by Johnny Liu

The American dream comes in many shapes and sizes. For some, it’s a cherry red sports car beaming on the front drive. For others, it’s overcoming great adversity to achieve even greater success.

Here’s another version of the American Dream, re-engineered. At only 38, Hau Thai-Tang is the youngest executive at the Ford Motor Company. Before becoming the Director of Advanced Product Creation and head of the Special Vehicle Team, Thai-Tang was the Chief Engineer on the newly redesigned Mustang. He doesn’t just own the “sports car”—he brought it back to life.

Thai-Tang grew up in Sai Gon, Viet Nam until the age of 9. In 1975, he and his family fled the country 48 hours before the war ended. Here, he talks to NHA about growing up in Viet Nam and his work at Ford.

NHA: How did your family leave Viet Nam?

HTT: We were really fortunate. My mother worked for Chase Manhattan Bank, which had a branch in Sai Gon. Towards the end of the war they transferred some of their employees to the U.S. Our family was selected. We were informed a month before it happened that we were going to have a chance to go. We were basically briefed to have one carry-on bag per person in preparation to leave. [We had to] tune in to Armed Forces radio and listen for a code song. The code song was Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas”. So one day in late April we heard the song. We drove to a rendezvous point and flew onto Guam. Then Sai Gon fell.

I think it was in the air that something was going to happen. It was inevitable. When [President] Ford decided to pull the troops out in 1972, we knew we were on the losing side. As a 9-year-old you don’t realize the magnitude of that. We were excited about starting a new chapter of life in a different country.

NHA: I can’t even imagine what it was like to grow up in the midst of war.

HTT: It’s going to sound a little bit odd, but it was fairly normal. War was always a part of our life. We would see flames. The Military. U.S. forces. The Viet Cong. It was just a part of life and you accepted it. We just didn’t know any different. We didn’t have another frame of reference.

NHA: But coming to a new country must have been a shock.

HTT: It was a big adjustment. I think the good news was that when you are 9 years old, you are pretty adaptable. We adjusted, but it was pretty much a shock at first.

NHA: Tell me more about your upbringing.

HTT: It’s pretty stereotypically Asian. Families push their kids to become doctors, dentists, engineers (laughs). Since I didn’t like blood, I went into engineering. When I graduated from school in the late ‘80s, the products were so exciting. They transcended mere commodities; cars are obviously a form of transportation, getting us from point A to B, but they also are very much a part of the American culture. It’s evident by the number of songs and movies and magazines that have been written about the Mustang.

NHA: How did you start your work with Ford?

HTT: [In 1988], straight out of college [with a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon], I joined Ford. I tell folks all the time that I had an offer to work at NASA. It would be intellectually very stimulating, but the likelihood of taking my wife on a space shuttle flight was very low. Whereas I can come home in a Ford GT or a Shelby Mustang and [my family] would immediately have a sense of what I do for a living.

We have a two-year training program [at Ford] where you rotate through different jobs. Most of my jobs were in vehicle dynamics and chassis suspension design. I’d say that’s my core competency. Then I had a chance to go work in motor sports; I worked in the Indy car program and was a race engineer with Nigel Mansell and Mario Andretti.

I came back to the production environment and I went to Cologne, Germany at Ford of Europe and then came back here and worked on the Lincoln LS and then the Mustang.

NHA: From what I understand, the very first Mustang you ever saw was while you were still a young boy in Vieät Nam. Tell me about that experience.

HTT: There was a gentleman named Al Extrain. He was doing something with the Armed Forces where he would go to various campaigns. He was in Okinawa and the Philippines. He was basically traveling with a fleet of Mustangs. His mission was to build up troop morale, but the other thing was to build safety.