It’s been proven that iffy memories become to feel iron-clad solid if repeated often enough. Such is the case with the version perpetuated to this day (in a Mustangs press release) by former SMU Mustang’s (and later Iowa) football coach Hayden Fry, wherein Lee Iacocca and a troop of his “engineers” barged into the Mustangs’ locker room after being defeated by Michigan 27-16 on September 28, 1963, and announced:
“Today,” Iacocca said, “After watching the SMU Mustangs play with such flair, we reached a decision. We will call our new car the Mustang. Because it will be light, like your team; It will be quick, like your team; And it will be sporty, like your team.”
Nice story, and no less than Automotive News asks “Is SMU horsing around with the Mustang’s history?” You really have to ask?
The first Ford to wear the Mustang name was the Mustang I concept, first shown to dealers at the fall 1961 new-car intros, and the public in 1962. There were also a number of other internal concepts that lead up to the actual Mustang wearing various names, so one could conceivably argue that the Mustang name wasn’t really locked in for Ford’s future sporty car.
But here’s the smoking gun: The 1963 Mustang II concept, a thinly-veiled preview of the production Mustang to come. It was built for Ford by Dearborn Steel Tubing in the summer of 1963, and shown at Watkins Glen on October 6, 1963, just one week after that mythical football game. The Mustang II’s name and logos were obviously wrapped up months before that. Sorry…that story just doesn’t have real legs to run.
At least Automotive News contacted Iacocca, and got this response from his assistant “So did Iacocca go into SMU’s locker room or even attend the game at all?
“I have read what you sent before and Mr. Iacocca doesn’t affirm or deny when asked,” she e-mailed back. “I think perhaps he gets pleasure from the various accounts on how Mustang was named.”
Hardly likely it was named after a bunch of losers playing that girls game you call football more likely named after the famous horse or the famous airplane.
you guys still throw rocks and sticks at each other and call it a sport right?
hahaha. That’s not a sport…. (pulls out rugby team) That’s a sport.
You guys are all wrong! The only thing here that deserves to be called a sport is curling:
The least you could do is call it a “girly” game or you might hurt our feelers.
A football coach lied or exaggerated to motivate his players? That’s never happened before.
Coach Fry is, to be polite, full of shit.
According to Ford, Mustang #1 was sold to Stanley Tucker of St. John’s, Newfoundland. It’s whereabouts? The Henry Ford Museum in Detroit.
http://www.thehenryford.org/museum/map.aspx
While it’s a pop-up, go to the “Automobile in America” area of the map and scroll down to the Mustang, which is where I pulled this from.
Incidentally, it’s a white convertible and I’ve seen it the three times I’ve been to the museum. Quite a terrific place and I’ve been wanting to take Spawn there for a while.
Beat me to it!
Mr. Tucker was also the owner of Mustang #1,000,001. Here is a photo of the airline pilot himself along with his second horse:
Another of my books has a photo of Mustang #1, and I never realized until just now. Ironically, the caption below the photo does not identify it as the first one off the line, but it does point out that it resides in the Henry Ford Museum, and oddly has Newfoundland plates (the same plates as seen in the photo above)!
Thank you for posting these; it’s good to have additional information about this.
Reading the linked article above, the Coach claims that not only did he got the first Mustang for $1, but it was also specially painted in the school colors.
Yeah, sure.
That’s the first one. The second was a ’66 model. .
Good catch, that is a photo of pony #1! The book I snapped that from has it incorrectly labeled. I should have caught that from the grill alone. No wonder the plates in both photos are the same…
Oh, C’mon Jason – lets hear the version where you are not being polite. 🙂
I think they should have gone with BS Levy’s version from the 200mph Steamroller; The Fairway Ferret
Again, the Last Open Road series should be on all our reading lists and if BSL is reading this, stop making excuses and finish the next book!
Not to mention that the timing is impossible, what with industry lead times. The Mustang was in showrooms in April of 1964. This left 6 months from Lee’s supposed inspiration to showrooms, a near-impossiblity.
How many “Mustang” nameplates and running horses are on this car? Let’s see – design the logos and insignias, then engineer the parts, then contract out the production of them, and make changes to the sheetmetal pieces like fenders that need holes punched in them at the right places, and do it all in 3 months (if that) to be ready for pilot production. Sure, sounds about right. Not.
Actually the first Ford Mustang sold by Ford to the public was to a woman in the Chicago area on April 15th 1964(a few days before it was to be unveiled) it was a Convertible
Here is a story on this
http://autos.yahoo.com/blogs/motoramic/first-ford-mustang-owner-still-keys-49-years-123831938.html
It has been deemed by Ford to be the first Mustang sold to the public
These could easily both be firsts; the one from Newfoundland was the first off the line and has serial number 00001; this is presented as the first sold to the public. Not knowing how this all works, but I can easily see a number of the first cars produced being used for various purposes and one produced shortly thereafter being the first sold to the public.
This is interesting that the whereabouts of both firsts are still known. I’m really curious about the whereabouts of the first ’67 AMC Ambassador!!!
Tis true, they had to have a few of those Mustang’s rolling around as demo cars or for advertising purposes.
Yep, Fiat has done this with the 500 when it first arrived in the US back in late 2011.
I test drove what was likely a pre-production demo 500 in Feb of 2011, and the car officially hit the market here in I think late ’11 if memory serves.
“After watching the SMU Mustangs play with such flair, we reached a decision. We will call our new car the Mustang. Because it will be light, like your team; It will be quick, like your team; And it will be sporty, like your team.”
I’m sure the story is fake, but in Fry’s defense, this does sound like something Iacocca would say.
It seems obvious that Iacocca knew the name of the car way prior to the game, but how widely was the name publicized prior to introduction? Lee was evidently yanking Coach Fry’s chain.
After spending an evening re-reading a few of my Mustang books bought as a kid, I’m afraid to say I think I need to eat crow… The text doesn’t give any specifics, but the photos two different books show lead me to believe that the Mustang name may have indeed become solidified because of said team. In one, the clay proposal for the Mustang II concept (dated 5-16-63) clearly displays the name Torino where the typical Mustang badging appeared on the final show car (and production models). Then we have the photo of the close-to-completion actual show car dated 9-19-63 that I’ve included. It’s probably too lo-res to see here, but in the book you can still see the Torino script, just as it appears on the clay from May. A separate photo of one of the production wheel cover designs dated 6-28-63 also has the Torino name set in the center spoke…
You say that game was on September 28th? All this fits perfectly into what the Coach says. Notice the photo Paul provides of the completed Mustang II concept. It’s dated 10-8-63. Wow…
If anyone wants to see the additional photos I mentioned, I can photograph and post them.
You’d have to show me a close-up of the Torino badging of the 9-19-63 picture to begin to convince me.
I find it hard to believe that all the badging, logos, grille etc. of the Mustang II was changed within 10 days after the game.
One more problem: if you follow the link to the Automotive News article, they found a picture dated 9-27-63 of a Mustang named “Mustang”. They didn’t show it, but referred to it. That was their smoking gun.
Here is the clear shot of the Torino script:
And here is the best I could get off of my iPhone 4S of the incomplete show car. Also worthy of note, in all the photos of pre-production design studies going from 9-10-62 in the books onwards, not a single one has Mustang visible on the vehicle. Torino and Cougar badging go back and forth, but no ponies in sight. Only until AFTER the 10-8-63 photo of the Mustang II do you see variations of the horse emblem and Mustang script, and both the Cougar and Torino markings disappear completely moving from this date on in marked photos.
Speaking of the name, didn’t Ford toyed with other names ideas? Earlier mock-ups clays showed a big cat instead of a horse and it was supposed to be a Ford Cougar (could we talk of a “Cat-car” instead of “Pony-car”? 😉
http://blog.cargurus.com/2013/04/19/50-years-of-the-ford-cougar-er-mustang
http://www.howstuffworks.com/1965-ford-mustang-prototypes3.htm
In Iaccoca’s biography besides Cougar, they also thaught of using Monaco and Monte-Carlo but these names was already trademarked.
Yes, they considered a bunch of names, including Allegro and Avventura. Some of the styling guys (including I think Joe Oros) lobbied pretty hard for Cougar and were very disappointed when it lost out.
I scoured the books, and there are quite a few:
For the record, there is no definitive answer as to why Mustang ended up being chosen according to all of my research. It is noted, however, that both Iacocca and Najjar favored the name Mustang.
T5 was the internal code name for the car during it’s development period (and West German models actually were so named, as another company owned the rights to the name Mustang).
Henry Ford the second’s preference was Thunderbird II (!)
Other ideas thrown about not yet mentioned were Colt, Bronco, Maverik, Pinto, and my favorite that would also resurface later on as a production Ford: Torino.
“Henry Ford the second’s preference was Thunderbird II”
Is he the reason there was a Mustang II and Bronco II also?
Before I put my Mustang literature away, I’d like to share this with everyone. This model was originally planned for ’66, but because of a disagreement between the designer and management over automating the top, the idea was scrapped. It’s mentioned that, even though fabricated from metal, the roof is counterbalanced for ease of opperation. Also, the rear deck was lengthened by 3 inches to accommodate the roof.
is that retractable top wrapped in vinyl? What’s the point of that? lol
that’s one I never heard of. It’s the long-hood, not-so-short-deck Mustang Skyliner Retractable. It’s no wonder why they never put that into production; they didn’t exactly need that kind of gimmick to sell Mustangs. (Although I wouldn’t mind having one for myself.)
That extra length in the butt ruins the lines.
During those early Mustang-Mania years, there were all sorts of ideas being thrown around, including a 4-door sedan and true 2-seater (not a Shelby that just had the rear seat replaced with a plastic shelf). Neither of those went beyond the idea stage.
One that ‘sort of’ made it was the Intermeccanica Mustang station wagon. It might not have been built or sanctioned by Ford in-house, but you can bet they had input and were interested in its creation:
And Dodge almost used the name Beaver. Whatever.
“Did you see the way her Beaver looked?”
I could imagine a reply like “Leave it to Beaver”, lol. 😀
That’s even worse than the Ford Probe. Ford dealership mid 1990s
“I’d like to trade my Beaver for a Probe”
“Sure thing ,Ma’am!”
Reminds me of the dirtiest thing ever said on television:
June Cleaver: “Ward, weren’t you a little hard on the beaver last night?”
“Dodge Ram” is my favorite. Which one?!?!
Pleased to see that Ford is manipulating all automobile sites, even ones as obscure as this, to promote the introduction of the 50th year anniversary 2014.5/2015 Mustang next April.
I’ll be buying one – a V-8 manual coupe. I want Ford to do well and to be offering V-8, RWD coupes for a long time to come.
The whole debate on who named the Ford Mustang reminds me of the (paraphrased) quote, “Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan”.
I doubt there are nearly as many people wanting to take credit for the naming of the Edsel…
And perhaps somewhat appropriately, two of the Edsel’s models were named Pacer and Citation respectively.
The Edsel also had the Ranger which had a pretty successful second run and Villager which reappeared as a Mercury
On page 69 of his 1984 Autobiography Lee Iacocca states that the name Torino, the Italian spelling of the name of the city of Turin, was originally chosen instead of Cougar. He then explains that the name Torino was dropped because Henry Ford II was in the midst of a divorce and was keeping company with an Italian divorcee, and “Some of Henry’s underlings felt that giving the new car an Italian name would lead to unfavorable publicity and gossip, which would embarrass the boss.” Mustang was chosen over Bronco, Puma , Cheetah, Colt and again Cougar. Mustang had been the name of one of the car’s prototypes which was named for the fighter plane.
Thank you for finding this!
And, once again, thank you Google books- for those who’d like to read about this directly from Iacocca’s autobiography, click on the following link and scroll to pages 73 and 74. You will find it all there:
http://books.google.com/books?id=HnK9lhWQh-cC&pg=PA65&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false
I work at SMU.
Regardless of the truth behind the purported Iacocca locker room speech, it is a fact that SMU’s athletic teams have been called ‘Mustangs’ since 1917. Ergo whenever Ford made the decision to go with “Mustang”, they had to work out the conflict with the existing SMU tradmark.
What better way than to throw SMU a bone? Brag on their team, give someone some folks some cars (maybe a donation?), and vow that the Ford Mustang logo will run to the left, since the existing SMU Mustang runs to the right (see below).
The SMU Heritage Hall (source of all things athletic memorabilia) acknowledges the Ford Mustang only by saying words to the effect ‘…it is rumored that the car was named after the SMU Mustangs.’
Here’s the Mustang grill emblem for comparison
So, long story short, Iacocca had to kiss some ass to pull off securing the Mustang namesake for their car because Torino got yanked from beneath their feet at the last moment, thanks to Henry the Second’s personal intimate relationship with an Italian socialite while still being married? Well, that does explain how the tooling for the logo was complete in a heartbeat…
Hate to say, but after reading some other parts of Iacocca’s autobiography earlier today, it doesn’t surprise. If they were willing to pay $104 average, per head, in mid 1960’s dollars just to feed the designers lunch in the Dearborn dining hall…
….and Lt. Columbo thought that $ 6.75 for a bowl of chili with an ice tea in a fancy restaurant was extremely overpriced, and that was in the early seventies….
In roughly 30 years of reading/learning all sorts of things Mustang I’ve never heard of this story. It’s quite made up.
The first official Mustang sits in the Henry Ford Museum. A pilot production car turned up in the Yukon. Ford sent the earliest cars to the ends of the earth where the general public would never see these cars with their various anomalies.
There is a stock photo of a ’65 that has been used for decades in mustang newspaper articles and such where the car has a cougar in the grill and very slightly different headlamps as I recall. Otherwise it looks like a stock ’65. (ok, 64.5) It appears that the naming debate went on nearly to the end or Ford purposely kept it confusing.
Let’s get totally into this Mustang thing…
Comments on the ending welcome 🙂