Former Ford chief Martin Leach dies

Dr Martin Leach, the former president of Ford of Europe whose death at 59 was unexpectedly announced yesterday, was one of a restless, energetic breed of young engineers.

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, he turned a company previously known for poor cars, expertly marketed, into one whose design and dynamic qualities set new standards for car makers.

Leach, who raced Ayrton Senna in karts in his youth, and might have made a champion racing driver had he not “caught” engineering at early age, was a true Ford high-flier. He followed Richard Parry-Jones in 1996 as Ford’s head of global R&D and was also concurrently appointed managing director of Mazda (then controlled by Ford) where he founded a new philosophy that produced the Mazda 6 and RX8.

By 2000, Leach was head of product development at Ford of Europe and became president of the organisation two years later. Always in a hurry, he began implementing a rapid new model programme called “45 in 5” without delay but fell out with Ford’s top management — who somewhat ill-advisedly announced that he had resigned before he had done so. Leach sued, and settled for $2.1m in 2005.

After a short spell from 2004 as head of Maserati, and some time running the LDV vans business, Leach launched a number of automotive-related businesses of his own, including the Magma consultancy group. Most recently he co-founded the NextEV supercar project with the Chinese entrepreneur William Li, and also became boss of NextEV’s Formula E team, which was successful in the electric single-seater series' first season in 2015.

When I met Leach to discuss the supercar a couple of months ago, he gave no sign of any illness, though Li has since revealed that he has been “fighting illness over the past few months”. Until his untimely death, Leach was looking forward to his new car’s impending debut in London, calling it “the best and most important thing I’ve ever done”.

Steve Cropley

Title: Editor-in-chief

Steve Cropley is the oldest of Autocar’s editorial team, or the most experienced if you want to be polite about it. He joined over 30 years ago, and has driven many cars and interviewed many people in half a century in the business.

Cropley, who regards himself as the magazine’s “long stop”, has seen many changes since Autocar was a print-only affair, but claims that in such a fast moving environment he has little appetite for looking back.

He has been surprised and delighted by the generous reception afforded the My Week In Cars podcast he makes with long suffering colleague Matt Prior, and calls it the most enjoyable part of his working week.