Hating on the Mach-E? It Could Have Been Far Worse

Apologies for another Ford Mustang Mach-E post. Clearly, Dearborn got its wish when it set out to get people talking.

While the brand’s new Mustang-inspired (and now Mustang-badged) crossover has generated both acrimony and praise, often split along generational and ideological lines, the story of what could have been is now leaking out. There’s a possibility of another Mustang family member, too, but let’s stick with the Mach-E’s genesis for a bit.

It would seem, based on conversations with Ford execs, that the vehicle that became the Mach-E was originally planned as something so mind-numbingly boring, Ford’s incoming CEO smelled a dud. As reported by Motor1 and Autocar, Jim Hackett was the man behind the switch.

Planning was already well underway two years ago, but Hackett’s arrival at the Glass House put designers back to work crafting something that was more than just a “compliance car.” As the automaker told Motor1, the team was told to play to the brand’s strengths and rid the vehicle of its overpoweringly bland eco-snobbery.

The Mustang muse stepped into the room, dropped its robe, and the team went to town.

“This started as another project in around 2014, and about two years ago it switched to this,” Ford of Europe design boss Murat Gueler told Autocar. “The design had a big influence: the whole structure changed, the technology inside changed. We rebooted the whole programme. The designers came up with this concept and everyone went ‘oh, this is good.'”

If the Mach-E’s design leaves you feeling cold, just imagine what the original plan would have looked like. Actually, you don’t have to ⁠— Motor1 shared a sketch showing how the design evolved. That earlier vehicle? Terrible. “Compliance car” is right.

As for where Ford goes from here, that’s an open question. While Gueler said, “We’ve talked about building a family,” he didn’t specifically confirm any plan to release other EVs under the Mustang name.

“We don’t want to take a Russian doll approach, where you can’t tell them apart other than the size of the car, but we want a family feel where a Ford EV starts to build off this concept,” he said. “But we’d never do a smaller version of this — if we did a smaller vehicle it would have different proportions.”

[Image: Ford]