Ford Mustang
The Ford Mustang, the auto that launched the sporty car revolution, is celebrating its 25th anniversary today, but was basically an impostor when introduced. The much ballyhooed Ford Mustang, introduced April 17, 1964, really was a drab Ford Falcon compact economy car with a racy body. But no one seemed to notice. The now-classic first Ford Mustang looked good enough to convince an astounding 418,812 people to buy it during its first 12 months on the market. More than half of those buyers were under 34, but 16 percent, a high percentage in the car business, were between 45 and 55.
Married couples bought Mustangs for use as family cars. Young singles purchased them as surrogate sports cars. Women bought as many as men did. The car's youthful spirit was universal. In fact, the original Ford Mustang made such a splash in auto history that it is considered one of Ford Motor's most famous cars, along with the Model T, Model A, Lincoln Continental, Continental Mark II and two-seat Thunderbird - all pre-1960 autos. The Ford Mustang's success prompted other automakers to launch their own sporty cars, such as the Chevrolet Camaro, Pontiac Firebird, Plymouth Barracuda and American Motors Javelin. Some 5.7 million Mustangs have been sold, with only three basic bodies offered, the first from 1964 to 1973, the second from 1974 to '78 and the third from 1979-current. Lee Iacocca, then the young boss of Ford Motor Co.'s Ford division, was the perfect auto executive to be behind the Ford Mustang.
Iacocca, now Chrysler's chairman, was a wizard in anticipating the desires of the car-buying masses. He was a great believer in taking existing cars with proven components, having his people modify the sheet metal, and - presto! - ending up with a rehashed auto that was billed as "all-new."
In the 1960s, most of the auto press was a rah-rah bunch that generally went along with auto company hoopla. Even Time and Newsweek put Iacocca and the "new" Ford Mustang on their covers. The Ford Mustang basically was razzle-dazzle Iacocca's "baby" because he persuaded Henry Ford II, who was running the company, to allow the automaker to build the car. That was tough even for super-salesman Iacocca to do because Henry was still stinging from the abject failure of the Edsel just a few years earlier.
The Edsel itself was just a rebodied Mercury with a few trick features, such as push-button transmission controls in the center of the steering wheel.
Donald Frey, former Bell & Howell chairman who now teaches at Northwestern University, was assistant general manager of the Ford division when the Ford Mustang was introduced.
Frey, a key person in creating the Ford Mustang, reminisced about the car's development.
"A few of us at Ford, sitting around one day in the early 1960s, thought it would be a good idea to produce a small, sporty car that would appeal to a mass market," Frey said.
"We were a bunch of young guys in our 30s and early 40s then. There was me, Don Petersen (now Ford's chairman) and Harold Sperlich (former Chrysler president).
"We were afraid to make the new auto a sports car because it would have had too limited a market (with only two seats). One of my Ford projects was turning the (1955-57) two-seat Thunderbird into a four-seater for 1958 to appreciably increase its sales - a move that worked.
"We looked at cars such as the sporty Chevrolet Corvair Monza, but wanted the Ford Mustang to create a whole new sporty car market segment, which it did.
"For one thing, we gave it a long hood and short rear end to make it instantly recognizable. We also gave it bucket seats.
"We had no market research to speak of, but didn't really care. The Edsel had all kinds of market research, and look what happened to it."
Frey said there was "a hell of a time selling the Ford Mustang idea to Henry Ford II," who had final say on what the company did.
"It wasn't just because he was not a car enthusiast," Frey said. "The company was just getting over the Edsel flop, and it really didn't want to gamble on another new model." So, he said, Ford Mustang development funds had to be taken from "excess funds buried in the budget."
All they needed was enough money to dress up the Falcon; the amount needed for a brand-new car could never have been met by "excess funds" without the maneuver soon being detected.
"The Ford Mustang cost $40 million, which even in the 1960s was petty cash in the auto industry," Frey recalled. "One reason was because it had many mechanical components from the Falcon economy car. "Few noticed the Ford Mustang even had Falcon instruments."
The Ford Mustang had virtually no mechanical problems, despite a crash development time of 18 months, thanks to proven components from Ford's gray old reliable Falcon, basically the creation of Ford President Robert McNamara. Few new mechanical parts meant a low price.
Tucked under the base, $2,368 Ford Mustang's long hood was the Falcon's six-cylinder economy engine, although Iacocca made sure an optional V-8 was offered to supply speed to match the car's looks.
Still, Frey said it turned out that "nearly 40 percent ordered the six, not the V-8." The six-cylinder model was the cheapest, and the young, enthusiastic Ford Mustang crowd generally was not affluent.
The Ford Mustang was perceived as an exciting, sexy, inexpensive car, just perfect for the first crop of World War II baby boomers out to buy their first auto.
The boomers wanted cars different from those of their parents - autos with bucket seats, floor-mounted transmission levers like the Jaguars XK-E sports car had, and plenty of visual splash.
Actually, the innovative Chevy Corvair Monza had bucket seats, a jazzier dashboard than the Ford Mustang and a floor shift. But the Corvair was a strange-looking creation, with a rear-mounted, air-cooled engine that was alien to American car buyers.
The Monza, introduced for 1960, had reliability problems, with oil leaks and broken fan belts. The Falcon was dead reliable, reflecting the no-nonsense personality of its creator, McNamara.
The inexpensive Falcon, also introduced for 1960, was near-perfect in the opinion of McNamara. He was a numbers-oriented intellectual who had such little enthusiasm for cars or Detroit's auto industry that he lived in the university town of Ann Arbor, far from Ford headquarters and fellow Ford executives.
McNamara left Ford to become President John F. Kennedy's defense secretary shortly after being named the company's president in 1960. He began work at Ford in the late 1940s as one of the "Whiz Kids" who helped Henry Ford II save the company from crumbling under a senile Henry Ford I.
But legions of mostly young car buyers in the mid-1960s couldn't have cared less about Ford history.
For here, for the first time with the Ford Mustang, was a sexy, affordable mass-produced car that could be bought as a convertible, because Iacocca had developed a Falcon convertible after McNamara left Ford, much to McNamara's dismay.
McNamara's Falcon soldiered on until 1970, with rapidly diminishing sales after the Ford Mustang's introduction. By then, the Ford Mustang already had become a legendary car. There hasn't been an auto like it since.
Chicago Sun-Times April 17, 1989 Dan Jedlicka