The Ford Piquette Avenue Plant is described as the birthplace of the modern automobile. Within its brick walls, Henry Ford and his team developed the Model T, a vehicle that forever changed how people lived, worked, and moved. On September 12, that same spirit of innovation and daring will come alive again as National rally racing champion, X Games medalist, Polar expedition leader, Oxford University graduate, and Hollywood stuntman Andrew Comrie-Picard – known as “ACP” — takes the stage at the museum for “Driving by Design.”
For Comrie-Picard, the opportunity is more than just a speaking engagement. It’s a homecoming of sorts – a chance to stand where the automotive history began and connect it to his own journey in racing, film, and design.
Detroit is inspirational every time I visit, he says. It’s not just about the history or its clear importance to American industrialization. It’s about the people, the attitude. When you’re in the town that created the car, there’s this energy that anything can get done. Every time I go, I feel refreshed.
That energy is something he feels deeply whenever he gets behind the wheel of his own Model T. Among a collection of exotic and high-performance vehicles, it’s the century-old Ford that has his heart.
“The Model T is the favorite,” he admits. “Other cars in my collection might make people ‘ooh’ and ‘ah’ because they’re fast or exotic, but the Model T is the one that makes everyone happy. Driving history down the street, with its wooden wheels and all – it’s a museum piece on the road.”
The process of recommissioning the car after it had sat dormant for three decades was itself a journey of discovery. He recalls being fascinated by its simple yet ingenious engineering solutions – such as the thermosyphon cooling system or the domed pulley for the fanbelt.
“The Model T is simple on one hand but an engineering genius on the other,” he says. “It inspires thinking. It’s a reminder that genius lies in making things work in scale and making them available.”
That balance of creativity and practicality—dreaming big while finding ways to make ideas work—is something Comrie-Picard recognizes not only in Ford’s story but also in Detroit’s broader culture. “Creativeness comes from friction,” he says. “Henry Ford went through trials and tribulations that led to his success. The same is true of Detroit. Entrepreneurs in Detroit are swinging for the fences. It’s not just a renaissance—it’s a natural product of the people and their attitude to get stuff done.”
It’s also a philosophy that shapes his own work in Hollywood, where he designs and performs precision driving for blockbuster films. Much like the early industrialists, he thrives on creating something out of nothing.
“In stunts, the only constraints are the laws of physics,” he explains. “That pressure creates sparks. You make something where there was nothing, see it come to fruition on screen, and you get a high from it. Maybe it’s similar to the feeling Edison or Ford had when they invented something we still use today.”
At the heart of both film stunts and automotive innovation is risk. Comrie-Picard believes risk-taking remains as vital now as it was in Ford’s day.
“Risk is at the core of almost anything interesting humanity does,” he says. “It’s all about managed risk. If you never take a risk, you won’t get anything done. But the danger has to be highly managed. The best stunt drivers I know aren’t daredevils—they’re really smart.”
It’s that mix of intelligence, creativity, and daring that he sees as essential for the automotive industry today. With electrification, autonomy, and new mobility models transforming transportation, the stakes are high.
“We’re at a really interesting inflection point,” he says. “The most important thing is that stakeholders don’t let their size put them behind the eight ball in innovation. You need visionaries willing to guess, to dream, to imagine the next thing – just like Henry Ford did.”
That sense of vision, combined with the ability to execute, is what made Detroit the home of the automobile in the first place. Comrie-Picard compares it to Milan’s rise as a fashion capital, where fabric makers, sewers, and designers clustered together, creating the conditions for creativity.
“In Detroit, you had the raw materials, the shipping, the financing, and the innovators. People gravitated there, and there was a competitive ‘yes’ attitude among car brands that pushed each other forward. It was like the right soil, water, and sun for a factory to grow.”
For him, standing inside the Ford Piquette Plant Museum is like standing at the roots of that ecosystem. It’s not just a museum, it’s a living reminder of what happens when imagination, risk, and execution come together. And it’s the perfect setting for his talk, which will connect threads from early automotive history to modern challenges in design, stunts, and technology.
Despite AI and CAD, automobiles still need humans to imagine them, draw them, and create them, he says. Somebody has to say, ‘I wonder if we can make this.’ That’s how we got things like the tailgate-down backup camera. You need an environment that nurtures those ideas.
That nurturing spirit is exactly what Comrie-Picard hopes to highlight in Detroit. His presentation will weave together his personal journey with the broader story of automotive creativity and innovation.
“I’ve done a lot of hard, fun things with cars—racing, stunts, building, and rebuilding. What I hope to do is pull certain threads from history and recent experiences, tease out what’s essential, and adapt it to what might happen next.”
As for speaking at the Ford Piquette Plant Museum for the first time, he says it feels both humbling and exhilarating. “It’s personally significant because I’m so inspired by the Model T—it’s the proto-car. To be in that plant, with its history, and to have the privilege to talk about cars is really exciting.”
And perhaps that’s the real magic of Detroit and the Ford Piquette Plant Museum: the reminder that cars are not just machines, but expressions of human imagination, risk, and ingenuity. And wondering where it will take us next.
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