COLLECTING
For Mustang Owners, the First Love Is the Sweetest
Jamie Martin for The New York Times
Harrel McKinney with the ’65 Mustang coupe he bought new.
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By JIM MOTAVALLI
 OVE
at first sight is not something that happens only between people. In
1964, tens of thousands of car buyers were swept off their feet by the
alluring shape of a sporty new Ford called the Mustang; four decades
later, many of those relationships endure.
Harrel McKinney of
Montgomery, Ala., was one of those whose heart was stolen, falling hard
for a Wimbledon White coupe with a 260-cubic-inch V-8. In his case,
there was not even a car in the first glimpse - just a picture in the
dealer's showroom. "I almost bought a Rambler Ambassador," Mr.
McKinney said. "But then I visited a Ford dealer and saw the new
Mustang in a brochure. When I stopped salivating all over myself I
ordered one on the spot." That Mustang was his daily
transportation for many years, but since being restored in 1990 it
leads a pampered life of parades and car shows, sharing garage space
with a 1965 convertible that Mr. McKinney bought in 1990. Mr.
McKinney's object of affection originally cost $2,440, and he remains
faithful despite the car's rise in value over the years. "I wouldn't
sell my original car for anything," he said. Wanda Whitsell, of
Springfield, Va., who calls her Nightmist Blue '66 coupe "the little
car," clearly recalls where she first saw a Mustang: on a turntable at
the 1964 World's Fair in New York. "I stood there with my mouth open
and told my husband I had to have one," Mrs. Whitsell said. "I begged
him until late 1965, when he finally surrendered and gave it to me for
Christmas." The Mustang was restored by Mrs. Whitsell and her
husband, Arley, in 1991, and she is often approached by people offering
to buy the car, which has been driven 149,000 miles. "Let's just say
that a lot of people are real nice to me," Mrs. Whitsell said. The
marketing bull's-eye scored by the Ford Mustang in 1964 would be nearly
impossible to repeat today. A perfect storm of prosperous times,
population trends (the children of the baby boom were reaching driving
age) and accurate market research combined to sell the youthful
two-door in record numbers. The public relations campaign to
introduce the car was as ambitious as the car's styling. In the fall of
1963, Ford brought journalists to the company's Dearborn, Mich.,
headquarters for seminars with Lee A. Iacocca, the general manager of
the Ford division, on the new youth market that the Mustang would
serve. The press introduction, on April 17, 1964, was timed to coincide
with the opening of Ford's pavilion at the World's Fair. The
public's appetite had been whetted by the Mustang I show car, a
roadster with a 109-horsepower V-4 engine. The clamor inspired Ford to
move ahead with the Mustang II, a 1962 design study that closely
resembled the car that Ford eventually sold. Mr. Iacocca bet his
career (and $65 million of Ford's money) on the Mustang, which borrowed
its chassis, engines and suspension from the Falcon, a modest economy
car. But the Mustang's fresh styling and youth appeal was something
entirely new. For $2,368 the buyer of the 1965 Mustang (the
"1964 ½" designation was never official) got a two-door hardtop with a
170 cubic-inch six-cylinder engine and a floor-mounted three-speed
manual transmission. Customers could also order V-8's with up to 271
horsepower. The '65 Mustang was an unqualified hit, sales
reaching 680,989 for the 17-month 1965 model year and 607,568 for 1966.
That success prodded General Motors and Chrysler to respond with
competitors using the same long-hood, short-deck formula, creating a
new class known as "pony cars." A minor restyling for 1967
represented an evolution of the original design. It was around this
time that 15-year-old Laurie Slawson began begging her father, a
national lease manager for Ford, for a Mustang. Now 51 and an
archaeologist in Tucson, she still owns "Murphy," a 1968 coupe powered
by the 289 cubic-inch V-8. Styling was revised again for the
1969 models, growing in size and shifting to a four-headlight design.
Engine options extended to the brutally powerful Boss 429 that year,
but it was a six-cylinder fastback model that proved irresistibly
attractive to Per Berglund, 35, of Sweden, who paid $3,600 for one in
1988. Mr. Berglund has invested another $30,000 in the car,
restoring the rusted body panels and replacing the anemic engine with a
450-horsepower V-8. Mr. Berglund is not the only Mustang lover in
Scandinavia - there are about 1,400 of Ford's pony cars registered in
Sweden's Classic Mustang Club. A restyling for the 1971 model
year took Mustang in a new direction, one that many collectors feel
abandoned the car's distinctive look. With the arrival of the Mustang
II in 1974 - a car based on the Pinto - the pony car attributes that
had fostered loyaly to the early Mustangs were all but gone. The
passion was renewed in 1979 with a redesigned model that revived the
Mustang's performance image. Dave Marchand, coordinator of the
Mustang/Thunderbird Club Center at Ford, estimates that there are
30,000 members involved in some 250 different Mustang clubs worldwide.
There is even a Yellow Mustang Registry that caters to - you guessed it
- 2,950 yellow Mustangs. The celebrations are also igniting an
old debate: Which Mustang was the first produced? Logically, the honor
belongs to a white GT convertible, serial number 5F08F100001,
originally sold to a Canadian airline pilot but now in the collection
of the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn. The second production car,
5F07U100002, a Caspian Blue hardtop, is owned by Bob Fria of La
Crescenta, Calif. Mr. Fria says he thinks his car may have been built
before the convertible, but haphazard record keeping makes that nearly
impossible to prove. Mr. Fria says one thing is certain, though: his
very early Mustang is worth "six figures."
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