We Love Ford's, Past, Present And Future

We Love Ford's, Past, Present And Future

The 1974 Ford Mustang, a dramatically smaller, lighter design, marked a fresh start for America's original pony car. It was the brainchild of Lee Iacocca, who fathered the first Mustang a decade earlier. Appropriately named Mustang II, the car eventually would be seen as a low point in Mustang's proud history. But that's certainly not the way it started out. Success often stems as much from common sense and dumb luck as from cleverness and hard work. The Mustang II is a case in point. As the smallest, lightest Mustang since the original, it was a fresh start for Ford's pony car and a refreshing return to rationality. And it couldn't have been better timed, introduced just two months before the first "Energy Crisis" upended America. People came in droves to see the Mustang II -- and to buy. In several ways, the Mustang II shows how history repeats itself in the automotive world. For starters, Lee Iaccoca just knew the market was ready for it in the same way he suspected the original Mustang was the right car for its time.

Pony cars were falling from favor by 1970, with many buyers turning to lower-priced, fuel-efficient compacts like Ford's own Maverick -- a huge first-year success itself. The 1971 Ford Mustang Boss 351 was Ford's final high-performance Mustang of the classic muscle car era. Here's a profile, photos, and specifications. The 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1 428 Cobra Jet was the muscle car Mustang fans had waited for. Gallop into its profile, photos, and specifications. 2 import coupes like Ford's own British/German Capri, which bowed in April 1970 to good reviews and strong initial demand. Another "captive import," GM's German-built Opel Manta, was selling well, and the Toyota Celica was more popular still. In 1965 such "mini-pony cars" attracted fewer than 100,000 sales, but by 1972 were up to around 300,000 -- and expected to go above 400,000 by '74. Mustang II's mission was to capture a big slice of this sizable new pie.

But Ford didn't start out to start over. The Mustang II program actually dates from around the middle of 1969, when work began on what was then simply the next Mustang. With muscle-car mania still raging, first thoughts inevitably centered on larger, heavier-looking designs, reflecting Ford's belief that buyers would still want roomy, "impressive" pony cars in the mid-Seventies. In fact, early proposals were even more hulking than the '71 Mustang then nearing completion. Iacocca had never liked Bunkie Knudsen's '71 Mustang, and it wasn't just because the man who backed it had been favored with the president's chair. Iacocca had been troubled by Mustang's course since 1966. He wasn't alone. Auto Editors of Consumer Guide Mustang II didn't start out as a much-smaller pony car but as an even bigger next Mustang. To her likely surprise, the chairman said he agreed. In one nod to the past, Iacocca instituted an in-house design competition to develop the next Mustang. In November 1969, less than two months after Henry Ford II fired Bunkie Knudsen as Ford president, new chief Lee Iacocca voiced his own concerns to a group of top-level Ford executives at the toney Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia.

An October 1970 idea for the Mustang II looked more mid-size than pony car. Covered rear wheels likely would have been rejected. Both programs were turned over to Nat Adamson, manager of advanced product planning, who recalled that the Maverick-based car, code named "Ohio," was initially favored. But the smaller Arizona got priority when three concept models "tested" well against contemporary sports cars in two Southern California consumer showings. It was the first sign the public might go for something even smaller than the original Mustang. The June 1969 "Apex" was one of the earliest attempts at a downsized Mustang. But neither of these programs produced anything that satisfied Iacocca, design vice president Eugene Bordinat, or Advanced Design chief Don DeLaRossa. Ohio proposals ended up blowsy and staid, while initial Arizona designs looked like the restyled Pintos they were. But then, in November 1970, Ford acquired a controlling interest in Ghia of Italy, and Iacocca wasted no time in asking the famed coachbuilder to submit concepts for his new small sporty car.

With typical dispatch, Ghia sent over a running prototype in just 53 days, a sloped-nose red-and-black fastback that Iacocca himself drove to and from work. It greatly accelerated the drive toward the eventual Mustang II. Several months later, Ghia offered a second running prototype, a trim notchback with an airy "pagoda" roof a la Mercedes SL and bodyside sculpturing like that of the first Mustang. This, too, would stimulate Dearborn design thinking. Around July 1971, management decided to abandon the Ohio car and moved up Adamson's preferred Arizona to 1974. These were key decisions, because they effectively ruled out using Ford's long-serving inline six-cylinder engine. Still, there was no early consensus on how much smaller the new Mustang should be, though it obviously had to shrink from 1971-73 size. There was also debate over whether to offer a notchback, a fastback, or a blend of both. The second of two prototypes from Italian coachbuilder Ghia revived Mustang's original bodyside sculpturing.