USA 2016 – Travel Diary – Day 06
USA 2016 – Travel Diary – Day 06
DAY 6: Ford Performance
Knockin’ on heaven’s Door
“If opportunuty doesn’t knock, build a door” Milton Berle
I literally spent my whole life dreaming about working for Ford Motor Company. But to be fair such kind of dream, in Italy in the late 90’s was pretty much impossible. Even visit the offices of Ford Performance (at that time Ford Racing) was something I just wondered about.
We reached Ford Performance offices after lunch. We spent the whole morning just to drive back to the NAIAS to catch the Rewell model of the Ford GT. That has been a very important reason to go back: we want to add it to our collection. Period. Even if it will stay forever in his plastic bag without being built ( When we came back, I discovered that Matteo built it.. something unbelievable for a collector like me).
Spending the whole afternoon inside those offices, again, after one year, was a one-way trip back to my childhood. Especially when they left me starting up a 2015 GT-350 Miami Yellow: wow guys, what a sound!
Every time I leave those offices, with its unbelievable prototypes parking lot, I feel extremely sad. First of all, because I am more than sure that cars will be more nice in my box, and second because I am jealous of the people that work there. I mean, not a negative way of jealousy, but I kind of feeling that says: If I can come back on time and choose where I can born, I will say USA and Michigan, just to try to apply for any open position inside Ford Performance.
We had an extremely quick shower, because our schedule was very close: we had to attend the Monthly meeting of MOCSEM (Mustang Owners Club of South East Michigan).For all the European guys that never attended a Club meeting in USA, you will be surprise; having 5-6 events by year is already a lot for us. Can you imagine have a monthly meeting, were you discuss about balance, gadgets, etc.? See again Mike Rey, Jennifer, William and all the other guys was a pleasure. But I will never expect the trick that Mike and John Clor had prepared for me: a standing speech in front of everybody, without anything to read. Luckily I had a story to tell to everyone: all the progress we made from the last time we met; I explained to them how difficult is being a Mustang owner in Europe; the frustration and the lack of competence you could find everywhere, how annoying is for the spares, etc. Probably was the first time that someone outside Europe heard this story. They listened me for 15-20 minutes, quite shocked, asking questions about how we manage all this issues. We left the MOCSEM guys with the promise to come back again, maybe in 2017, but in summertime. At the hotel, we went directly in our room to recover; the day after we had to step in another amazing place: Roush Industries!
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