Unlike the T'bird, the Forty-Nine wasn't just a few tweaks from reality, and still isn't, but it's a bit tasty. Based on the production T'bird platform, it also has much in common with the Jaguar S-type. And obviously it shares the T'bird's retro feel, but with its own spin. An offbeat spin, too, because it's basically hot-rod homage. As Ford said, a concept 'designed to take America on a sentimental drag-race down memory lane, and underscore Ford's commitment to designing excitement into new cars coming down the road...'

If you think it looks good in shots, in the metal it's stunning. Mays calls the look 'hypersmooth' and that's an under-statement. It makes a modern Audi look fussy. It's somewhere between sexy and menacing - smoother than oil, with a bottomless paint job in any colour you like so long as it's black. Sitting virtually at ground level on 20in chrome wheels, it really is drop-dead fine. In its day, so was the car it evokes, the 1949 model-year '49-er', Ford's first all-new car after World War II. Its radical new look, with smooth slab sides rather than the old separate wings, was a massive sales success, and a hot-rodder's dream.

The Forty-Nine still is. The only hints of glitz are the slim chrome line running around the floating all-glass roofline, the twin exhausts exiting the otherwise smooth rear bumper, and the more aggressive treatment of the Thunderbird-like nose. The door releases are flat chrome buttons, the rear lights pencil-thin LED wraparounds, invisible in the black paintwork until they are lit. The only badges are the chrome F-O-R-D on the nose, a 'Forty-Nine' plate on the back, and two insets on the front wings - 'Powered by Thunderbird'.

Under the bonnet is a heavily chromed and black-gloss version of T'Bird's all-alloy V8 - 3.9 litres, 32 valves and about 280bhp and 286lb ft. It drives via a five-speed T'bird auto to the rear, and if you take the T'bird platform as gospel it must have wishbones, rack and pinion, vented discs with ABS and 245/40 front and 275/35ZR20 rear BFG g-Force rubber.

Inside is as hot-rod as the chop-top low-rider exterior, dominated by a full-length aluminium spar down the centre, splitting front and rear bench seats into four thin-shelled individual buckets. There's just one main dial on the column, with concentric speedo and rev-counter displays. The rest, with a single column stalk and cruise and audio controls mimicking a horn-ring, is pure 1950s fantasy. So, high-tech it ain't, but the driving position is comfortable and low, and the simplicity of it all gives the Forty-Nine an old-school driver focus.

And it does drive. Not hot-lap drive, because under the skin it's a bag of bolts, with more steering slack and less brakes than a kid's soap box - but enough to get us thinking. It sits as low and square as it looks, and it isn't hard to figure that its lack of non-functional weight, V8 and super slippery shape, would not add up to slow. Then throw in the chassis dynamic possibilities. Something akin to an S-type's platform, with the appropriate suspension tuning could make this a real rollerskate.

That much at least is apparent even in the concept, which would clearly be happy with masses of power if the chassis-hack steering and brakes were remotely on par with the performance. In other words, a classic V8-powered hot-rod shape with the socially acceptable performance and the modern ride and handling dynamics to match the purity of its styling. That could be the recipe for a great car. As J Mays also said, 'we've now got to look at a business case for this car'. You can but dream...