American Muscle: The Mustang

American Muscle: The Mustang

America was in need for a new style of car, and Ford Product Manager N. Frey and Ford Division general manger Lee Iacocca were the ones to bring it to them. 0-60 in 5.1 seconds, The Ford Mustang is one of the most popular cars to hit America, having the most successful launch in automotive history. During the first few years of the Mustang it was at a very affordable price, sporty looking, and had a nice performance. In 1994, the Ford Mustang won Motor Trends Car of the Year award and from 1983 to The Mustang has come a long way in the past forty-four years, it is a very successful car, made by a dependable company, and can be customized to be the car for you.

Much of the Mustang was put together using parts that they already used on other cars, such as the Falcon. Sitting at 180 inches long and 68.2 inches wide, and equipped with a V6 Engine the mustang weighed about 2570 pounds. When ordering a Mustang you were able to choose from a list of equipment so you could customize your car to the way you wanted it. The Mustangs introduction to the United States was perfect, because it was released during the first years of the baby boomers generation. Iacocca repeatedly tried to get the go ahead to build the Mustang, and in 1962 he finally did.

The Design team of the Mustang only had 18 months to make the car and they finished well before that and under budget as well. Ford designers pretty much threw out the handbook on design limitation pushing some of the technology of the time to its limit. Even though a lot of parts on the Mustang came from the Falcon car, its body was completely different and had very good handling for its time. There were some big changes to the Mustang, only five months after it had been introduced. Ford completely changed the engine on the Mustang, making it faster and stronger, and eventually the designers came up with the now famous Mustang GT.

Some major Competition in the 1960's was the Corvette, but Ford added a new man to the design team to help make a better Mustang and his name was Carroll Shelby. Carroll Shelby was determined to turn the Mustang GT into a racing machine to not only over power the Corvette but to put its looks to shame as well. The first car produced by this new team was the GT-350, a high performance car, with a 4-speed manual transmission, less hood, less car seats, and the road-racing look. With a new side exhaust and Shelby magnesium wheels, this new racing car would go from 0-60 in 3.4 seconds. After a few great years Shelby and Ford pulled apart from each other, but even today the teams 1967-1970 Mustang Models were the most sought after vehicle today.

The Mustang was a great success for Ford Motor Company, having annually sold 150,000 Mustangs the last few years. Ford never stopped producing Mustangs after 1962; in fact today they are still coming up with newer models and more upgrades. In 1966 the Mustang did not under go much change except for under the hood where the engine was replaced with an even more powerful one. In 1969, Ford Motor Company a new style of Mustang that was meant to be in Nascar. In that same year and 1970 the Boss 429 came out with the most powerful engine at the time, and was only available with a manual transmission.

The 1971 through 1973 models were produced under a new product manager for Ford by the name of Semon Knudsen, having incredible new engines and a great deal of horsepower. The public however did not like the new models of the Mustang and they demanded that it be turned back to the way it was. The 1974 Mustang was a very short live car, though it did make Motor Trends Car of the Year, but was heavier and slower. One of the major downfalls of the Mustang II that was built during these years was the fact that it could not support a V8 engine like the old Mustang used to be able to. However the Mustang II had some of the best sales in all of Ford Motor