photo by the author
(Submitted by Aaron Toth) Those who lived through high school almost certainly remember Robert Frost’s ubiquitous poem titled “The Road Not Taken.” Down Ford Motor Company’s untrodden path could have easily rolled the Mustang I concept car, a car that, according to the following period Ford video, was nearly production ready.
It certainly impressed car loving bystanders with its capable handling and racy looks. Technically, it’s fascinating to anyone interested in 1960s car technology, utilizing a neat German Ford V4 (yep, a V4) with a hotter camshaft and carburetion. It used off the shelf Ford of England brakes, and a tube chassis and body hand formed by Troutman and Barnes of California. It looks like just about anybody of note in the car world, including Dan Gurney, got a crack at the wheel of this seemingly well-sorted prototype. The adjustable pedals and steering wheel might have taken some getting used to, as would the manual headlights, but those are issues that probably would have been sorted out for production.
Obviously, Ford made the right financial decision in abandoning this car for the Mustang that we know, but how interesting a competitor for Alfas, Triumphs, and MGs would this thing have been? Today, the one and only running example sits at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI. I’ve been visiting it for years, but imagine my surprise when my Dad (who worked at our local Ford dealer in the late 60s and early 70s) said that that exact car sat in the service department in a corner for at least a year. I’ve heard stories about some fanatical Ford employees hiding that car over the years to keep it from suffering an ignominious fate. Dad said that nobody really made a big deal about it at the time, and that he probably moved it and drove it around the lot a time or two. If that’s the case, my Dad’s a lucky guy. I wonder where the Mustang I sojourned before it found its way home.
We can dream about it all we want, somewhere along the line I don’t think it would have sold much better than the MG-B. And compared to the boring, technologically deficient Mustang . . .
I don’t think this would have sold even as well as the MGB. The MGB was really pretty successful for a two-seat sports car: once production was up to steam, in the realm of 25,000 cars a year, sometimes a little better than that. I have to assume the Mustang I would have cost more than an MGB or TR4 in any case, and a starting price over $3,500 would have been suicidal in that market.
A fascinating car, but I have to agree with Syke – this would have been a niche vehicle at best. A sports car with a V4 coming out about the same time as the GTO would have been creamed. There were, what, 50 people interested in a well-balanced mid-engined 4 cylinder sports car in the mid 1960s?
Add in the fact that the Anglia had been sold here but did not exactly rack up a reputation for durability, and the car’s British innards would have been a liability on the sales floor.
This was the difference between Ford and GM in that era. GM would have built this car just because it could, and would probably have sold about 10K of them a year for 2 or 3 years (a lot of them probably out of Corvair’s buyers). Ford took a pass on the niche vehicle and saw the emerging outline of a much more lucrative market to serve – and then dominated it.
Nice sports car but would it have sold in sufficient numbers? its really only a space framed Transit van with that awful shaky V4 in the middle, tuned admittedly, did they fix the distributor/oil pump drive issues or just soup it up and install, Iaccocas restyle of the Falcon was a much better idea sales wise, and as we know if you pour enough money into a Mustang they go quite well.
Other than the brakes (which I’m pretty sure didn’t come from an Anglia — I don’t think the Anglia ever offered front discs), I’m not sure what on this car would have been British. The engine and transaxle were adapted from the Taunus 15M and I think most of the chassis (and certainly the body) were pretty much bespoke. I don’t think the car would have sold in meaningful numbers, but I don’t think having a few English Ford components would have made much difference. Some six-cylinder Mustangs used an English Ford four-speed and I don’t think anybody squawked about that except insofar as it was a pricey option for a six.
The 9.5″ front discs were from a Consul, as were the rear drums. Nothing wrong with them.
Looks to me like the car would have required substantial changes before a version could have been sold to the public anyhow. eg: bumpers, full height windshield.
D type Jaguars were sold without windscreens or bumpers without any trouble to the public but those were a proven road/race car
According to wikipedia, total D-type production was under 100 cars TOTAL, and that was over 4 years. Also, the roadworthy XKSS variant was fitted with a full windshield, windshield wipers, passenger door, bumpers, convertible top, etc. just like I’m saying this car would need.
As it sits, the Mustang-I would be little more than a race car that could legally (?) drive itself to the track, an extremely narrow niche. If this was to compete with Triumph, MG, etc. then it would need to be a bit more practical to appeal to a wider audience. You said as much yourself in the comments above.
A lot of IFs. IF they had made it, IF they had advertised the heck out of it, IF they had used Ford’s economies of scale to make the cost affordable…
@jpcavanaugh
“GM would have built this car just because it could, and would probably have sold about 10K of them a year for 2 or 3 years”
Yeah, I think they called it the Fiero. ;^)
Still my favorite “Mustang”, however.
Ha ha, when I read that line, my first thought was also to the Fiero.
My understanding is that this was a bit of a styling decoy. They knew the basic package of the ‘Cougar’ and wanted to throw the other manufacturers off the scent. This little thing was never going to fly, so to speak, but it was far enough away from the 2+2 seating and Cougar styling cues to keep the public happy and the opposition in the dark. The last minute change was to call the 2+2 Cougar a Mustang and then they launched it as a production model. Mustang II was made to prepare the public for the styling cues.
I agree, I doubt it was ever intended to be more than a concept car.
Aaron – which local Ford dealer do you refer to? Detroit area or otherwise?
It was Delta Ford in Bay City, which is why I thought it was so strange that it was there. My Dad figured it was probably around ’67 or so.
Thanks Aaron – after googling it, not a long way from Dearborn in the scheme of things!
The closest production cars to the original Mustang I would probably be the Saab Sonnett V4, sold from 1967 – 1969, and the elemental Lotus Elise sold in the US from 2005 – 2011. The Sonnett V4 sold a grand total of 1,610 vehicles, almost all exclusively in the US, a miniscule fraction of total Mustang sales for even the worst three years.
Likewise, the Lotus Elise’ best year in the US was it’s first (2005) with 3,321. The next year was a third of that, 735 in 2007, and the final three years never saw sales above *two* figures (never over one hundred sold annually).
So, all indications are that if the V4, mid-engine Mustang I had made production, it would have been a niche vehicle, at best (and a very small niche, at that, considering the big V8 engine craze of the sixties). For a niche sports car, Ford’s success with the V8-powered AC Ace (i.e., Shelby Cobra) speaks for itself.
When you say success, they built around 1000 Cobras. A cheaper car with more parts-bin components could have worked, you could also compare it to the Fiat X1/9. Of course it still would have been too low-volume for Ford.
‘Success’ is a relative term. In terms of unit profit and volume, the Cobra wasn’t all that great (although they were certainly pricey).
But, like Chrysler and the 426 Hemi, Ford has gotten a whole lot of success out of the Cobra is myriad other ways. To this day, when using the word ‘Cobra’ in automotive circles, it’s nearly as identifiable with Ford as Mustang or Thunderbird. You can bet that there were more than a few people who have been swayed to a Ford simply because of the linkage to the name.
Would the word ‘Mustang’ have evolved into a household name if the Mustang I had made production, or would it have faded into obscurity like other, low-volume projects? The Saab Sonnett and Lotus Elise aren’t exactly icons.
The Corvair Monza convertible was the closest inspiration for this. Its relative success caught Detroit by surprise, with the opposition trying to figure how to replicate it.
Even though I’m convinced that this was a decoy for the car that was eventually released as the Mustang, it was also possibly an exploratory effort to combat the Monza. Whatever volumes were sold of the Monza would be the closest rule of thumb.