Ford says it will continue to build cars for driving enthusiasts even as autonomous vehicles become more commonplace.
While many fear the rise of the self-driving car will spell the end of vehicle’s catered towards people who actually enjoy driving, Ford futurologist Sheryl Connelly told Autocar that, in the future, it will remain committed to enthusiast’s cars.
“Autonomous is a spectrum of technologies with assisted driving, like adaptive cruise control, at one end and full hands-off driving at the other. We remain committed in future to building enthusiast’s cars. There are some models where autonomous makes sense and others where it does not,” she said.
The American automaker is currently testing a fleet of Fusion Hybrid self-driving vehicles on the streets of California, Arizona and Michigan. Additionally, Ford recently teamed up with Google, Volvo, Uber and Lyft to speed up the development of autonomous cars and to get a high-volume self-driving car into commercial operation by 2021.
At the same time, Ford Performance continues to produce some of the industry’s best value performance cars, most notably the Focus RS and Shelby Mustang GT350 range. Soon, the 2017 Ford GT will fit into the firm’s burgeoning fleet of driver’s cars.
Thankfully, these models won’t be the last of their respective breeds.
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