THE MAN, THE MYTH, THE LEGEND

Ahmed began his career with a Ford apprenticeship, working up to a Technical Supervisor at a Ford dealership by the late ’80’s. As engines were increasingly being endowed with electronic management systems, he began experimenting with ECUs in his spare time, teaching himself how they work and devising improvements.

Ahmed’s experiments with old ECUs and software showed great results, and as a result the then head of Motorsport at Ford, Peter Ashcroft, head-hunted him as a consultant Engines and Electronics Engineer.

Ashcroft had a special project under development. As this was 1990, it turned out to be the original WRC programme. This was the big time for Ahmed. Goodbye to showing mechanics how to fathom out a car’s electronics, hello to refining software to help Ford to numerous international rally wins. He took to the job immediately, and over the years worked on every major Ford Motorsport project throughout the ‘90’s – some of his later projects involved developing the 1600 Phase 2 Puma rally engine and the ‘ST160’, aka the Ford Racing Puma, engine.

As Ahmed was freelance, he also became an ECU-mapper supreme of the modified car market. “The power reading is not the point,” he once said, “sure, if someone wants 500bhp, we can build an engine to give that. But if I map it, it won’t produce horses at the expense of torque. What’s the point in spending thousands on a road engine that’s useless anywhere but on the track?” Ahmed’s aim for every car he mapped for the road was that it should drive as good, if not better, than Ford themselves intended.

“It’s a combination of software and pure mechanical knowledge. I couldn’t map engines if I hadn’t spent years learning exactly how they function,” he continued, “the mechanical and electronic aspects of engines are often seen as separate, but they’re not, they’re inter-dependant. I’m just lucky to understand that, and know lots about both”. Ahmed was often known to work into the small hours in the dyno booth, getting things right. He was probably a little obsessive, “I need to know that something is spot on. The results depend on it. I don’t want to kid people by making claims that aren’t true. But more importantly, I don’t want to kid myself”.

This attitude brought Ahmed lots of happy customers and lots of friends in the scene, including Bruce and Costas. Unfortunately, Ahmed passed away in 2016 but he will forever be remembered in the Ford scene.