Designed by Peter Horbury, Ford's Super Chief pick-up is rather more than a mere car...
...but, for all its excesses, the it's as perfect a piece of design as you will see anywhere, try to forget this is a practical vehicle and look at it as sculpture.
"It's the confidence and optimism that built America," says the Super Chief's designer Peter Horbury. "People didn't come over here, get in wagons and travel west because they thought things were going to get worse."
Inside, that sense of informal, Charles Eames, shoes-off comfort is overwhelming. "This is a truck with big surfaces, with thick leather and wood, not super-polished, but honest. This is American luxury," says Horbury.
The designers have used discreet themes and an effortless melding of body panels. Even the front, with its shoulder-height bonnet and stainless-steel grille bars, is less about aggression than it is about optimism.
With no sound-proofing, the Super Chief sounds wild. It's also pretty wild on the move, because someone forgot to put any damping in.
As a result, you are in great danger of losing your head as you bounce through the Rouge plant's potholes. The driving experience, though, is not what this truck is about.
What it's about primarily, is estabilishing Horbury's credentials and proving that Ford has the wherewithal to pull itself up by its own bootstraps.
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