Jim Farley isn’t just the CEO of Ford Motor Co., he’s also a salesman.
A family’s random encounter with Farley outside a gas station in northern Michigan last fall converted them from Land Rover loyalists into Blue Oval buyers, Torque News reported last week.
Jan Brosh told the site that she and her husband had test driven the new Land Rover Defender but were put off by its price. Soon after that, they spotted a preproduction Ford Bronco Sport while traveling with their grandchildren in their Land Rover LR3.
“We asked the driver if we could take photos. He had the Badlands trim and invited us to look inside and around it. He introduced himself as Jim Farley, the new CEO of Ford,” Brosh said. “Mr. Farley told us it was a prototype, and Ford hoped to go to full production in a couple of weeks. It was clear he was enjoying driving it. When I said we were driving the LR3, he chuckled and said, ‘I’m sorry.’ ”
Torque News said Ford officials confirmed Brosh’s story.
The couple ended up ordering a Bronco Sport a few days after their run-in with Farley and took delivery Jan. 7. Jan Brosh posted on a Facebook page for Bronco Sport owners last week that her husband is waiting to get a Bronco SUV as well. “With every option on his want list, it’s still far less than the Defender,” she wrote.