The first Mustang was a pure, two-seater sports car prototype with mid-engine V4 power
Ford product manager Don Frey had a bright idea for an all-new model. He saw it as a two-seater sports car that would serve as a lower cost competitor for Chevrolet's Corvette.
The first Mustang was a concept car with pop-up headlights, a mid-engine V4 and racing windshield.
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Though the automotive press was in love with the first Mustang, Ford saw it as having limited appeal.
Lee Iacocca suggested the Mustang be converted to a four-seat configuration and relentlessly pushed the car through a thicket of skeptical Ford executives including CEO Henry Ford II who feared another Edsel disaster.
Ford’s bean-counting financial executives opposed the Mustang during every step of its development and nearly succeeded in killing the project.
Full size clay mock-up from 1962 shows unusual side treatment
When Henry Ford II was shown the original Mustang prototype, he thought the back seat was crowded and ordered designers to add another inch of length to the roofline.
Basing the Mustang on the Falcon compact saved Ford tons of money, making it a high profit earner right out of the gate.
Pre-production Mustang prototype shows Cougar grill insignia
Though "Torino" was an early favorite and Henry Ford II wanted to call the new car a “Thunderbird II” or "T-Bird II", early pre-production prototypes were called Ford Cougars and bore an image of a stylized cat in their grills instead of a horse. The Mustang name came from the fastest propellor-driven airplane of WWII, the P-51 fighter.
The Mustang’s rear fender side scoops were originally designed to send cooling air to the rear brakes but Ford’s bean counters nixed it when they computed that they could save $15 per car by using fake scoops instead.
Though the Mustang’s list price was $2368, the average buyer added $1000 in options, which were hugely profitable for Ford.
Ford made a billion dollars in profit (1960s money) off the Mustang in its first year.
Conducting a publicity campaign for himself and the Mustang, Lee Iacocca flew to New York to promote the new car to Time and Newsweek magazines. Newsweek’s national editor Jim Cannon was so impressed by Iacocca’s enthusiasm for the car; he bought a Mustang from him on the spot.
Iacocca appeared on both Time and Newsweek covers the same week.
Ford's original sales estimates for the Mustang were 100,000 units for its first year but the car sold that many copies in its first 90 days and went on to move over a million cars off showroom floors within its first 18 months.
The Mustang created the “pony car” genre of automobiles. It was soon joined by Chevrolet Camaro, Pontiac Firebird, AMC Javelin, and Mercury Cougar but only the 'Stang stayed in continuous production for over four decades.
Plymouth’s 1964 Barracuda, a sporty fastback version of its Valiant compact, actually came out slightly before the Mustang but sold miserably in comparison.
Iacocca drove Ford to make succeeding models of the Mustang bigger and plusher, resulting in the bloated 1971 generation. Then he pushed to shrink it into a small economy car, resulting in the 1974 Mustang II.
The 1974-78 Mustang II was based on the much maligned Pinto. Now thought of as the Mustang’s weakest iteration, the Mustang II was actually one of the best selling.
Ford’s 1989 Probe was originally designed to be a new generation Mustang, but Mustang owners objected to the idea of a Japanese engineered, front-wheel drive car wearing the galloping stallion so the Probe was launched as a separate model.
The Mustang’s first appearance in a movie was in Goldfinger, released in September 1964.
In 1969 Serge Gainsbourg released his song Ford Mustang with the lyrics:
We kiss each other
In a Ford Mustang
And bang!
We kiss the trees
Mus on the left
Tang on the right
Mustang Sally was released by Wilson Pickett in 1966 and reached number six on the R&B charts. Rollingstone magazine ranked it #434 of the greatest 500 songs of all time.
Chevrolet's Corvair sold indifferently until the introduction of the floor-shift equipped, bucket seated Monza model which uncovered a market for affordable, sporty coupes—a market that Iacocca realized an all new car like the Mustang could capture. When the Mustang hit the market, Corvair sales took a dive. Ford's pony car was as much responsible for the demise of the rear-engine Chevy as Ralph Nader's book Unsafe at Any Speed.
Today, the Mustang is locked in a heated sales war with Chevy's newly revived Camaro. Competition seems to be improving the breed, as Ford has embarked on a relentless program of upgrades for its pony car with each year's new model taking the cup from the one before as "the best Mustang ever."
For more info check these links:
Pony car war heats up: 2011 Mustang debuts with multiple upgrades throughout
Ford Mustang celebrates 45th birthday
New Mustang "Dearborn Doll" shows aircraft influence
New 2010 Camaro: Return of a classic
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