1964.5 Ford Mustang Convertible and 1966 Ford Mustang Coupe
Ride, Sally, Ride

“I bought you a Vintage Mustang,
Of nineteen sixty-five,
Now you comin' right, signifyin' woman, no
You don't wanna let me ride
All you wanna do is ride around, Sally ( ride, Sally, ride)”

---“Mustang Sally”, by Sir Mack Rice

Text: © Nancy Black
Photos: © Isaac Hernández

It was 1964, and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” by the Beatles was single number one in the US. The Addams Family show aired for the first time. And the car culture was in full bloom; with car songs like “Beep Beep”, “409” by the Beach Boys (a reference to the cubic inches in a 1964 Chevrolet V-8), “GTO”, and “Hey Little Cobra” by Ronnie and the Daytonas (another two car references). After all, it was the muscle car decade; life was good, cars were big, and gasoline was cheap. True, there was the Cuban Missile Crisis… and growing Civil Rights issues, but the US hadn’t visibly gotten into the Vietnam mess yet, and the oil crisis of 1973 was unimaginable. It was a time when cars in the US were made to go fast, in a straight line.

Muscle cars of the time included the Chevy Chevelle and Camaro, the Dodge Charger and Challenger, the Oldsmobile Toronado, and the Plymouth GTX, Roadrunner/Superbird and Barracuda. Drag races and cruising were what the kids were doing, on a Saturday night anywhere in the US; but Southern California was particularly hot, with the surf culture spawning the Beach Boys, Gidget, Dick Dale and the Deltones, and the Surfaris, as well as Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, and movies like “Beach Blanket Bingo”. Guys spent hours on their cars, while the girls dealt with bouffant, high-maintenance hairdos. The drive-in movie was the date of choice, and one’s vehicle was a social statement, a babe-magnet, and a matter of pride.

The Pontiac GTO had gone on sale for the first time in the autumn of 1963; and so was born the muscle car craze. Ford was a fashionably late to the party, introducing the Mustang convertible at the 1964 New York World’s Fair.

It was Lee Iacocca’s idea to make an inexpensive sports car for the baby boom generation of the post war. The design was picked from an internal design competition. It was named Mustang I, after the P51 Mustang fighter plane. The two-seater, mid-engine concept debuted in October 1962 at the United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen, New York, driven by racer Dan Gurney around the track. The same year came the Mustang II concept, powered by a Ford V-4 with 91.4 cid and 109 bhp. The Mustang I was destroyed. The Mustang II is at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

But Iacocca wanted the Mustang to be a volume seller, so the production car would be a four-seater, built off the Ford Falcon platform, to cut costs. It also offered a large number of options for individual customization. The cheapest version, a 170 cubic inch six cylinder hardtop, sold for $2,368 . It included full wheel covers, padded dash, bucket seats and carpeting, as standard equipment. The next step was the 200 cubic inch six cylinder, and then a 289 cid V8 with 200 bhp.

The formula was a big success; and on April 17th, the first day the pony car went on sale, orders reached a record 22,000 units. The Plymouth Barracuda was launched two weeks earlier, beating Ford to the dealerships, but the Mustang’s success ultimately overshadowed the Barracuda. According to legend, a truck driver, distracted by the car, drove through a showroom window. Ford expected 100,000 units to be sold in its first year, but by April 17, 1965 417,000 had been sold; a new record for the industry...

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