...
No.
Hold on, you haven't heard my pitch.
I know, but I'm scared.
So if we could think of a famous movie where there was a white woman starring opposite either an Indian person... Okay, great. Okay. I will go as the Indian, and you will go as the white person. And then you'll have a comrade.
But I won't go in brownface, of course, because that would end both our careers.
Oh, I see. Okay, so you're just gonna... I see.
I'll be a companion. I'll be playing the wrong race, and you'll be playing the wrong race.
Okay. That would help. Okay.
How many... There's so many. Not really. So many to choose from.
Like what?
No, I know. Exactly. Probably. go black, to be honest. It'd be a white woman and a black lead male would be most easy for us to pull from.
We're so off track. Listen, this one's really fun for me. Yes. And I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's gonna file into the category of Delane Norton's, and a couple of these people I've had in where you kind of thought, well, this is gonna be boring.
100%. 100 P. 100 P. When I see on the list... Well, by the way, because this came to us a little bit back door, because you have a personal relationship with this person, so it wasn't like he was pitched in the same way.
You were just like, hey, we're gonna have this person on.
P.S. Jim's stopping by, and we're gonna interview him, because he's on this crazy road trip in a Ford Lightning.
Jim, the Ford guy?
Ford CEO. Yeah.
And I love him.
I'm so glad that that was the result. And I'm not shocked, because he's such a sweet, wonderful guy.
Oh, cars, here we go. Vroom, vroom, vroom. Pistons, cylinders, timing chains, who cares?
Yeah, and we talk about it. We talk about the stereotype in this episode.
Yeah, and he's very... I feel like, especially for a big three CEO, he has his ear to the street everywhere. He knows what people think. He knows what hurdles there are. Yeah.
He's an incredible dude. So Jim Farley, and yes, this is such a fun tidbit, he is Chris Farley's cousin, and has some incredible Chris Farley stories, as you might expect.
Yeah.
At any rate, as I remind you, he is the CEO of Ford and a board member of Harley-Davidson. This dude is such an authentic car guy. What he left and went and did was announce the new Mustang GTD. that's gonna have 800 horsepower, a transaxle, so 50-50 balance. This thing's gonna be a track weapon!
This is what I was afraid of.
And he has since challenged all other CEOs to race him in any of their best cars on the track. Open challenge to all other auto manufacturer CEOs. It's hysterical and adorable. Okay, we love Jim. Please enjoy Jim Farley.
Monica, do you see the resemblance? Stare at Jim. I don't think she knows. So let's just stare at Jim for a second. Do you see a resemblance?
with anyone? I'll give you a hint.
And I'm scared.
That guy is a little cut.
Okay, well, I mean, I know the last name.
Yes. Really? But it's so uncanny right now.
I would never have made that assumption, but wow!
Now they, I've said that, though, look for it, it's very much there.
But what's the exact...
They're cousins.
First cousins. Cousins. Yeah. Our fathers were brothers.
And were you guys close?
Chris was much younger than me. And I was the only Farley that lived on the West Coast. I went to UCLA graduate school and I worked at Toyota. Like four of us founded Lexus. My wife was an actress.
Every time he'd film out here, he'd stay with me. And then I got to a point where I hired his high school friends. Because I couldn't trust the Hollywood people. Nothing against it, but they were like just giving stuff. Yeah.
And he would take the stuff.
Were the high school friends any help?
It was amazing. They would watch. Totally turn them around. It took two years. It was expensive, but you know, it saved us life for a while.
And then I got transferred to head Toyota of Europe, which was my big break in the car business. I mean, I was no one. I was going to Leno and I worked in a car restoration shop in Santa Monica to put myself through graduate school. So I loved cars, but I wasn't an executive or anything like that. Then I moved away and I got a huge break to start.
Toyota of Europe. Moved to Belgium and I married my wife. And we've been dating for like 20 years. So it was a big deal. And he died like two months later.
No one there. And I'm so mad because I know he would be so great with my kids. Yeah. Anyways, it's really nice to be back here getting stuck in traffic. Because I can remember that.
Yeah.
So weirdly. you're born, I imagine, and brought home from the hospital in Buenos Aires. Yes. Your dad, although brothers with Chris's dad. Yeah.
He was born in Chicago and grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. Then my dad was very typical of World War II. He went to college on the GI Bill and learned how to speak Spanish. And he got a really good job with his First National City Bank, it's now City Bank. They said, we'd like to start up overseas operations in Argentina.
Yeah.
And he was like 30 years old. And he's like, okay.
You weren't born yet. No.
He lived there for 20 years. Oh, my goodness. All my family was born there. So he's a Wisconsin kid. First time I went to America, I went to a Packers game.
I was eight years old. And we flew up to Chicago, the Packers game, and then flew back to Buenos Aires. No. Oh, my God.
That was your first trip. So I imagine you have dual citizenship.
We decided not to do that because in Argentina, like a lot of countries, like Israel, there's mandatory military service. Yes. And if I had dual citizenship, and I got called up during the Falcon Wars, and I didn't serve. So I couldn't go back until I became an executive vice president at Ford. The lawyers made it all go away.
They waved their wand. Yeah.
How old were you? Eight.
We went to Montreal, which was a total culture shock from Argentina. Yeah. It's like elbows, really dirty hockey. And I was like, whoa. We moved to Connecticut then after that.
But both those cities, legendary world cities. Yes. Montreal is supposed to be the sexiest city in Canada.
It's so cool.
Yeah. Everyone loves it. And then Buenos Aires is incredible, right? It is. Yes.
So these are incredible places to have stopped down for a while.
I was lucky. I just got exposed to those things. And then we moved to Connecticut, and I went to high school in Rhode Island, and then college at Georgetown in D.C., and worked on the Hill, and then got a job at IBM, which I did not like. And then I wanted to get on the West Coast, so bad.
Obviously, you speak Spanish.
Swear words and beer and all that stuff. Argentina was a really different place.
It is in the 70s?
No, 60s. I remember going to school on a donkey cart. I remember going to Las Pampas. I had my mate cup. They don't throw lassos.
They trip the animal up on their legs. It's a cowboy place, actually, and all they eat is beef. Like you go to Asado, like a barbecue there, and it's like just a whole animal. Whoa. And they're like, you want some liver or heart?
Would you like some? no vegetables?
It's avocado on the organs.
Yes. No vegetables. Okay. They love their beef there.
I've heard that. I hear it's like the best beef in the world is Argentina.
Totally natural. I had a pretty odd upbringing.
And what were you aspiring to be as a kid? What did you fantasize about being? Not the CEO of Ford.
No. Well, I got my Schwinn Stingray. That was like the big moment. Like, I got independence.
Freedom.
And then in our town in Connecticut was the Ferrari distributorship of the United States, Luigi Canetti, and I used to get my money on the weekend from delivering the paper, and then I would go downtown, buy candy, and then I'd go for the mechanics. And on Saturday, I would sit there with all the mechanics in the garage below the showroom, and they would show me all the racing Ferraris from around the world and the show cars. So I think I wanted to be a mechanic, maybe.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Like, I just wanted to work on cars. My dad was a banker, and I'd watch NASCAR, and he'd be like, turn that crap off. My son isn't watching NASCAR. But it was like the only racing you could find. You know, I'd collect a road and track, and I wanted to be around cars.
That's what I cared about.
You know, I really relate. You interviewed me on your podcast, Drive. Yes.
Thank you.
Oh, it was so fun. Yeah, we both shared that. I used to go. There was an engineer in my neighborhood. He worked in the Corvette Group, and so he had all the competitor vehicles in their fleet.
So I would go hang out in front of this guy's driveway, and there'd be, like, Lotus Esprits, Ferrari 308s, Lamborghini Countach. In his garage, he had two 250 GP bikes. He raced motorcycles. A year or two after me. staring at this guy's garage, my mom says, I want to take you to dinner at a guy's house.
I'm dating. I met him at work. We drive over to that house.
No way.
I'm like, get the fuck out of here. That's crazy.
That house.
She marries that dude. I won't say that that was a blast. It was more fun to look at the shit from outside. But I got to ride in the Lamborghini Countach. I got to ride in an 84, an 82..
What year was that? 1984..
That was crazy. 5000s. Yeah. The Corvette was coming out in 84, but in 83, we got a ride. He brought one home from work.
Oh, my gosh. Dashboard with the digital. I was like, this is the future.
We're here.
Making 225 horsepower or whatever that thing made.
That's amazing. You're, like, ground zero for the car business.
Yeah. So at that time, we were in Highland, but then I lived in Milford, and my mom worked at the Peruvian Grounds. And, yeah, so my whole life, my dad sold cars. So you and I relate deeply on this. And I'll say, I'm going to jump right to it, but we're going to go back to your journey to CEO.
But that's part of my deep heartbreak. is all I've wanted since I was a kid were race motorcycles and exotic cars. I have only built this career so that I could buy those things. I mean, that's the only reason I did this. And now I'm here, and there's global warming.
And now I feel terrible about having a car that gets sick. And I'm like, no, that's not how this works.
Well, there's a solution to all that, and that is you have to race. Because no one gets mad at you for racing in a racetrack, and you can enjoy all the same stuff.
I did race in the Super Trofeo series. Oh, you did? Lamborghinis, yeah, yeah, yeah. And there you go. I'm on the track with the motorcycles nonstop.
He's not allowed to do that anymore.
Oh.
Why? Because you got injured too many times. That was on the motorcycle, and it was only one time.
Still, still.
After 15 years of track days, I had one accident.
And then on your bike.
That was coming to this job. Should I not do this job? Yeah.
You have to quit everything. I saw your cars on the driveway. You're hardcore. That Raptor R, you're not like, OK, it's OK from Ford. But I want to do a bunch of other stuff to it.
Well, let me first thank you publicly. So I have to tell everyone. So. I did your podcast, and you're lovely. And then we started an email correspondence, which I cherished.
And then I immediately abused this friendship and asked you, would it be possible to get on the list for the Raptor R?
Oh, you're the reason for that.
I exploited this new friendship. And I think I owned it. This is maybe not cool.
I wish I could exploit it. But I don't think I can drive a car like that.
You love cars. What are you driving?
A Mercedes.
Well, not just a Mercedes. AMG. The AMG 43. C43. C43..
Nice.
Well, it was a gift from him.
Wow.
See?
You know, I totally relate. My dad's 70th birthday. Not a car person at all. Dad, I bought you a 1953 Woody Buick station wagon. And he's like, oh, my God.
That's so amazing. That's great. And then he sold it a year later. Oh, no.
Like, at Bear Jackson.
Like, I found out. I'm watching the TV, and I'm like, oh, my God.
I call my dad.
I go, Dad, there's a car just like yours. It's the same color. He goes, yeah, I know. I sold that damn thing. I was like, you, mean you sold it at an auction?
I gave it to you for your 70th birthday. He goes, I know. It was just difficult. I was like, but it was a gift from your son.
A loving gift.
He's like, yeah, I know. I sold it.
Oh, my God. That's amazing.
Because as car people, we want to indulge. Even gift giving is a chance to show what we like.
What happened was, and I need you to know, she owns the house across the street from ours. During this period, I end up driving her late-modeled Prius home from some place. I'm at a stoplight, and it's so noisy inside this car. I'm like, what the fuck is she doing in this car? It's a great car.
She's just in it because she doesn't know. Right. That year, for a bonus for the show, Christmas time, I got her that car.
Makes perfect sense.
It did work, though, right? You did immediately go like, okay, I get it. This is an entirely different experience.
But it did take me three days to even drive it home, because I was afraid to drive it, mess it up. I should have, because now, today, currently, it's in the shop because I've broken the front of it.
But that's three years later. You ripped the front off, pulling out of her parking spot. That's no big deal. That bumper's going to slide right back on. That's no whoop.
I don't deserve it.
But what you want to give people, really, is the thrill and excitement and passion that you experience, which is probably a fool's errand. You're not going to be able to get people to buy in the same way you and I do. But that's what you want for the people. You want your dad to walk out there and go like, look at this thing.
Boy. You're the greatest son.
Time's canceled. He must have scoured the entire internet for this thing.
Yeah, exactly.
Now, did he take a bath on it when it got auctioned?
No, he made money. Okay. We can justify a lot of crazy stuff if we make money when we flip the car.
Yes. My problem is, I don't ever sell anything. You don't? No. Do?
you sell a lot of stuff?
I have a rule. The rule is, if you don't drive it in six months, you have to sell it. Oh. Irregardless. I don't want to have, like, 20 cars, because I've gotten up to stuff like that.
I found myself violating the basics of our marriage. when I would come home. My wife's like, what's that? I was like, I'm holding it for a friend. I would come up with all these, like, kind of white lies.
At first, she was, like, expecting me to be honest. So she's like, oh, which friend? I'm like, um.
Dax. We always say Dax.
Then I was like, no, this is not going to work. And then I've owned so many cars I've always wanted that I got down to the cars I really love. I really can't sell any of the ones I have.
OK. Now, let me ask you this. I've asked a few different car collectors this question. Do you have nightmares? where in your dream, you're like, I know I have an 86 Mustang somewhere.
Where the fuck is that car? I thought I parked these in this lot. I'm regularly having these nightmares where I've misplaced some cars I bought. And I'm so ashamed. Like, where are these things?
Do you ever have those dreams? Yes. Oh, my God.
That is the weirdest thing. I've never gotten that question before. I have this dream that I own a broken down garage somewhere. I don't know where it is. And I actually put cars there several years ago.
I have a dream. I'm like, oh, my God. Look at that Corvair Monza. That's really cool. I got to go.
And then I wake up and I'm like, do I own those?
Jim, it's the same dream. That is so weird. The garage is the same. in my dream, too. I've bought a home, specifically just because the garage was so enormous.
And I can't remember where the home is. And then every time I go there, I'm like, when are we redoing this? Where are the cars? I know I've bought so many cars.
That is crazy. you just said that. I've never talked to another human being on the planet that had that experience.
Start asking your friends who collect cars if they have it.
Is it a guilt dream?
Well, I think it's, I feel the stress of owning too many cars. Like, you walk through my driveway and I'm humiliated. Like, the Lincoln's dirty. The battery's dead. The Roadmaster needs a piece of paneling.
You know, like, I can tell you everything that these cars need. So, I have this kind of baseline anxiety that I'm not maintaining or keeping up with the shit I already own. Not even getting into the fact of how often am I driving it. That's a whole separate thing. And then you'll occasionally think about your insurance bill.
That's not a great place to spend time. So, I think just it comes out in your sleep. I'm being so reckless about this. I probably have a bunch of cars. I don't even remember where I put them.
Maybe. When people do really good car things. Like, I had a Myers-Mangst that I got perfect. And then a friend of mine found this 4.5 liter Bentley I've been looking for for a long time. So, I gave him the Mangst.
Because that's car karma. You want it to be positive, right? Yes. Like what Dax did for you. That's positive car karma.
And then somehow it came back when you put me on the list for the Ford Raptor. And I got it way sooner than I really was entitled to do. Sorry, I have to show you one thing, because you just said it. This is three weeks ago.
Oh, this is the really nice one. Wow, that thing is super nice.
So, my friend Tom Hanson, he's 74 years old. He's my idol and I'm with him all the time. That's his car. And he's one of the guys I asked if he has the dreams.
Is it a four seat car? It's like I have a rear seat.
No, we got one riding. So, why is your child in the back? That's none of your business. And I don't need another headline. I don't wash my kids.
It's not moving, by the way.
The car's not moving.
Isn't that great? You just brought up the Mangst. They're so cool, aren't they?
One day, mine was like blue metal flakes, so the same as my Schwinn. Once I was in Carmel with the kids. They were like your daughter's age. And Leah called and she said, what did you do today? I said, oh, I took the Mangst down to Big Sur.
And she's like, with my children? I was like, yeah, because we had three kids. I was like, yeah, yeah, they fit in the back, fine. No seat belt, Jim. I was like, I know, but it doesn't go that fast.
It's got a roll bar that you can hang on.
No roll bar. It was really bad. I got shamed. Yeah, yeah.
There's this incredible meme on the internet I keep seeing. It's so great. It's a picture of a guy, older guy. And he's got a little girl in the gas tank of his motorcycle. No one else on was on.
He's got a leg down and he's getting sideways. And the caption says, I don't know who this man is, but I know his wife was away for the day.
Totally true. So funny. Totally true.
Okay, so you went to Georgetown. You went to UCLA. I don't know if we talked about the UCLA connection, but I think that's pretty interesting as well. I went there as well. What year did you graduate?
1990.. I was 2000..
Being on that campus, I kept pinching myself like, why am I here? Yeah. It was so nice.
You feel like you've entered into a movie. almost, right? Right, totally. Yeah, yeah. Students aren't wearing shorts.
It was $1,800 a year. And Wharton, where I got into, was $30,000..
Wharton is very prestigious.
And I said no to Wharton. Wow. I came to UCLA because I wanted to put myself through school.
Yeah.
And I could only really afford here. I sold my five liter Mustang. What year? 88.. It was brand new, but I couldn't afford it.
And I got a specialized stump jumper and I rode to school. And I got a job as a janitor on Lincoln for Phil Hill's restoration shop and got my PhD in the car business.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
Can I say something? Sorry, I won't say much during this. Don't worry.
Please. Please.
I have to say what I think a lot of not-to-be-gendered women are thinking right now. Go ahead. Which is when you hear about car guys, like you have an idea of a car guy. I think a lot of people are shocked to hear that you got into Wharton. Obviously, you're so smart because you couldn't get to where you are if you weren't.
But I don't think people put two and two together. that car guys can be brilliant. I mean, that's really bad to say.
You think there's a stereotype.
That's a stereotype.
And that's probably based on who took auto shop in high school or generally the burnouts who weren't thriving in AP history. So I'm sure there's some basis. I don't know why.
Maybe it's like movies. I don't know why we think that.
Movies, sure.
The greasers were in the cars. All the outcasts, the outsiders, all the roughnecks.
That makes sense.
But it's good to break that stereotype.
Well, Tom Hanson is a lawyer who I'm referencing. And Jay Leno's a mechanical genius. Jim's pretty smart, and I'm pretty smart.
I know, I like it.
Malcolm Gladwell.
Do you know, Malcolm's a huge car guy? No. That's kind of a shocker, right?
Yeah. I met founder Dire Straits. He's a huge car person.
That makes a little sense, though.
A lot of musicians, they are car people.
But social scientists like Malcolm Gladwell, that's more of a, oh, that's cool.
Or like business CEO. You just don't imagine it, but it's good.
I see it because people call me to get the Raptor R's. And they're like, hey, Jim. I'm like, really? Oh, wow. Now, Dax makes perfect sense.
That's why we accelerated his order immediately.
Can I brag and say what the email was? I tell this story nonstop. Oh, good. So I say to you, hey, don't want to stress out our burgeoning friendship, but can I get on the Raptor R? His response, Monica, had about 19 people on the email.
And it said, let's get Dax a Raptor R. And I was like, oh, my God, he's unleashed the whole cavalry. And then immediately after, I don't know what the pecking order, but someone writes, perfect. His will be the first one after Tom Brady's. And I'm like, look at this.
That's what happened.
I don't think I've ever felt more important. I know that I had joined Tom Brady on a list.
That's incredible.
If you charted, Jim, your popularity, do you see it spike like when the GT was announced? And then now the Raptor R, do you start getting cold, called from random, weird people?
Yes, but, you know, with my job, there are a lot of stakeholders. So we have the UAW union negotiations right now. So that tends to be popular for other reasons. Since taking over the CEO, I noticed that there's more videos about me online, which my kids bring in and say, dad, you should see this one. They really hate you.
Oh, no.
Ford is such an iconic company. When you lead Ford, a lot happens.
Yeah.
To me, there's something a little bit old school about what you're doing, because if you watch, like the DeLorean documentary, which is great and I recommend it. So John DeLorean famously worked at General Motors. I think he invented the GTO Pontiac, first unibody muscle car. So he became this really interesting figure within General Motors. He was very artistic.
He had a vacation home in California, but he hung out with Johnny Carson.
Is that why it's called Back to the Future?
Well, so he then left General Motors and started his own car company called the DeLorean, which is made famous. Yes. And Back to the Future. But he was hobnobbing with all of Hollywood royalty in the same way that currently the tech industry seems to cross pollinate. Right.
Makes sense.
And Detroit was the Silicon Valley for 40 years. If you were a genius engineer, you would go to Detroit. That's where the coolest stuff was being made. So then it fell out of favor in the 80s, or rough and just, the car industry in general, from 72 to probably 90 something. It's just in a dark spiral for so long.
But I see you as someone who's seemingly intentionally bridging that divide.
Yes, because I believe for a company like Ford, it's very important for us to do what we naturally do well. We should stop doing things that other people do really well and we're just okay at. But when it comes to Raptors and Mustangs and Ford GTs and Broncos and F-150s and Tremors and Super Duties and transit vans, that's what we do.
Well, the Ford F-150 has been the best selling vehicle in America for 46 years. I've got an argument on a vacation this summer where someone was telling me that Tesla was the top three of the top five best selling cars in America. And I said, I think you misread that. I think what you're talking about is they did a most American parts list. I think that's what you're thinking.
No, no, it was most. I'm like, there's no way. I think the Ford F-150 sells more than the whole car company does. Look it all up. Yes, that's the case.
We sold a million last year and we do that really well. I remember when I joined the company, I asked the head of engineering because they were like, you got to reimagine the product lineup. So I was like, well, I got to understand what makes these engineers tick. So I asked the head of engineering. I worked at Toyota for 25 years.
What makes a Ford engineer different than the engineers I work with at Toyota? He's like, I don't know. Why don't you go, ask? So I spent a full day walking to the engineering labs. I went to the truck engineering safety lab and I ran into this gentleman.
He's like, I'm working on this crash instrument. It looked like a child. And I said, really? But the federal government doesn't require us to crash tests with instruments or dummies that look like children. He goes, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I don't do this job just for passing safety requirements for the federal government. I lost my child in a car accident.
She was 13 years old.
And I was a doctor at the Philadelphia Children's Hospital. And I came to work here because I know I'd save more lives here than being a doctor. Get out.
That's a real story. That sounds impossible.
And I said, what are you doing? And he said, well, on my spare time, I'm building this instrument and it has a gelatin center section so I can test the G loads on the organs. Because my daughter died of internal bleeding and we didn't know. And he goes, I just do this on my spare time because Ford's cool with it. No one knows in America where things come from, but I know.
So I learned very quickly at Ford, we should get those people working on the things that they naturally do well. And don't start to make like an affordable $15,000 subcompact car. When I was at Toyota, they do really well. But Ford is like, we do Broncos really well. Better than anyone.
So when I took over three years ago, I was like, we're going to double down on our icons and we're going to invent some new ones like the F-150 electric. But we're going to stay loyal to our customers who already love the brand and just build on that.
Every auto manufacturer, well, the good ones, they have a fingerprint. They have a vibe, right? So Toyota, I tell people all the time, people ask me, what's advice you have for acting when you move to L.A.? And I always say, buy a Honda or a Toyota. That's my advice.
You're going to drive everywhere and you're going to be broke. It's going to get great gas mileage. You don't have to change oil. It's going to run for 300,000 miles. That's what it is.
It is reliability. Both those companies. It's just simple, simple design, functional. That's not my favorite car company, but no one builds a more reliable car than a Toyota. And then you go through the different brands.
Some of them are missing that personality. No one's figured that out. I remember years ago, someone approached me about, they were working on some branding stuff for Mitsubishi. I'm like, yeah, that's a bottom up. Like, what is Mitsubishi?
They make heavy equipment. They're reliable. So when you walked into Ford, you came in in 07..
Six months away from all the other companies going bankrupt.
Yes.
I moved from Santa Monica to Detroit with my family.
Oh my God. And everyone goes bankrupt in that same moment. But Ford doesn't take money from the government, right? Nope.
We avoided the bankruptcy.
But Ford, growing up, I can tell you exactly what the brand was. It's like seared into my heart. It's tough American work.
Yes.
And then, fuck you performance out of this Mustang GT. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not a track car. It's not the Corvette. This is your stoplight to stoplight, be a king car.
I get the whole thing. Then, yeah, when you're coming in and around this, I think there is some trying to redefine or re-remember what Ford's fingerprint is. Yeah.
I really believe that we can take on Porsche with Mustang, but we are going to do it our own way. And it won't be the way that a Z06 does it. But we're going to race a Mustang at Le Mans. We're going to race a Mustang in Australia in the supercars. We're going to race a Mustang in NHRA.
We're going to have a track car for people. We're going to have a car for SCCA, Pro Solo, and one for people that just go track cars on the weekend. And we want Bronco to be this other thing. And we want Raptor to be something else. And we want F-150 and Maverick, $20,000 pickup truck that gets 42 miles per gallon on a hybrid.
We want to have this full lineup of pickup trucks from the entry to $110,000.. Electric, hybrid, gas. We want to have a commercial lineup with transit and smaller vans. We want to just build a company filled with products that are either work or passion. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
Well, you had a couple things come down the pipeline from Hollywood that helped remind people what Ford is. I mean, first, you have the best history of any company, which is you have Henry Ford. Yes. And we're going to glaze over the fact that he was an anti-Semite. There's a couple.
We've got to acknowledge it, and then we're going to move on. But the assembly line, the automotive revolution, that's the history of Ford Motor Company.
My grandfather was an early and hourly employee.
1918 at the River Rouge.
Alan Park, he started in 17..
Incredible. But then you have the 60s, and you have Le Mans, and you have Ford versus Ferrari.
Breakout moment.
And talk about a patriotic moment for everyone, right? Did you see the movie?
No, even though my boyfriend's in it.
How could you have not seen it with your boyfriend in it? Matt Damon.
Yeah, he's not my real boyfriend, but he's my pretend boyfriend.
He was amazing. And I raced a GT40.. I was just at Le Mans a month ago with my GT40.. My door flew off at 185 miles per hour. What?
It did.
What was that experience like?
So the GT40 doors, like Ken Miles did in the movie, the latching is a problem.
It's like a screen door, virtually, right?
It's not a great mechanism. And it has this wing at the top. And Dan Gurney was too tall, so they had to make a bubble for him on the top of the door. What happened was, it's typical. A screw came loose on the window.
The window flew out the lap before. Then there was pressure inside the car. The pressure popped the door open. And when I got on the Mulsanne straight, I'm going 180, 185..
Can I just add, 185 in a 1966 car is about 235 in a Veyron.
It's freaking fast. It's scary. And there's cars around you. And you're passing cars. So I'm in the race.
It's like the top three guys were all in GT40s going for it. And my door opened, and it was just enough where it flew off. The top, caught the wind, and it was gone.
This is like a $5 million car. I don't even know what to tell you. They're pretty expensive. There are about five more?
Yeah, I try not to tell.
I have some secrets, too.
Yeah, he has one. he keeps really close.
So we invited you to a golden ticket event, if you can come in Vegas. Yeah. It's hard to get to, and everything. I would love to go.
I just have an 8 and 10-year-old. Okay. If I tell my wife, I'm going to Vegas for the day she is.
You should send a proxy for you to take pictures or something. You're going to want to virtually be there.
Well, I'm so intrigued. I'm like, what on earth are you unleashing? It's Mustang related, right? There's a prancing horse. I can't tell you.
But it's going to be worth it. But Le Mans was a breakout moment.
Can I just tell Monica really quick this story? There was a moment where Ford was going to take on Ferrari. You'll correct me if I fuck this up, but in the 60s. And Enzo Ferrari, at least from the Ford family's perspective, kind of backed out at the 11th hour and kind of fucked them. Oh, okay.
I have the contract in my office, legal contract about this thing. And he has a big purple pen around. who runs a Formula 1 team. It says, in Italian, Ford will run the Formula 1 team.
It's like a big circle. No. Oh, my God. That was it. So they got in a pissing contest.
And Ferrari's unbeatable at Le Mans and in racing in general in the 40s, 50s, 60s.
They'd won five or six times in a row. Yeah.
This is the life of Ferrari. They're a race car company before they're a road car company. And so the Ford family says, well, we'll see you at Le Mans. And they unleash the full brunt of the engineering and development force of Ford. And they go to Le Mans and they fucking win one, two, three.
Wow. What an underdog story. And there's a picture of the three of these GT40s coming in in first, second, and third place.
That's amazing.
Yes. First time American car won Le Mans.
And then they brought the car back again in 06, maybe with 05. 05..
Yeah.
So three iterations of the GT40.. There was a GT40 in the 60s. Then in 05, there was the GT. And then in 2017, the GT comes back.
Yes. We brought it back in 15 as a race car first and a production car in 17 because it was the 50th anniversary. We wanted to win the race on the 50th anniversary to the day, which we did.
Wow. They went and did it. We did it. We had one chance. I mean, you know, you watch enough Formula 1..
The notion you're going to throw your hat in the ring and, within the first year, be dominant, that's not possible.
It's not possible. No, it's not possible. We kind of did a lot of things behind the scene to make it possible. We put the motor in a race car two years before and drove Sibring and Le Mans, every racetrack to make sure that motor was ready. To get the motor right.
We did everything because we knew we had one chance.
So I think those events have really, really helped remind people what Ford is. Yes. I think like it is a really nice time for you to be at the helm.
I see the company as an underdog.
Of course, which is completely ironic. Yeah. When I grew up in Michigan in the 80s, General Motors was the biggest company in the world. Correct. They employed the most amount of people.
Correct. They were Apple, for Christ's sake. And then Ford was always neck and neck with them. And this was one of my questions to you. Tesla, which you have to talk about nonstop, I'm sure.
Tesla is currently valued at 12x of Ford. Last year, it was 16x of Ford. And they sold 1 million cars and you all sold 4 million cars. Does it frustrate you, this huge disparity between performance and stock value?
Well, it is the metric I watch every day. Like this morning, I woke up and I was down like $2 billion. So it's not been a great day today. I don't know how you all see that. It's a long-term metric.
But the valuation of the company for myself and my performance, that's what I look at. I'm there to add long-term value. And the stock market goes up and down. And they're either wrong or right about us. But here's how I look at it.
The EV transition is a move from an analog to a digital car. It happens to have a propulsion system that's digital. But it's much bigger than that. It's sending software to the car. It's partial self-driving.
It's predictive failure of the components. There's a lot of things when you make a vehicle digital. And they were the first one to really show that future. That cars don't have to depend on the economic cycle, because you can send software to them. And you get revenue when times are good or bad, because people use the software.
I like the fact that someone recognizes that there's a company using technology that made people's lives better. I also believe that we can do it better than them. And there will come a day when people, investors, will go, Wow, I'm impressed that Ford could compete and beat Tesla at their own game. Will we get all that market cap? I don't know.
I don't know if everyone invests in Tesla just because of the actual earning power. If they did that, their margins went from 20% down like in half in the last year. They've had to drop their prices so much. The valuation didn't change in half.
To be crude about it, so many of these companies that people are drawn to to invest in, it is more appealing to invest in a tech company than it is a manufacturing company. There's also this implied subscription model, where the car is going to generate money long after it's been sold. I don't know about that.
I think, with the changing political landscape, you're up against some political dissonance, where Ford is the company of the tough American. And I think there's a group of liberal Americans who feel like that's a Republican car. I'm just going to straight up say it. I think that is affecting some of this, perhaps. And Tesla is not.
Tesla is like the Apple.
Although, ironic.
Well, now, exactly. Exactly. I'm not saying it's right, but I think that's the feeling.
You know what's so interesting about what you just said? You know, I'm not going to debate it because in a way I just have to deal with whatever it is. I find it so amazing, and this is on us, that people don't really understand, when they spend their money on a vehicle, what happens to that money. And we have done a poor job, I believe, educating people about what that vote means to people's real life. And if you did, if you really care about other human beings, you would see the tremendous transformation of people's lives who work in our factories in the U.S.
I'm not saying this because of the CEO. It's just a matter of fact. We are the most American company with people working in our factories. We have 60,000 people today working. It's 120 degrees.
today in Kansas City. They're making Super Duty pickup trucks at 120 degrees. And we're 20% higher than anyone else in our industry, GM second. And we are the largest exporter of vehicles in the country. When I take a Jimmy Fallon or a Dax or you into my factory and you meet a single mom who's got that job at Ford, makes 80 grand, overtime, 100 grand, health care.
that's like at 98% of the highest in the U.S., then you would go, I had no idea.
Exactly.
Why didn't I know this? Is that my bad, or is that we just don't really care about where things come from? And it's like up to the consumer to care. I don't know. I do know that if you're German and you buy a Volkswagen, you do feel differently.
They know.
They know, the government kind of educates them.
And they have apprentice programs.
You know, I worked for GM for years and Opel was a division. And when we did shows with Opel, the way that the technicians were not separated from the engineers in their hotels was like unfathomable. On a GM car show, the engineer stayed at the nice hotel with the journalists. And then the technician stayed with the car preppers, me, at the Red Roof Inn. And we partied.
It was fun. Not Germany. The technicians are the heroes.
Revered.
Yes. And it's so respectful and cool. All of us who had been doing car shows for GM for 10 years, when we did this Opel launch, we were like, well, fuck, that's where we would like to work.
I feel like we're like this best known car company from a brand when you see the Ford logo. But people don't really know what's different about the company. You know, I love reinvigorating our icons or having an electric F-150 be the best selling electric pickup truck in the U.S. But on the other hand, I don't know how to take everyone to a factory. But when Jimmy Fallon walks through the F-150 lightning line, we had to shut it down, by the way, because he was saying hello to everyone and we couldn't build trucks.
Probably a couple million dollar visit. It was very expensive.
But he was like, Jim, I had no idea. You know, World War II people knew where things came from. And look, I worked for Toyota for 25 years. I'm not like some preachy, you know, uninformed person, kind of like my parents were. to some extent.
I see all the facts and I feel like we haven't told our story the right way.
And I want to comment on the Tesla, GM, Ford market cap disparity. I think because I'm so into cars. Kristen owned a Tesla or leased one for three years. To me, it doesn't feel like an actual manufactured car. It feels very kit car-y, like in the fucking 80s, you buy a shell of a car.
Yeah, exactly. But I have for a long time been saying, yeah, the big three don't have the powertrain yet. But the car itself, even the suppliers from the seat manufacturers and the visors and the dashboard, there's no comparison. It's laughable if you're into cars. The gap in the vehicle.
So I've always thought, just wait till they have the powertrain. And you're seeing it with Mercedes, too, I'll say. This EQ, you're like, oh, right, that's still a Mercedes. Kristen has a Chevy Bolt. She's obsessed with it.
She found out they're not making anymore. She said, should we get a backup? I mean, that's how much she fucking loves it. And the Lightning is awesome. And if you get in a Lightning and you drive that, I'd bet my life on that.
versus Cybertruck. There's no comparison. So I just think a lot of the investors got very swept up into the tech bubbleness of it all. And I think they maybe ignored what the vehicle itself was in the 120 years of building cars, what that gets you.
I give Tesla a lot, but I also saw the ignorance of the leadership team in the Detroit 3 towards Tesla 10 years ago. Non-negotiated price, online experience to buy and own a reductive car. that is so simple.
By the way, people who don't like cars, they love that.
They want it to feel like their iPhone. It feels almost like a commodity, like an appliance or something. We're not normal. I worked at Toyota for 25 years. Most people want just to get to point A, to point B, really reliably.
And I give them so much credit because, to be honest, competition, personal level, professional, it always makes everything better. We are going to surprise people. We're number two in EVs last year to Tesla, but they're a mile ahead.
Well, I totally applaud. I also want to be on record, applauding that he literally fast forwarded everything 10 years and forced everyone's hand. That part's incredible. Yeah.
Doug Fields at Ford, he was the head of engineering at Tesla and then went to Apple, and then his successor at Tesla. Alan Clark's, also at Ford. And we started really tearing apart the cars, especially the ones made in Texas. It's impressive. Our wiring harness for the Mach-E was 1.6 kilometers longer.
It was about 70 pounds heavier. And in the ice world, that's bad to spend that much money in a wiring harness. But in an electric car, you have to have batteries to haul around the extra weight of 70 pounds. So the batteries alone are like 70 or $80 just to carry around the weight. So when you have these expensive batteries, all the math changes.
You want to invest more in lightweight wiring harnesses. You want to invest more in braking systems for regen, because you can minimize the battery. And if you measure everything in battery cost, you make completely different engineering decisions. Which they did. Now we had to do that.
So it did inspire us, but we didn't want to go head to head with them. That's why we did a pickup. That's why we did e-transit. That's why we did the Mach-E. We didn't want to have a reductive vehicle.
We wanted a Mustang that goes zero to 60 in three seconds. We are betting on the icons that are our company. But the next cycle product is going to really surprise people. Because we approach the engineering so radically different than the first gen. These vehicles will look completely different than what people expect.
Oh wow. And I don't know how they'll react. I don't know how you'll react.
Yeah, we'll find out shortly.
A couple years.
Here's an exciting thing. Ford is entering Formula One as an engine manufacturer in 2026..
Yes.
Here's some fun. other overlap. Fun. I took Daniel Ricciardo riding dirt bikes. Oh, you did?
So I pulled up in my Raptor R, and he has a last generation Raptor that's fitted. You know, it's awesome. He's got the fiberglass fender. It looks gorgeous, right? So we got both Raptors there.
And he goes, oh my God, I just drove that R. It's so great. I go, where did you drive it? And he goes, oh, I was a guest in Dearborn. Okay.
Then we start talking about you. And I go, oh my God, isn't that guy the greatest? And he goes, oh my God, I'm so in. I spent a day with him, and Blake, too, was like, we're so in on, Jim. We just fell in love with him.
That's funny. Were you a part of that decision to get into Formula One? Yeah. Do you have anxiety? I mean, those motors, be honest.
Those motors are, that's a 1.6 liter motor making over 1,000 horsepower.
It's hugely risky. Okay, great. No risk, no reward in this life. That's right. You know, we really like Red Bull.
We really like Adrian Newey. I mean, he's so skillful. And Christian runs a great shop. And they got great drivers. And you're right to ask that question.
It's a lot of money. But more importantly, it's a lot of reputation on the line. Because if you're like in the middle pack or the end, it's like pretty awful. And it doesn't get better.
And you've seen those teams. They'll throw their engine manufacturer right under the bus.
Yeah, right under the bus. My Ford was awful today. Ugh.
Yes. When McLaren had the Renault motors and they didn't like them, boy, they were over.
But if we win, I'm not sure it'll be the opposite. No one will mention it. So in the 70s, Ford won seven world championships in Formula One. Our approach is totally different. I watched Drive to Survive very carefully.
And when it reached that threshold and we start to see multicultural younger people, women and men, get into Formula One.
A lot of women. Excitingly so. More than I've ever seen in a motorsports. I think it helps. how fucking cute all the drivers are.
It doesn't hurt.
Yeah. It does not hurt. And so I called our head of racing and I talked to Bill Ford and I was like, this sport is popping in the United States like it never has ever. Like four acts, I think. And it's got a lot upside.
We have to expand what people think of Ford. Bill Ford, tough. Is that going to work in a digitally connected, very advanced looking EV? So we're coming out with all these vehicles in 25 and 26.. They're really advanced.
So I said, how about if we do this? Because it was interesting. When we were doing the engineering for the second generation of vehicles that aren't out, but the ones we talked about, I realized that aerodynamics are going to change these cars totally. So, like on an F-150, if I take a standard F-150 hybrid and I maximize the aero, as clean a design as possible, deployable flaps on the rear.
Reduce drag. Reduce drag.
It would be a hundred miles of range.
For just the aero, you could add an additional hundred miles of range.
And on batteries, if I took the range and said, we're going to fix it 300, I could take out about $6,000 of cost.
From the battery pack. Yes. Oh, wow.
For a vehicle with these huge, expensive batteries, it's so important. I can't believe. So I kept asking my team, do we have the best aero people? And they're like, no, they're all in Formula 1..
No, his name is Adrian Newey. Yeah. You don't have him. They're all Formula 1.. They have better aero people than NASA or Boeing have.
What does it mean? Okay. So aerodynamics.
Oh.
So, as you know, the car. It's how the air goes over the car.
Okay.
The car itself weighs 900 kilos, right? It's 2,000 pounds. But when it hits 55 miles an hour, it's the reverse of an airplane wing that would create lift. It creates downforce. And it creates so much downforce that at 55, the car could drive completely upside down, and it would stay stuck to the road.
It's creating more than 2,000 pounds of downforce at like 55.. At 210 miles an hour, it's creating thousands and thousands of pounds of downforce, which is why they can take a right-hand turn at Silverstone at 200 miles an hour flat, and the car goes dead right because it's being pushed to the ground so hard. And then they just shook everything up, and you used to be able to get your aero from the wing and from these other sides, and it was making the air behind them really turbulent, so people couldn't follow closely or they didn't have any downforce. So then they switched just two years ago. Like, you've got to get all your downforce from the bottom of the car, from the floor pan.
So just the hurdles they're clearing in that sport are completely unparalleled. Even in aerospace.
Exactly. I talked to Bill. He was like, yeah, if we could find a really smart way to get in the sport, you should look into that. So I talked to Christian, and he's like, but we need battery tech because we have in 26, they go to 50% electric, and they need really fast discharge. So where do we have that?
Drag racing. We have, like the best high-discharge electric batteries anywhere.
Wait, the drag cars are now using hybrid system?
Full electric. We have full electric drag cars now. That are running what? And they're very special. In NHRA, sportsmen and amateur racing in NHRA, they have a class now, and they're so fast, but we've had to develop special batteries for them.
That let all the energy out immediately.
Yeah, in like eight seconds, seven seconds, six seconds. Wow. So he's like, you know, we need that. And I was like, but I need Adrian to look at my production car. And so we were like, well, this is crazy.
We kind of need each other again. Why don't we, instead of sponsoring the whole team or the car, we'll share the battery tech. We get Aero from you. And then I'm going to write a personal service contract for the drivers so that Max or Daniel or Checo are promoting the new EV cars to a great new generation. who may not think of Ford and may think of Tesla first.
So that's what we did.
Yeah, I think it's so exciting.
Really scrappy. It's not like some super huge corporate deal where we take over the engine program and it'll all be Ford engineers and Milton Keynes. No, no. It's a total practical relationship.
Oh, this is great. Very cool. Because the only sad thing about watching Formula One is we just now this year have one American driver, Logan Sargent. We have Haas as an American team, but that's not a front pack. Yes.
So I've been like, yeah, Ford, let's get in there and let's win some fucking races.
That's so funny. you say that because Christian goes, if Ford wanted a driver, what would the driver be like? And I was like, I'd like a driver in Formula One who gets in fights.
A little dose of NASCAR. Yeah, I don't want to like get in fights,
but I want them to care so much about winning. It's still like a European sport, right?
Yeah, yeah. Pretty much rich kids. Yeah.
I'd like there to be a little more flavor in there. He's like, I like that.
Well, Christian wants that too. Yeah, he does. Well, he famously when Riccardo, Max would fight.
Is it not that?
His father was convicted of fracturing a man's skull at the go-kart track when he was a kid. There you go. Max's dad, Yost. Yeah. So he comes from that stock.
Well, it's coming up, but on Drive, I interviewed Max. Oh, you did? Yeah. I can't get up.
I'm impressed.
So people are like, well, you know, he's kind of mechanical. Yeah, but I mean, he's doing what he wants.
He's driving better than an AI would. Yeah, exactly. It all pays off.
I think Red Bull is kind of an irreverent company. Yes. And their marketing is very irreverent. I like that. an American company is going to join with Red Bull because Red Bull is going to go to WRC for us.
We're going to go to Dakar and race with them.
Well, let's just say they were like, no, we're never making commercials. We're going to spend $2.5 billion on motorsports, and that's going to get our beverage out there. You and I were like, now we're talking. Yeah, I like that company. This is a smart, smart company.
No commercials and all race teams.
And I think that's what motorsports should be. We should create digital content. that's outside the norm. We need to take a Formula One car and drive it through our factory at the Rouge, and we should do things that people don't do.
And you should be using me and Ricardo for this. I'll jump any car over anything you want. Okay. Yeah. I got it.
Let me go to work on that. Whenever that gets pitched to you, you need someone to jump something over something. I'm the dude. Perfect. Well, that does bring me to my one really big umbrella question, which is obviously generationally.
things have changed dramatically. Like when I was a kid, I had exclusively car posters in my room. And all of my friends had car posters. And I don't think it was just Detroit. I think very much kids of the 70s and 80s.
Our shows on TV that we loved were Dukes of Hazzard and Fall Guy. They were car-centric, Knight Rider. We were obsessed with cars. Everyone wanted a great car. We've been hearing for the last 15 years that younger generations would prefer to get driven in an Uber or they'd prefer their car to be self-driving.
How do you foresee our overall romantic and emotional connection to cars? It seemed like it was going to go away, but I don't know if I believe that. What's your take on that?
I think it's tripped on the other side of that invisible line of younger people caring a lot. But it has changed a lot. Like my son is 15.. He's on the road trip with me. We were pretty much talking about cars the entire trip.
And he hates every car I like. And I like every car he likes. He's like, Dad, you only like cars that were built before 1990.. You're like totally ridiculous. But he likes cars that are very outspoken, that are popular in digital content.
Like video games?
No, like. on YouTube, someone will do a review of something. A Pagani or a Koenigsegg, or something. That he doesn't want to buy, but he thinks is really interesting. So it's more of an intellectual exercise, maybe, and a digital thing.
It's not like. he expects cars to be software. But he thinks it's more digital currency than I did or you did. Which is like I want to get in and drive it. He's just as interested in sharing a cool video about a car than driving it.
He's really into learning how to drive a stick shift. But he's embarrassed when it doesn't work right. Because someone's going to have a camera. And a lot of people would see it. So all the degrees of freedom that we had to learn and make mistakes.
A lot of that generation doesn't, because they don't want to look like they don't fit in. So the pressure to fit in is so high and everything's recorded. I believe that it's changing in a positive way, but it will take a long time. And for us, we have to get used to younger people liking stuff that we don't like. Not because they're just younger, but because they have a more complex view of a car.
They see the software. They want to tune it with software. They want to use it for content consumption. They want to use a car stationary. They want a car to kind of advertise who they're about as a person.
So the accessories mean more to them, like your truck. My son went right over to your lights.
Sounds like a genius.
I just think it's time for us to give them their own version of loving cars.
Remember the old Oldsmobile thing. It's like, it's not your parents' Oldsmobile. Good luck.
And I think that's great. He hates my 73 Bronco. I love my Bronco. He doesn't like it. He wants something else.
He wants a 3 Series that he can work on. So what?
That's great. Yeah, yeah. You just want him to love it. That's all I want.
Your question about the emotional engagement, it's there. Do you love your Mercedes?
I do, and I don't even care about cars.
There's only one car she's ever liked.
Oh, really? What's that?
The 300 Goldwing Mercedes.
Oh, nice. That's a good choice. Right?
Timeless choice.
Total Wolf has one, I think.
He does?
He does. What a stud. What color?
He's got it all. I would guess it's silver. I don't know.
Same, same.
With a red and green plaid interior.
I don't know. I'm just guessing. What a gentleman. What a gentleman. Well, that's comforting.
And every time you think they've figured out what this generation wants, and the next one's right behind it. Someone told us the other day, like, Gen Z, they love ostentatiousness. We had that really, like, austere movement in 2008, with the oil prices and the SUV hatred and all this stuff. That generation was like, I hate all that. But guess what?
Now? this one behind them, they're like, no, we want Bugattis and fucking Louis Vuitton. We want it all.
We were on vacation this year, and we had a day free in northern Italy. It was raining. I'm like, we're going to Lamborghini. Like, as you would. Yeah, yeah, of course.
And so we went to Lamborghini, and my daughter was like, these are the coolest cars. An off-road supercar in, like, lime green.
The Moutoo? They had a Moutoo there? Yes. Oh, awesome.
I think it just takes having one car at some point in your life that you do like getting in or you find represents you or something. Because I did not have that until this. The Prius was great. It was like, yes, get me to point B, reliably. That's all I care about.
But then, with this one, it was like, oh, this is like—.
When it starts, you're like, hello, personality.
Yes, it, like, adds to your personality. And then you start seeing it across the board in other people's cars. And then you just start opening your eyes to it a little more.
Jim, another thing you would have loved is we were doing a live show in Detroit. And I said, okay, tonight we're going to Woodward, and we're going to watch cars. Monica's like, what? We're going to watch cars? I go, that's right.
We're going to park on the side of Woodward. We're going to sit on the trunk. Perfect. Perfect. We're going to bring some pops and some snacks.
And it was—.
It was like, I don't understand.
It was so obscurity, right?
Yes.
While you were doing it, was it weird?
No, I loved it. Yeah, my daughter.
We did it last weekend. My daughter's. like, Dad, let's go to Woodward. I got my Celine Mustang. Oh.
Did a few burnouts. Yes. There was a few cops around. My daughter's, like, you're pushing luck. Let's go pull off.
We got a Custer.
And you just watched Chargers and Challengers? Oh, yeah. I mean, man, is it a high concentration.
It is. Yeah. It is. They own it. But their Mustangs kind of come back.
But she looked at me. She goes, Dad, this is really fun. Right?
Monica was like, oh, my God. I get it. It's fun.
Because when there's a culture and a community anytime, it's fun. Oh, that's true.
That's true.
Even like at the Taylor Swift concert. You see everyone there. for a reason. It does something to you.
There you go.
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