….Happy Birthday to you!  The Ford Mustang, that is, not the horse, nor the “ranch” in Nevada.  Yes, the Ford Mustang turns 50 years old this week.  Though today it is a globally recognized American Icon, it very nearly never came to be.  Accountants at Ford were not convinced of the need for the new model since it was really just a Falcon with different bodywork and they believed it’s introduction would only hurt sales of that model.  Still, legendary marketing man Lee Iacocca pushed hard for the project and won out in the end.  The projected sales for the first year were around 100,000 units, and ended up in reality being over 400,000 units!  And it is a brand that is still thriving today, even after many copycat competitors  have come and gone and come and gone again.

I have owned a few Mustangs, though is has been about 20 years since my last one.  The first car that was my very own was a 65 sedan which I bought from my brother-in-law in the mid seventies for $300.  It had a 200 cubic inch 6 cylinder engine and a 1 barrel carburetor that looked like it belonged on lawn mower.  The transmission was a three speed manual with a floor mounted stick.  It had an after market paint job in a non factory color, a kind of “root beer brown” which earned it the nickname “hershey car” though in reality it was more metalic brown than chocolate.  Overall, a great car – simple transportation, nothing fancy.  I drove the crap out of it for 4 or 5 years and sold it for $200 when the transmission finally went out.  I don’t have an actual picture, but this one is very close:

same hubcaps as mine

My second Mustang belonged initially to my girlfriend who I later married and so it was more ours than mine.  It was also a 65 with the same 200 c.i. engine and three speed manual tranny as mine, but this one was a fastback 2+2 (fold down rear bucket seats) and ran alot better than my first one.  It was positively peppy.  I wish I had taken better care of it and kept it, but after marriage and when a couple kids came along it wasn’t practical.  Again, I have no picture but here is a similar one:

nearly identical to ours

My most recent Mustang was the first brand new car I ever bought: a 1979 Mustang “Ghia” coupe.  This generation of Mustang, the 3rd, after the ill-conceived “Mustang II” was not a muscle car in any sense.  It was after all the late 70’s and we had just gone through the Arab Oil Embargo and so small engines were the order of the day.  All Mustangs of that vintage had only 4 cylinder engines, though there was a turbo option (larger engines were re-introduced later).  Mine did not have a turbo, but it was a fairly light car and so performed reasonably well with it’s 4 speed manual transmission.

mine was Burgundy Red, but same faux wire wheels

Since the Mustang of legend is always thought of as a muscle car, my next one will be more along these lines:

I’m a vanilla kind of guy

Oh, who am I kidding?  By the time I’m ready to buy one they will probably be wind-powered…

…but I suppose I could live with it