Mustang Turns 50

36 DAC NEWS DECEMBER 2014

Conceived 50 years ago during a lunch at the Detroit Athletic Club, the celebrated Ford Mustang remains popular with the public after five decades on the road.

The Mustang’s success spawned the original “pony car” segment – affordable, sporty automobiles with long hoods, short decks, V-8 or six cylinder engines, and fast acceleration. While rivals such as the Plymouth Barracuda and Pontiac Firebird fell into the automotive dustbin of history, the Mustang survives.

Not only was the Mustang conceived at the DAC, other DAC members were involved in designing and recreating the car over the years.

“Mustang represents the freedom and fun of the open road; a timeless appeal that never gets old,” said Bill Ford, Jr., executive chairman of Ford Motor Company and a DAC member for nearly 24 years, in a statement for the DAC News. “When it launched in 1964, there was a substantial demand for a small, sporty car that provided an ideal balance between

performance and practicality.”The “father” of the Mustang, Lee

Iacocca, a DAC member from 1959-1981, said in a DAC News interview that: “The Mustang was built for the Baby Boom Generation. It was a time when our population had shifted in attitude and lifestyle.”

The original Mustang was developed to meet four goals, Iacocca continued, as a car for two car families with surplus cash to spend; for young drivers with very little money to spend; as a woman’s car with easy

Born at the DAC

Mustangturns

BY JOSEPH CABADAS

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37DAC NEWS DECEMBER 2014

maintenance; and a sporty new car for those seeking new toys.

“I think the initial goals have consistently been adhered to for the last 50 years, making the Mustang highly recognizable and maintaining what some believe is a ‘cult like’ following,” Iacocca said.

Iacocca credited his team for bringing the car to fruition. Several other DAC members were among the Ford personnel who figured prominently in the creation of the 1964 ½ Mustang including Ford Chief Designer Eugene Bordinat, Jr. and Donald N. Frey, who spearheaded the car’s design and development.

For the early 1970s Mustang, which were much larger and more powerful than the original ‘Stang, former DAC President Semon E. “Bunkie” Knudsen even had a hand in its creation.

A LUNCH AT THE DAC

The story of the Mustang starts with Iacocca, who was born 90 years ago on Oct. 15, 1924, in Allentown (PA). Graduating from

Pennsylvania’s Lehigh University, he earned a fellowship at Princeton before joining Ford in 1946 as an engineer.

Discovering he excelled at sales, he quickly rose up the corporate ranks. When Henry Ford II named Robert S. McNamara as president of Ford Motor Company in November 1960, Iacocca became vice president and general manager of the Ford Division.

Iacocca’s idea for the Mustang arose at one of his frequent luncheon meetings at the DAC in early 1961, according to the 1987 book “The Fords: An American Epic,” by Peter Collier and David Horowitz. He and his top lieutenants, including his close aide Hal Sperlich, were discussing how

Chevrolet was introducing the Monza, which was a sportier version of its Corvair.

Determined to have a new car that was unlike anything else on the market, Iacocca instructed the Ford Design Department to create something “bold and brassy.” Club member Don Frey, who was Ford Division’s assistant general manager and chief engineer, assembled the team that worked on the Mustang.

Born in St. Louis in 1923, Frey grew up in Waterloo, IA where his father was chief metallurgist at a John Deere factory. After serving in the Army during World War II, he earned bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in metallurgy from the University of Michigan.

Joining the DAC in 1963, Frey went on to become chairman and CEO of Bell & Howell Company, but at Ford he kept the Mustang project going despite the fact Henry Ford II rejected the proposed car four times before he finally approved it.

The Mustang project was “bootlegged,” Frey once told USA Today in a 2004 interview. “There was no official approval for this thing. We had to do it on a shoestring.”

Lacking resources, Frey, Iacocca, designers and engineers met in a storage facility by day and a motel at night.

Although Iacocca claimed that extensive market research had been conducted to identify the youth market

for which the Mustang was created, Frey told the enthusiast publication Mustang Monthly in 1983 that all the reports were made up afterwards “to sanctify the whole thing” for Henry Ford II and the financial executives.

For the Mustang’s chief designer, Frey picked Joseph E. Oros, Jr., who had worked on the four-seat 1958 Ford Thunderbird.

Opposite, Lee Iacocca and Don Frey stand with one of the first Ford Mustangs (the plate refers to the goal to sell 417,000 Mustangs by April of 1965). Photos for this story courtesy of Ford Motor Company. Above, Bill Ford, Jr., drove a Mustang off the line in 2004 representing the company’s 300th millionth vehicle produced.

DAC member Eugene Bordinat introducing the Mustang to the press at the 1964 New York World’s Fair.


Ford Chief Designer Gene Bordinat was also involved. A native of Toledo, OH and educated at the Cranbrook Academy of Art and U of M, Bordinat had just become Ford’s head designer in 1961 as the Mustang project got rolling and oversaw the styling of all Ford Motor Company vehicles.

To save tooling costs, Sperlich suggested using the Ford Falcon platform.

FALCON TO THE MUSTANG

The Falcon was a lightweight, efficient, and low cost platform that had been championed by McNamara as a simple, affordable family automobile but was soon derided by critics as a “granny’s car.”

Presented with the marketing research and estimates on how low the production costs were, Henry Ford II – company chairman and grandson of the founder – finally authorized the Mustang, but looked at Frey and told him in several unprintable words that he would be fired if the car didn’t succeed, according to Frey’s 2010 obituary in

The New York Times.Ford introduced the new car to

the press at the New York World’s Fair on April 13, 1964. Although the automaker’s financial experts predicted that only 80,000 units would sell the first year, Iacocca told a reporter that the “Mustang will go 417,175.”

The car went on sale halfway into 1964, hence the reason it is often referred to as a 1964 ½ Mustang rather than being a 1965 model.

“The Mustang was a huge hit,” noted DAC member and famed automotive executive Robert A. “Bob” Lutz in an interview. “Not all were fire breathing V-8s – a whole batch of them had the Ford inline six engine

– but the low-cost Mustang became a good ‘secretary’s car.’”

While production of the Mustang was scheduled for the Dearborn Assembly Plant at the Rouge, Ford moved very fast to add production space elsewhere. Actual sales for the Mustang’s first full year were 418,812 units.

With an overall length of 181.6 inches and a 108 inch wheelbase, the car offered buyers a choice of coupe or convertible styles and four engines – ranging from the base 101-horsepower inline six-cylinder to the 271 horsepower V-8 – and a starting price of $2,368.

Less than two years after the first production Mustang was made, on March 2, 1966, the one-millionth Mustang came out of the Rouge, eclipsing the Falcon’s record. Thanks to the efforts of Ford Public Relations Manager and DAC member Walter T. Murphy, Time and Newsweek featured Iacocca and the Mustang on their covers in the same week.

FORD REVEALS A MARKET

Creating the original car was risky, noted Lutz, whose career included working at General Motors, Ford, and BMW, and is an acknowledged all-around automotive enthusiast and

Above, the final inspection is made of Mustangs at the Dearborn Assembly plant in 1968. Below, Frey stands besides a 1960 Ford Falcon with Iacocca next to his offspring – the 1965 Mustang.


CONTINUING LEGACY

Improvements were made to the Mustang, but one of the biggest changes came after Henry Ford II recruited Semon E. “Bunkie” Knudsen to become Ford Motor Company’s president in January 1968.

The former DAC president, Knudsen had led Pontiac’s early

interested and it was rush, rush, rush to get the first Camaro out.”

Although the Plymouth Barracuda had debuted two weeks ahead of the Mustang, it took General Motors and Chrysler nearly two years to respond with competing models including the Chevy Camaro, Pontiac Firebird, and Dodge Challenger. Even American Motors Corporation released its own pony car – the AMC Javelin.

expert. At Chrysler, Lutz was vice chairman for a time, having been recruited by Iacocca.

In his 2011 book “Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business,” Lutz looked at the Ford Mustang success from the General Motors perspective.

GM had toyed with making a small, sporty car like the Mustang, but the automaker’s financial analysts – or “bean counters,” as Lutz called them – had figured that only 100,000 such vehicles sold annually in the United States. With the right car and marketing, GM might carve out 50,000 sales away from brands such as MG, Jaguar, Triumph, Mercedes-Benz, and Porsche.

“You can’t do a marketing program for 50,000 cars, so GM rejected the idea,” Lutz said. “But when Ford demonstrated that the true market was half a million cars, now GM became

Working on the Mustang coupe in 1964.


potent, and more capable, but they moved farther and farther away from the original concept of a smallish, lightweight, and attractive sports coupe and convertible,” Lutz said. “Basically, all of those cars were improved to oblivion where no one could afford to do the next cycle because the sales volume wasn’t there anymore.”

Knudsen and stylist Larry Shinoda are credited with making the larger-bodied Mustangs that appeared in 1971, offering even bigger engines, more performance, improved brakes and tires.

revival before going to Chevrolet. Apparently upset that he was passed over for promotion to become General Motors president in favor of fellow DAC member Ed Cole, Knudsen accepted Ford’s offer.

About the time Knudsen moved to Ford, GM’s and Chrysler’s pony cars were dividing the market and the “horsepower war” began.

Nearly one-third of buyers wanted great acceleration, plus air conditioning, automatic transmissions, eight-track players, and roomier back seats. Yet, it was difficult to fit all of those features into the Falcon/Mustang chassis.

The answer? The typical Detroit solution was “bigger is better.”

“The Mustangs, Camaros, and Barracudas all got heavier, more

The 1971 “Knudsen bodied” Mustang was eight inches longer, six inches wider and 600 pounds heavier than the original 1964 ½ pony car. But buyers were

turned off as sales slid from 299,824 units in 1969 to 149,678 units.

However, well before the launch of the new pony car, Henry Ford II fired Knudsen in September 1969. When asked by reporters why he had been fired, all Knudsen would say was that Henry Ford II “wanted to resume control of the company.”

In an effort to rejuvenate the car, Iacocca turned to the Italian design firm of Carrozzeria Ghia to help come up with the Mustang II, which was introduced in September 1973. Weighing 3,000 pounds less than its

The 1966 Ford Mustang is showcased in a publicity photograph.


predecessor, the car was even shorter than the original Mustang.

Mustang II sales were boosted by the aftermath of the oil embargo by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting States (OPEC). Its production climbed to 385,993 units for the 1974 model year.

Again seeking changes at his company, Henry Ford II fired Iacocca in 1978. Not giving up, Iacocca

moved on to Chrysler – where Sperlich was already at – and worked to save that company from bankruptcy with new products such as the minivan.

“I am best known for the Mustang, but the minivan saved a company and thousands of jobs,” Iacocca said in the DAC News interview.

Ford continued to reinvent the look of the Mustang with the 1979 model that had European styling and was on the “Fox” platform.

The Fox platform served the Mustang for nearly 26 years, before being replaced by a more modern chassis.

“Throughout the years, it has remained a sporty car that is affordable and versatile with a design that has kept the classic essence of what makes a Mustang a Mustang,” noted Bill Ford, Jr. “The new 2015 model is a great example of that and our best Mustang ever.”

Immortalized in songs such as the song “Mustang Sally” and appearing in movies ranging from Bullitt to the Transformers franchise, the Ford Mustang is alive in the pop culture even as the next generation of the car comes out of Ford’s Flat Rock Assembly Plant.

Lee Iacocca

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Mustang Turns 50