BACK TO THE FUTURE
Progress. Besides being a ripper Midnight Oil song it’s an ideal praised and despised in equal measure because of the doubled-edged nature of this manmade concept. Progress in a transformative sense has given us every technological marvel we use today, including the internal combustion engine, but while these labour-saving devices have made our lives more convenient, the cost is only now being felt.
Back in 1964, the phrase ‘climate change’ hadn’t been coined and Ford, with its Big Red experimental truck (powered by an engine more at home in aviation circles than on the road), wanted to see what the future could look like when trucks and the relatively new technology of turbine engines were put together. To say the teams involved in the creation of Big Red were excited would be an understatement as it represented pure design and engineering freedom, and the Ford employees at the Blue Oval’s Dearborn, Michigan offices ran with it.
Coast to coast
Arriving at a time when the US was opening super-efficient transport
