Virtual reality and 3D printing have cut Ford's clay-modeling time roughly in half, compressing a two-week full-size sculpture cycle into a five-day design theme and buying critical weeks for a company refreshing 80% of its North American portfolio between 2027 and 2029.

The change sits at the center of Ford's latest reinvention. In December, the automaker announced about $19.5 billion in charges and pivoted its electric-vehicle strategy after all three Detroit OEMs pulled back on EVs in 2025 as the federal government scrapped subsidies. CEO Jim Farley accurately predicted the EV market would be cut in half as a result.

The human face of that transformation is John "Rex" Allen, 68, who has spent four decades building life-size cars out of clay, the last 24 years at Ford. He works upstairs at the new Ford World Headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan, which opened in November 2025, wearing a virtual-reality headset alongside his clay, monitors and plastic models.

How did a clay sculptor end up at the cutting edge of AI-era design?

Allen came to the trade out of fear of automation. "I used to be a machinist, and then it started becoming robotic, so I got out of that business real quick," he said. He had run a side hustle in high school airbrushing the "Rat Fink" mascot onto T-shirts and carving Disney characters from wood and clay for extra credit in art class.

"Somebody told me they created cars out of clay," Allen said, "which I had no idea of, so he introduced me to a guy that owned a business. And I mean, I fell right into it." He was 26, soon working 100 hours a week at Detroit model shops for roughly $100,000 a year, including the original Dodge Viper concept at a Chrysler satellite studio.

At the time, a dense web of small shops handled overflow work for Ford, GM and Chrysler. "You could grab a job any day of the week in one of these places," Allen said.

Why does clay survive in a digital studio?

Ford's modeling studio, with ceilings 25 to 30 feet high, still relies on full-size physical models nearly a century after the practice began. "Having the physical property in front of you to have the conversation with multiple people has always been a key part of the process," modeler Shawn Fairall said. "There's always kind of this general misconception that computers have taken over car design. Clay has never really gone away."

Michael Smith, who leads research and development for Ford's design team, tells interns: "We don't sell pretty pictures of cars. We sell vehicles." A director, he said, might look at the clay and say, "you need to pull this back three more inches."

The workflow changed about six years ago. The team now roughs out a car in clay, scans it in about 20 minutes, refines the shape digitally in a headset, and has a mill carve the new surface over a few shifts before finishing by hand. They call it hybrid sculpting.

"This one is leaps and bounds," Allen said, "further than anything we've ever done."

The technology shrank headcount. "Because of technology, we've reduced the people over the years, so there's less and less of us," Allen said, adding, "we still have the same amount of work." He said the VR way of working "would help keep us employed, basically, and it seems like it has, because we're able to flip more designs now because of it."

What is the shape of Ford's rebirth?

Ford sold about 650,000 fewer vehicles in the U.S. than GM last year yet brought in slightly more revenue: $187.3 billion to $185 billion. The difference is Ford Pro, the commercial arm selling trucks and vans to businesses and governments, which earned $6.8 billion before interest and taxes in 2025 at a 10.3% margin — more than double the $3 billion earned by Ford Blue, the gas and hybrid business. The EV unit, Model e, lost $4.8 billion.

COO Kumar Galhotra said Ford's next EV plan began with a California skunkworks team. "We tore down multiple Chinese OEM vehicles," he said. "It was clear that because of the labor advantage and certain subsidies and battery areas, that their batteries are cheaper than ours." Ford stopped trying to win on battery cost and designed around a smaller battery with better aerodynamics, fewer frictional losses and more efficient motors. "In the end, we're pretty much equal in total system cost," Galhotra said of Ford's projection against China's BYD, calling it "first principles thinking."

The first vehicle on Ford's new Universal EV platform is the Fathom, a $28,350 midsize electric pickup due in 2027. Ford says it will send more than 10 kilowatts into a house during a blackout without the expensive wall-mounted inverter the F-150 Lightning required.

The pivot also created a new business. By around March 2025, veteran executive Lisa Drake saw her battery plants "weren't full," but Ford had licensed lithium-iron-phosphate cells from China's CATL and was building batteries in Marshall, Michigan — chemistry that proved near-ideal for energy storage serving utilities and data centers. "I had a license for the best tech on the planet and the right tech for storage," Drake said. In December, the board gave her $2 billion to start Ford Energy. She is retooling a Kentucky plant that made F-150 Lightning batteries, reusing 30% to 40% of the equipment, with production set for late 2027.

Who keeps the 109-year-old Rouge Plant running?

Across Dearborn, the 109-year-old Rouge Plant — the world's first fully integrated auto factory — runs on a century-old assembly line patched with 3D-printed parts under one of the world's largest green roofs. Greg Foresi, 35, manages its 3D-printing lab, where roughly a dozen machines have produced nearly 300 tools and components, including about 50 socket covers.

During a supply-chain disruption, Foresi saw a shortage coming and printed a bright royal-blue factory-floor wheel himself. Some versions failed, but iterative improvements followed. "We avoided the problem entirely," he said. The stakes are high: Ford builds a new F-150 every 54 seconds at the plant.

"One of the most radical things about 3D printing is that it decentralizes your logistics," Foresi said, while conceding it is "not remotely close to replacing our conventional supply chain." Galhotra was blunt: it is "good for patches here and there."

Where does AI fit in Ford's factories?

Amazon veterans Mike Aragon and Alicia Boler Davis, both new to Ford's C-suite, lead the digital push. Farley described how Ford Pro uses AI to guide dealership technicians through an engine removal from a Super Duty truck — "It's like a two-day job" — with AI telling mechanics, "Okay, do this, do that."

Boler Davis said some fleet customers resist: "We have some customers that don't want you monitoring the vehicle or connected or don't want to use the AI." The goal, she stressed, is not to "get rid of the fleet manager" but to "make their job easier," with downtime costing hundreds or thousands of dollars per vehicle per day.

Galhotra was measured on factory AI: "I haven't seen really good execution yet. And even ourselves, we're at the beginning of that journey."

Allen, for his part, steered his son Derek into engineering years ago out of worry about modeling's future. "I always thought virtual reality would be there, but not in my lifetime," he said. Eight years after nearly retiring, he now trains the next generation of modelers in both media. "I'm very excited about this whole chapter in my life," Allen said. "I hop out of bed in the morning so I can come to work."