Our Pope, who art from Chicago, hallowed be thy Ford Fusion. Thy transmission be manual, thy clutch be dumped, on Earth as it is in Heaven. Amen. That’s right, according to a recent admission by Ford CEO Jim Farley on the podcast Spike’s Car Radio, reports Ford Authority, the Pontifex himself not only drove one of Ford’s greatest sedans, but he also bought one with a six-speed manual transmission. The now-deceased, humble, Mexico-built American sedan is a fitting one for a man of the cloth, and apparently, it served the then-Cardinal quite well. He grew up in the suburbs of Chicago in a small middle-class family home, after all.
I don’t have a full account of when Robert Francis Prevost drove which cars, but following his missionary work in Peru, he returned to Chicago from the late 1990s until he became a naturalized citizen of Peru as Bishop of Chiclayo. It makes sense that Leo would have had a Ford Fusion during his time in Chicago. This is the kind of car that dominated the Midwest in that era. It’s at least interesting, though, that he selected a stick.
The Fusion was available, with a manual transmission no less, from its inception in 2006 until the six-speed was killed off (along with the 1.6-liter engine) in 2015. Several different engine and transmission combos were available that could’ve had then-Prevost rowing his own gears — including a 2.5-liter four-cylinder, or an early 2.3-liter four-cylinder paired with a five-speed manual. Given my choice of the bunch, however, the 1.6-liter Ecoboost second-gen model with a Getrag-built B6 manual would be my choice.
Blessed be the Fords
“He actually missed his Fusion 6-speed. I told him that we lost like $4,000 on every one of those we made, but he didn’t seem to care much,” Farley said of Pope Leo. I’m not sure why Farley expected the Pope to care about Ford’s profit margins on a car he bought over a decade ago — an odd thing to say, to be super clear.
The Fusion was a good vehicle for every day use when it was built, and it was one of the last regular sedans to be available with a manual transmission. These days, you can’t even buy a Ford with a manual transmission unless you’re a Mustang or Bronco guy, and I don’t think a pious man worthy of the papacy would be seen in either. Perhaps the stick shift was his way of connecting with the everyman or grounding himself in reality or something. Or, who knows, maybe he said a Hail Mary, Full Of Grace every time he dumped the clutch at 5,000 RPM and put a big wing on the deck lid?
Mr. Farley also recounted that he had recently taken audience with the Holy See at the Vatican, and he and his family personally presented Pope Leo XIV with a brand new Ford Explorer Hybrid. The Explorer, after all, is built in Chicago, and this example has been custom fitted with several Chicago-themed pieces of flair to remind his excellency of his humble midwestern American roots. “He noticed and appreciated all the personal touches,” Farley said in an official Ford release. “We even took a quick drive, and I can confirm the Holy Father enjoys driving a sporty ride.” No matter how much he enjoys it, though, the Pope won’t be using the custom Explorer as a Popemobile.
What have other Popes driven?
Pope Leo isn’t the first Pope to have driven an interesting car with a manual transmission. Pope Leo XIV is the first American-born Pope, as it were, and we’re quickly running out of manual vehicles here, but other countries have had them in abundance for a while. So the chances are pretty good that previous Popes drove cars with manual transmissions, assuming they didn’t ride around on little scooters. You can bet that a Pope has never regularly spent time in, like, an F40 or a Porsche 911, though. The Pope isn’t formally required to take a vow of poverty, but something showy like a million-dollar hypercar isn’t exactly in keeping with the teachings of the office. Pope John Paul II was gifted the final production Ferrari Enzo, but at his suggestion, it was instead auctioned off for charity.
The world’s most recent pre-Leo Pope, Francis (formerly Jorge Mario Bergoglio) was a practicing Jesuit and committed himself to never owning property or having a bank account. The one thing he allowed himself was a 1984 Renault 4 hatchback, which was gifted to the Papacy in 2013 from Italian pastor Renzo Zocca. The car had 186,000 miles on it when Francis took delivery, and he continued to drive it, eschewing the traditional “Popemobile” treatment for his more modest set of wheels.
Pope Leo is seen in the image above riding around in the first all-electric vehicle to wear the S.C.V. 1 Vatican State license plate, denoting that it is the Popemobile. The vehicle was a gift from Mercedes-Benz to Pope Francis in December 2024, shortly before his death. There have been dozens of different Papal automobiles over the decades, often with vehicles built for the occasion of a single visit to a country. Popes have ridden around in everything from a Lincoln Town Car to a Ferrari Mondial. Not quite an F40, but about as close as it gets.
