Designing and Building a Legend

The biggest automotive success of the 1960s was actually some 20 years in the making. Since World War II, Americans had shown growing enthusiasm for British and European sports cars with their rakish looks, handy size, tight handling, and intriguing "foreign" features like tachometer, floorshift, and individual "bucket" seats. Sports cars attracted few sales but tons of attention.

It was in 1961 that an astute new Ford Division chief broached the idea of a more distinctive sporty Ford. A self-professed car-crazy and nobody's fool, Lee Iacocca had worked in the rental-car business as a high-schooler, attended Lehigh University, and earned a master's in mechanical engineering at Princeton on a scholarship. After joining the Ford sales force in Pennsylvania, he devised a novel and successful sales scheme that McNamara used nationwide. By age 35, Iacocca was a Ford vice-president. A year later, in 1960, he was promoted to head Ford Division.

The new chief moved quickly to rejuvenate Ford's profitable but stodgy lineup. He rushed out the Futura, added more "Lively Ones" for mid-1962 and again for "1963 1/2," and put fastback rooflines on several models. He also launched an all-out racing program under the same "Total Performance" banner. By mid-decade, Ford was a consistent winner on racetracks and road courses the world over, which boosted sales and the division's bottom line.

But Iacocca wanted something more, suspecting there was a market looking for a new kind of car. He took his hunch to a 1961 meeting of the Fairlane Group, an informal planning committee composed of top company execs and Ford advertising people.

Just as chairman Lee Iacocca got Ford rolling on an effort for a sporty, affordable car, other Ford hands were finishing up a very different think-young car, the Mustang I. Petite and curvy, this open two-seater borrowed a front-wheel-drive powertrain from Ford Germany's mainstream Cardinal/Taunus sedan but put it behind the cockpit. Lead designer John Najjar suggested this mechanical format, then becoming de rigueur for racing cars. He also came up with the horsey name.

Though simply a what-if exercise at first, the Mustang I impressed design vice-president Eugene Bordinat. As it happened, Bordinat wanted a newsworthy "bell-ringer" for Ford's autumn-1961 new-model press preview and ordered that Mustang I be transformed from clay-model dream to drivable reality.

The Mustang I was not only Dearborn's first true sports car, it was very innovative and thus quite unexpected from tradition-bound Detroit. Jaded reporters pleaded for a ride at the new-model preview, then went home to write glowing stories. The public didn't get to see Mustang I in person until October 1962, when race driver Dan Gurney drove it around the Watkins Glen circuit in New York before the start of the U.S. Grand Prix.

For a time, there was talk that Ford would build Mustang I for sale, and Najjar's studio devised a larger windshield, door windows, and a lightweight removable hardtop with that possibility in mind. But as Iacocca later told the press, Mustang I never had a chance.

Where sports-car purists saw a dream come true, Ford's market-savvy chief saw a car that would be costly to produce. He also knew that a tight two-seater with hardly any luggage space would be tough to sell in sufficient numbers to return a sizable profit. "That's sure not the car we want to build, because it can't be a volume car," he declared. "It's too far out." Exit Mustang I.

It was still more than two years before the original 1965 Ford Mustang would make its debut, and Ford was casting about for the right formula. Engineers, designers, and marketing men were in uncharted territory: No one had ever created the kind of car they were after.

To get things moving, an impatient Iacocca had the program restarted in August 1962. A new package was laid down, and the company's three design studios were assigned to come up with fitting proposals. Iacocca felt the in-house competition was bound to produce the car everyone was searching for.

The requirements were daunting: a $2500 target price, 2500-pound curb weight, 180-inch overall length, seating for four, standard floorshift, and maximum use of Falcon components. Styling was to be "sporty, personal, and tight." Marketers threw in the notion of an arm-long option list so buyers could equip the car for economy, luxury, performance, or any combination.

The contest pitted the Ford and Lincoln-Mercury divisional studios against a team from the Advanced Design section under Don DeLaRossa, all guided by design vice-president Eugene Bordinat. Each studio had just two weeks to come up with one or more full-size clay models.

Ultimately, seven candidates were wheeled into the Ford Design Center courtyard for an August 16 executive review. Each had its own character, some more formal than others, but most featured a long hood and a relatively short rear deck surmounted by a close-coupled "greenhouse." This look was at least partly inspired by the sporty yet elegant 1956-57 Continental Mark II, a design benchmark among recent Dearborn cars, but it was also the basic look of many genuine sports cars. Other shared traits included full rear-wheel openings and crisp body lines.

Among the gathered seven, one design leaped out, a white notchback coupe. "It was the only one that seemed to be moving," Iacocca said.

Fittingly perhaps, it came from the Ford Studio headed by veteran designer Joe Oros, studio manager Gale Halderman and executive designer L. David Ash. Oros had his team paint their clay white so as to catch management eyes, which it obviously did. It looked much like the eventual showroom Mustang except for different side treatments left and right -- the former would be chosen for production -- plus rectangular headlamps, different trim, and nameplates (more of which shortly). Ironically, this mockup was a second-thought rush job, completed in only three days after the group spent its first week on a design that Oros immediately vetoed upon returning from an outside seminar.

Except for changes typically made for mass production -- suitable bumpers, round headlights, less windshield rake -- the design was essentially untouched. And most Ford people didn't want it touched anyway. That included engineers, who bent a good many in-house rules to keep the styling intact.

The task of "productionizing" the Mustang fell to executive engineer Jack Predergast and development engineer C. N. Reuter. It was mainly a body engineering job, because the basic chassis, suspension, and driveline were, by design, shared with the Falcon and the related "intermediate" Fairlane, new for '62.

Overall length ended up at 181.6 inches, a bit over the specified limit but identical to that of the reskinned 1964 Falcon. Wheelbase was set at 108 inches, 1.5 inches shorter than Falcon's, but enough to accommodate four passengers. Though Falcon relied mainly on six-cylinder engines, designer Joe Oros' team had left plenty of underhood space for Ford's light and lively new "Challenger" V-8, which arrived with the Fairlane and became a new option for top-line '63 Falcons.

Though Mustang development focused mainly on a hardtop coupe, the effort more or less assumed that a convertible would also be offered despite its inevitably higher price and lower sales. But with racy fastbacks starting to make a comeback in the market, designers felt a sloped-roof coupe was essential to give Mustang a credible performance image with American youth. Planners okayed the fastback, and it was all but wrapped up by mid-October 1963. However, it wouldn't start sale until some six months after its stablemates.

Why the delay? One reason was that the Mustang was a new idea and thus not a guaranteed success, however promising it seemed. While many Ford people thought it would be quite popular, there were a few -- including chairman Henry Ford II -- who feared a replay of the recent Edsel fiasco. They needn't have worried. Indeed, market research conducted during the program's final months strongly indicated that Ford had a winner on its hands. But the Edsel's outlook had been just as rosy, hence a certain amount of hand-wringing in late 1963.

By that point, Ford had settled on the Mustang name after months of search and debate. Cougar had emerged as the early favorite, one reason the Oros team model wore Cougar nameplates and a big stylized cat within its grille. But countless other names were considered along the way, including Torino, Turino, and even T-5. Chairman Ford liked "Thunderbird II" and "T-Bird II." Ford Division chief Lee Iacocca, engineer Donald N. Frey, and others argued for Mustang, though other horses were in the running for a time, including Colt, Bronco, Maverick -- and Pinto.

In any case, the name wasn't finally decided until late in the game. Indeed, some early Mustang press photos showed production prototypes with another big cat in the grille. But a galloping horse soon took its place. This icon was cast from a mahogany carving by sculptor Waino Kangas working from sketches by John Najjar and Phil Clark for the Mustang I. Equine name aside, the only other legacy from the little midships roadster was a small tri-color logo designed by Najjar, which appeared on the production model's dashboard and lower front fenders.

In many ways, Mustang was a perfect name for the sporty new Ford, evoking romantic images of free-spirited cowboys astride powerful steeds. Just as important, it was easy to spell and easy to remember. As one Ford ad man said, Mustang "had the excitement of the wide-open spaces, and it was American as all hell."

But it wasn't yet a household name, and Ford publicists wanted to build on the buzz created by the Mustang I. The result was a new showpiece, a convertible logically named Mustang II. Though billed as another "experiment," this was really an exaggerated preview of the showroom models, built after tooling was ordered with mostly production-line parts.

Differences included a five-inch longer hood, a more pointed front, a bulkier tail, a cut-down windshield, matching liftoff hardtop, no bumpers, and an elaborately trimmed custom interior. Ford returned to Watkins Glen in October 1963 to unveil the Mustang II. Response was enthusiastic, which must have lessened some anxiety in Dearborn. Reporters, noting the car looked factory-ready, now knew what they'd suspected for months: Ford was up to something potentially very big.

The Mustang II kicked off a six-month publicity buildup to announcement day. The next major step came on January 21, 1964, when invited reporters went to Dearborn for a "Mustang Technical Press Conference." Iacocca, who conceived the Mustang idea, played host, beaming like a proud new papa. "Frankly, we can hardly wait for you to get behind the wheel of a Mustang," he gushed. "We think you're in for a driving experience such as you've never had before."

Next: Marketing and Selling a Legend