One of the worlds most well love American classic cars is undoubtedly the Ford Mustang. The Mustang was first unleashed on the world at the New York Worlds’s Fair on 17 April 1964 and proved to be Ford’s most successful launch since the A model.
Ford executive John Najjar had come up with a name - he had been a great fan of the World War II fighter plane, the P-51 Mustang - and an American classic was born.
The Mustang was the first of the American ‘pony cars’ - so called because of the sports like features with long bonnets and short rear boots.
A massive publicity campaign was launched in 1964 to promote the Mustang on both TV and the national press and although sales forecasts for the first year had been estimated at 100,000 within 18 months over 1 million had been built. The Mustang even appeared in the James Bond film, Goldfinger, in September 1964 further boosting its popularity.
In the 1970s Ford Motor Company president Lee Iacocca decided a change was necessary. An oil crisis in the middle east and tougher pollution laws meant that large, gas guzzling cars had fell out of favour and the Mustang was no exception. In 1973 a new model - smaller and more fuel efficient was introduced. The Mustang’s reduced size saw it compete admirably with imported sports models such as the Ford Capri (then built in the UK and Germany) and the Toyota Celica and the success story continued.
The Mustang has without question sealed its place in American car history being the only ’pony car’ to have remained in production continuously for over 40 years.