If J Mays, who heads up all the drawing, sketching and painting at Ford Motor Co., really does need a huge hit to keep him in the game (as rumours suggest), then he's not showing it as he toys with a paper coffee cup the size of a small toaster.

We are sitting in the early morning shadows of a partly lit New York Auto Show, just hours before hordes will descend to finger and gawk at all the latest sheet metal. Just J and I, a chorus of honking horns and several dozen clattering workers setting up displays. There is also a pleasantly muted PR handler who is there to make sure I get my quotes right, and to ride herd on the notoriously candid and talkative Ford global vice-president of design -- the head artist at a $170-billion (U.S.) car company.

Mays, the trim 49-year-old Oklahoma native who cut his teeth designing cars in Germany for Volkswagen and Audi, speaks softly but forcefully with a Midwestern accent, and he absolutely looks the part of a car designer. I've seen him dozens of times and just like today he almost never wears a tie. Just a dark suit and a turtleneck or a stylish open-collar shirt. His tired eyes betray the inevitable lack of sleep that goes with a globe-hopping work life. It may explain why he is just a tad defensive when asked the inevitable question: "Does J need a big hit?"

"I think what people tend to forget is that I'm responsible for every one of these brands here," he says, waving a slim hand at the various Ford and Ford-controlled company stands, which surround our kitchen-like conference table here on the floor of Manhattan's Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.

"Go around this room. Look at a Volvo S40 or at a DB9 [Aston Martin], or look at a new Land Rover Discovery. Look at the Mustang. I can go from stand to stand and you can see fingerprints of my team on every one of those. I think everybody wants to think that I am in Dearborn [Ford's Michigan headquarters] concentrating on Fords, which is far from the case."

Mays, who became famous for penning Volkswagen's Concept One, which later became the New Beetle, once led design at VW's luxury brand, Audi. He was hired away by Ford in 1997 to replace Jack Telnack, whose fate as Ford design chief was sealed by the disastrous, jelly-bean-shaped flop known as the 1996 Taurus.

It is common knowledge that Mays came aboard in large part to sex up Ford's designs.

But the Ford empire is far-flung, so even he admits he's been stretched too thin. Late last year, tongues began wagging when Peter Horbury, the well-regarded former Volvo design boss who most recently oversaw styling at Ford's luxury brands, arrived to take control of Ford, Lincoln and Mercury design in North America.

Insiders suggest that British-born Horbury has been charged with not only the designs, but to make sure the designers are using the latest and most efficient computer-aided design tools,

Horbury's success at Volvo, whose latest vehicles are winning acclaim for a consistent but not cookie-cutter look, has a reputation for moving ideas swiftly from design studio to production line.

The soft-spoken Mays comes across as more creative and more artsy than corporate. But that's just his style. In reality, the top designer at Ford or any other car company needs well-honed boardroom survival skills.

Design is responsible for the look and feel of every new model. And a typical new-model program can cost up to $1-billion. A lot of money is riding on Mays and his team.

Which is why he is not in Dearborn all the time. Most months, he spends at least a week in Europe meeting with the design bosses of Jaguar, Land Rover, Aston Martin, Volvo (the Premier Automotive Group luxury brands) and Ford of Europe.

On top of that, until Horbury hit the scene, Mays had personally headed design efforts in North America. Now, he's turned over that day-to-day leadership to Horbury, so he can focus on "strategic" issues. Some have speculated he's been kicked upstairs, but that's not the impression I get -- not when you consider the explosion of new-model activity beginning at the world's No. 2 auto maker.

It's been seven years since Mays took the design helm, and Ford this year will launch a big new sedan called the Five Hundred, a gasoline-electric hybrid version of the Escape SUV and a large crossover utility vehicle called the Freestyle, which is aimed at Chrysler's Pacifica. There's also a new Mustang coming in September.

Next year, the biggest guns in the Ford product onslaught are three new midsize sedans based on the current Mazda6 platform. There are new models coming from Ford-owned and -controlled brands, such as Volvo (the new S40 and V50), Land Rover (the new Discovery SUV), Jaguar (the long-wheelbase XJ sedan) and Mazda (a Mazda6 sport wagon and five-door hatchback this year and a Miata roadster next year).

For Mays, it is a juggling act bringing all these models to market. Mays will make or break his reputation in the next three years based on how well he keeps the new models from crashing into each other -- or just landing with a thud in dealer showrooms.

The key piece in all this is the "thread of design DNA" running through the new Ford midsize sedan.

This sedan's look is based on the 427 concept car originally penned by Brit Jo Baker, who also did the small Bronco show car unveiled to some acclaim at January's Detroit auto show.

Mays, by the way, says he loves the Bronco -- "It's the SUV a child would draw, without the quirkiness of a concept" -- and there's a good chance Ford might actually make it a production crossover utility vehicle or CUV in the near future.

It could be based on the current Ford Escape SUV's mechanical underpinnings or the platform of the Brazilian EcoSport already in production. To make sense, it would have to be priced in the low-$20,000s (Canadian). But it is those midsize cars that matter most.

"We've been working very hard on that design DNA, to establish that look and feel of those sedans," he says. "Now the first sort of fruit of that labour will really be the [yet to be named] midsize sedan, which will have what we call the new face of Ford, with this horizontal three-bar chrome grille. Eventually, you'll see that work its way into new Ford sedans."

Mays believes all future Ford products should "have a toughness, a strength, an authoritativeness about them. Those are the values we talk about a lot. The three-bar chrome grille that I'm talking about is a very good graphic example of toughness."

The toughness theme is particularly important now, Mays says. What goes on in the world influences car design, he says. And the three major socio-cultural influences today all are rooted in our emotional response to a general lack of safety and security in a crazy world.

"Terrorism and the war, the economy and the environment. Those are probably the three big ones," Mays says. "People want to feel safer.

"People want to justify analytically that they have bought into a safe product, and they want to emotionally buy in that the product they are driving is safe."

Buyers also are looking for an alternative to SUVs. That's where a big sedan like the Five Hundred comes it. When it hits showrooms this fall, consumers will see a car that looks like a cross between a VW Passat and the outgoing Audi A6. Not surprisingly, Mays helped design the A6. Throw in Mercedes' taillights, a Ford grille and a VW-inspired interior and you've got the Five Hundred.

Yet, while visually the Five Hundred is tame, it will surprise buyers because it is about 10 cm taller than a typical sedan, has a trunk able to hold eight full sets of golf clubs and, with the rear and front passenger seats folded flat, you can slide in a 10-foot ladder and still close the trunk.

"I think if you look at the Five Hundred, you're seeing a convergence of sedans and crossovers," says Mays. "The Five Hundred has really rewritten the package rule book I think for three-box sedans. So, although it's a conservatively styled vehicle, package-wise it's quite radical."

Outside of the Ford brand, Mays insists that a resurgence at Lincoln is coming based on three new models. The key Lincoln entries will be the Mazda6-based Zephyr for the 2006 model year, the Mark LT pickup (a rebadged Ford F-series due in 2005) and the new Aviator crossover.

"Lincoln's DNA shows up in the Aviator," Mays says. "We'll migrate to the egg-crate grille over the next five years. A Lincoln has to look elegant, it has to look upscale and it has to look American."

Expect Land Rover to push for more sales with the next Discovery, which was unveiled at the New York show as the LR3. Even more important is the need to stretch Jaguar by actually going back to the future -- but not in the retro-conservative way of the new XJ.

"In fact, we really are having a hard look at Jaguar in terms of how to make it more innovative. How do we get back to the values that were Jaguar in the 1960s, a time when Jaguars were really some of the most innovative cars on the road?"

Naturally, Mays likes his chances with all the new models, although the one he flat-out guarantees will be a smash hit is the 2005 Mustang. Mays and his team went back to Mustangs of the 1967-70 era with that design.

"Those are the ones that ingrained themselves deeply into the American culture and for that reason into how the world saw American culture," he says.

Add in the first all-new Mustang platform and power train upgrades in 30 years "and I can tell you that car is going to be a runaway train. It's not going to be able to be stopped."

The 2005 Mustang. It could be the big hit that will silence his critics.

Since the late 1990s, Ford models have mostly been greeted with the sound of one hand clapping.

FORD THUNDERBIRD: Nice and sleek on the outside, though not as vivid a design as the original in the 1950s. And the T-bird's by-the-numbers interior would look would look right at home in a rental car, if not for the coloured console inserts and gauge cluster.

FORD ESCAPE: Most people think its Mazda twin the Tribute is more interesting, although both trade creative forms for two-box functionality. Upgrades for both are going on sale and are a modest improvement.

FORD FOCUS: Some attractive shapes and lines there, but 10 product recalls had people talking about broken bits and pieces, not the car's shape or its excellent ride and handling.

FORD F-150: The all-new 2003 pickup is selling well and its cabin is the classiest of any full-size truck. But nobody looks at the F-Series' exterior and shouts, "Wow!" Too mainstream for that.

FORD TAURUS: It went from the odd-looking and totally impractical shape of 1996 to the current car, which is completely anonymous and likely destined to be phased out by the end of the decade if not sooner.