CORPORATE HOT ROD; Ford 427 show car reveals a glimpse of Detroit's new direction.(Product/Service Evaluation)

Byline: DUTCH MANDEL

Take a look at the Ford 427 concept and ask yourself whether this can be considered the ultimate tuner car. Though it is a clean sheet of computer drafting screen attached to a thick corporate wallet and a bigmuthamotor for a sound so incredibly seductive it makes your legs quake, there is more to 427 than that. Underneath its massive, hydraulically actuated hood, saturated in its every slab-sided molecule, lies the essence of Detroit Big Iron, tuned and polished to a stark cultural glow. If this doesn't represent an expression of what's right with America, then little does.

Now think about tuner cars and what they are: automotive expressions of cultural desires. They are high-octane, slammed and chromed cultural images hooked to nitrous bottles. More often than not, today's tuners begin as someone else's canvas; plain-Jane econoboxes or beat-to-hell coupes that metamorphose into radical, brightly hued creatures that embody the owners' taste as well as the surrounding environment. This is hot rodding.

Ford's 427 is a tuner with a corporate sugar daddy. It tempt- ed and taunted 2003 Detroit auto show goers with gritty, husky looks that, while penned by a young Briton, represent-in group vice president of design J Mays' opinion-a design ethic that will be part of future Fords. Maybe it's better said as a tuner car in reverse: First came the tuned car, and then the docile production variant-a similar design evolution made by another well-known designer, Harley Earl. Remem-ber, it was he who first built California customs and was then hired to style original General Motors product. What goes around comes around.

"This is a rear-wheel-drive performance sedan in a `Made-in-Detroit' vernacular.'' Mays says the rough-and-tumble blue-collar mindset exemplified in 427 is something future production Ford cars will embrace. "Henry Ford's cars were representative of the era and the location in which they were built. They were rugged and durable and quality no-nonsense vehicles people could afford. That was Detroit then, and that is Ford's Detroit now.''

However, according to Mays, the 427 is deliberately filled with a so-called gangster reality-perhaps adding an even greater patina to the Detroit tuner car scene. "Think of the movie 8 Mile, and you see an urban aspiration among today's society where 40-year-olds hum along with Eminem songs. The suburbs are the middle of the road-where you don't want to be. On one polar end lies the rural, cowboy image and on the other the urban `gangsta' image.''

Cultural influences for cars are not new. The 1980s saw the rise of things European-whether they came from BMW, the Japanese or even a Ford Taurus. Rugged outdoorsmen have long been used to identify tough truck designs and users, while the adventure-seeking culture codifies the sport/utility design and market.