What's so special about the Ford Mustang?

If I could have my time again, I’d be a teenager in 1960s America.

The Sixties are often remembered as a time of conflict, with the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, and a string of riots and high-profile assassinations.

But they were also a time of great human endeavour - both culturally through music, cinema, and fashion - and technologically with integrated circuits, lasers, and satellites, culminating in Man’s successful landing on the Moon.

These post-war years belonged to the baby boomers, and important as these achievements were, a new generation of teenagers were about to achieve a milestone all of their own: the attainment of a driver’s licence.

Cars, until this point, had been designed for your Dad. They were either grey, functional boxes for the voyage to the office or ostentatious whales bristling with fins and hood ornaments.

But the kids didn’t want that. They wanted something cool to cruise to the beach in. Something that could turn a corner. A car that allowed them to express themselves, even to rebel. They wanted rock ‘n’ roll on wheels, but with a student-friendly price tag.

Just as there was on the political streets of America, a revolution was brewing in automotive tastes. And one man in an office saw it coming.

Lee Iacocca was General Manager of the Ford Division in the early 1960s, having established himself as something of a sales and marketing whiz. He had a vision of a sporty four-seater that would appeal to this new generation, and he badgered Henry Ford II into giving him $45 million (a paltry amount) to develop the new car, gambling his job into the bargain.

The project started with an ambitious set of goals: to produce a sporty four-seat car with European styling that weighed less than 2,500 lbs and cost less than $2,500. Iacocca set an 18-month deadline to completion, a target that conveniently took the team up to the 1964 World’s Fair in New York.

To hit these targets, Iacocca’s team used the platform from the rather dowdy Ford Falcon, as well as a selection of existing parts. The old joke that you could peel off the Mustang badge from the steering wheel of an early car and find a Falcon logo underneath was entirely true, but today, this practice of platform-sharing is a cornerstone of modern car development.

The Mustang also introduced the world to the concept of extensive options lists. Offering the car with an array of extra-cost options not only allowed buyers to customise their cars to suit their tastes; it also helped Ford keep the base price low while increasing profitability by enticing customers to pay for upgrades.

The 1964 press materials declared: “With standard equipment, the Mustang is an economical, fun-to-drive car with all-weather comfort and unique styling. With [the] addition of a few well-designed options, it becomes a high-performance action car with precise handling and rapid acceleration.”

Options included a full-length centre console, additional gauges, air conditioning, power brakes, power steering, push-button radio, a handling package with faster steering, sports wheels and tyres, automatic transmission, and – of course - three different V8 engines.

This customisation was key to the Mustang’s everyman appeal: customers could order a light-weight agile racer, a luxurious cruiser, or an economical family car. It could be almost whatever you wanted it to be.

The Mustang made its debut at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, and in the first of many savvy marketing stunts, the cars were placed in strategic locations to turn the queuing public into a captive audience.

Adverts ran in 2,600 newspapers simultaneously across the US, and the car appeared – with Iacocca – on the covers of both Time and Newsweek.

By any yardstick, the car was a huge success, selling more than 22,000 in the first day alone – about the same number of Corvettes sold in an entire year. It was the best-selling car since the Model T, and by the end of its first year, over 418,000 had been built. Within eighteen months, sales would reach more than a million, a milestone that even the venerable VW Beetle would need 10 years to reach.

More than half the buyers in the first year were under the age of 34, and it was bought by almost as many women as men – unheard of at the time. It straddled social classes, too, with owners ranging from secretaries to Presidents.

Those that couldn’t afford their own Mustang still had the chance to drive one, thanks to an exclusive deal between Ford, Shelby and Hertz that created the GT350H. For $17 a day and 17 cents a mile, anyone over the age of 25 could rent one, making them popular with weekend racing drivers and earning them the title ‘Rent-a-Racers.’

The Mustang name went on to litter the Motorsport Hall of Fame alongside that of legends Parnelli Jones, Jerry Titus and others, and the connection with Carroll Shelby would continue well into the new millennium.

The silver screen soon beckoned and in 1965 the Mustang made its first movie appearance in Goldfinger, before being shredded by James Bond’s Aston Martin.

Its most famous role came in 1968, when Steve McQueen spent nearly 10 minutes squealing, sliding and jumping one around the streets of San Francisco in Bullitt, firmly cementing the car in the hearts of cinema-goers everywhere and securing a place in the history books. The Mustang’s performance in 1974’s Gone in 60 Seconds earnt it a place in the film’s opening credits, and was charismatic enough to warrant a remake in 2000 with Nicolas Cage at the wheel that would make the name Eleanor forever synonymous with Mustang.

And so the list of achievements goes on: the Mustang is the only car to have reached the top of the Empire State Building – twice; the owner of the first Mustang ever sold still owns it today; it’s been immortalised on postage stamps and as Hot Wheels models; inspired numerous chart-topping songs; and features in the memories of countless people who all have a personal connection with a car that spans half a century in production.

Impressive as all of this is, the Mustang’s story is one that’s largely told in North America, the only country where the car has ever been officially sold.

That all changed with the 2015 Mustang – for the first time in its then 50-year history, the Mustang was officially sold in Europe, and in right-hand drive.

When Iacocca looked at some numbers and saw the baby-boomers toddling over the horizon, no-one imagined that the car that followed would still be around more than 50 years later.  The original Mustang was a success because it mobilised a generation, introduced the concept of personalisation, and captured the feelings and emotions not just of the young, but of an entire nation.

The Mustang's endurance has stemmed from its ability to adapt, and over the course of five decades it responded to changing tastes and even the occasional oil crisis.  With buyers more demanding than ever before, the Mustang that takes us into the next 50 years is the most advanced yet, and promises to offer a breadth of capability never before seen from the pony car.

In 1964 when Iacocca addressed the media at the Mustang's launch, he didn't claim the car would be 'all things to all people.'  Instead he said simply that he believed it would be 'more things to more people.'

With more than 9,300 Europeans clamouring for the chance to own one of the first 500 units, it's clear the Mustang still means as much to people as it did in the beginning.