The Welshman who saved Ford

Sir Jackie Stewart reckons that, of all the world’s roads, a 65-mile loop in Scotland is the best place to evaluate cars. ‘It condenses so many varied conditions and surfaces into a short distance,’ says the triple Formula 1 World Champion. ‘Motorway, A, B and C roads, open bends, tight bends, crests, dips, long humps, broken edges, narrow village streets and fast kinks across high moorland.’

The loop is north-west of Gleneagles, Perthshire, and we are here, in March 1993, in a Ford Mondeo, soon after its launch. Jackie, in his role as a Ford R&D consultant, is driving and chatting with his front passenger, Richard Parry-Jones, presently Chief Engineer of Ford’s Small and Medium Vehicle Centre. In a few years, he will be Ford’s Chief Technical Officer, responsible for 30,000 engineers and designers and everything technical in Ford worldwide. Some believe his work will save Ford of Europe more than once.