Following Ford's announcement that it would build a massive new EV development and assembly complex in Stanton, West Tennessee with SK Innovation, it received push back from locals worried about the effect the facility - named BlueOval City - would have on the tiny town that, as of 2010, had a population of just 450 people.
The residents formed the BlueOval Good Neighbours Coalition and encouraged Ford to agree to hire locals at the plant and prevent gentrification of the rural area, while Ford responded by creating the Ford Good Neighbour Plan to aid the local community, offering scholarships to local students and restoring a historic African-American school, among other initiatives.
One of those "other initiatives" was to donate US$150,000 (NZ$260,000) to the creation of a statue in nearby Brownsville to celebrate the life of legendary singer Tina Turner, who grew up in the area.
Well, the statue has been unveiled and... let's just say that this one may not have created the goodwill that Ford would have been hoping for.
The statue's likeness to Turner - or rather the drastic lack of it - has attracted heavy criticism online following its unveiling, sending photos of the statue viral with fans of Turner quickly taking to social media to criticise it, using terms like "travesty" and "hate crime" to describe the... unfortunate results.
"That Tina Turner statue is a tragedy. She deserves better," one person wrote, with another adding; "A travesty. Did the artist even look at a photograph of the real Tina Turner?"
Sculptor, Atlanta-based artist Fred Ajanogha, told the Associated Press he tried to capture Turner's "flexibility of movement on stage, how she held the microphone with her index finger extended, and her hair style", which he compared to the “mane of a lion”.
And now we're not sure he even knows what a lion looks like, let alone Tina Turner...
