Ford Mustang Introduced 45 Years Ago Today

Look at these pictures. Aren't they beauties? The 1964 Ford Mustang started a revolution when introduced 45 years ago perhaps the first vehicle specifically designed to capture a certain sense of "hip" for the baby boomer generation just coming of car buying age in 1964. While sharing some of the guts of the standard Ford compact, the Falcon, the Mustang incorporated sports car features and a sense of style reserved for much pricier cars geared toward luxury like Thunderbirds and Cadillacs. Ford billed it as a sports car that a secretary could afford.

Over the next two and a half years, the Mustang revolutionized the auto industry. A small car was no longer a cheap compromise. The "pony car" was hip. It offered all the options available on the full-sized standard cars but offered brisk performance and relatively nimble handling. Plymouth restyled its compact essentially installing a giant aquarium on the back of its Valiant making the Barracuda the Mustang's first competitor. From the door forward, the 'Cuda was essentially a jazzed up Valiant, but in attempts to look sporty somewhat emulating the Corvette Stingray, it featured a massive rear window fastback, a very expensive item, if damaged. While Plymouth's entry brought a few more buyers into their dealers, it was hardly head-on competition to Ford's mightly little horse that was the talk of the industry.

In 1967, the real competition began as General Motors introduced it's pony car, the Camaro in Chevy trim or Firebird in Pontiac trim. One could easily be mistaken for the other from a side view. They were sharp-looking cars, very worthy competition for Ford's runaway success. Meanwhile, Mercury would produce a sister car to the Mustang, its first incarnation of the Cougar, built on the Mustang platform but very different looking with a longer wheelbase and more luxurious styling.

Once the competition was set, all the players, including American Motors who had their own Javelin, added more high performance options and bigger, more powerful engines. The Barracuda was no longer a pimped out Valiant but its own car allowing a Dodge spin off, the Challenger. The Mopar entries would sport the massive 426 hemi and 440 engines while the Mustang featured a Boss 429. The midsized cars in Detroit's lineup were no longer plain Jane smaller versions of their full sized counterparts. They borrowed styling elements from the pony cars becoming the real high performance platform. Full sized cars became more exclusively devoted to luxury not sportiness.

All was well in the late 60's as all divisions of the Ford, GM, Chrysler, and American Motors had a full complement of products from pony cars, standard compacts, midsized, full sized, and personal luxury choices. Performance, comfort, style, and entertainment options allowed drivers to personalize their vehicles to fit their own unique sense of style.

The excitement was to be short-lived. Federal environmental standards and insurance rates put the squeeze on high performance products, then came the first Arab oil embargo making Detroit's cars bulky old Dinosaurs ready for extinction. A curious thing had happened to the Pony cars, they got much bigger and heavier no longer having the basic simplicity that make them so popular to begin with.

1973 would be the last year of the Mustang after only a ten year run. Ford had a popular smaller sporty car, the Mercury Capri and Toyota's Celica was capturing much of the Mustang's old market as smaller, more fuel efficient sporty compacts. The Mustang style continued in 1974 working off of the Ford Pinto platform, and while hardly the original Mustang, the Mustang II started off as a very popular entry. Sadly, it was not a good car and quickly its time was over. The Mustang appeared doomed, but its 3rd generation came alive for the 1979 model year, larger, lighter, more nimble, and a little more performance but it looked nothing like the original Mustang. This would be Mustang's longest lived incarnation as restyling efforts made subtle efforts to look more like a real Mustang, but by 1990, the Mustang was looking like it was gone again. The front wheel drive import, the Probe, looked like Mustang's replacement, but Ford found a loyal base that refused to let the pony car die yielding the first attempt at a retro Mustang in 1994, after 30 years of Mustangs.

The 1994 Mustang was a beauty. It had styling touches from the original including the 3 element tail light notion, side sculpting, and a grill design with the pony right in the center. It was clearly the leader of the pony car field once again as the final generation of the Camaro and Firebird simply lacked character. More and more emphasis was returning to high performance to where the 1999 styling refresh looked like the 1994 vintage Mustang on steroids.

The pony car looked like an endangered species in the new millennium as GM terminated the Camaro and Firebird after the 2002 model run. Still, the Mustang held on.

The 2004 North American auto show, 40 years after the original Mustang brought forth another surprise, presenting a styling concept called "retro-futurism." The result would be the 2005 Mustang so faithful to styling concepts of the first generation of Mustangs but just as unmistakably a car of the new millennium. The new Mustang was such a hit that it didn't take Chrysler long before they introduced a Dodge Challenger revival so successful in its car show debut, a production model followed. Chevrolet would not stand still for long charming the car show enthusiasts with a resurrected Camaro that will hit showrooms next month.

These are dark days for Michigan metal, but car enthusiasts can help but feel the effects of a mysterious fountain of youth when catching a glimpse of the latest Mustang and its Chevy and Dodge kin. Can these vehicles, their bold styling and fun loving character influence the rest of Detroit's product line that is so generic, predictable and boring?

Congratulations to Ford Motor Company for the continued success of the Mustang and not giving into impulse to discontinue this legend when times got rough. Could the spirit behind the newest Mustang be part of the same spirit that has made Ford the one Detroit automaker that hasn't hit us up for some operating coin and loan guarantees.

Success finds its rewards even in tough times.