Losing the first-generation Mustang: A bittersweet tale of a beloved family car and its long-lingering afterlife
By Andrew Cameron Williams
Yes, this was my father’s Mustang, to reverse the premise behind that in some ways unforgettable and in other ways deeply regrettable Oldsmobile slogan of the late 1980s. When a brand new first-generation Mustang entered my middle-class suburban family in 1968, it was indeed my Dad’s car.
But that points to one of the most magical qualities of the phenomenon we call “Mustang.” In an era when tensions between The Greatest Generation and their Baby Boom offspring were reaching their peak, the first-generation Mustang had an appeal that could bring generations together.
Fathers and sons, mothers and daughters could all share an appreciation of a model that brought a fresh new vibe to the American automotive landscape.
Like the first generations of Chevrolet Corvette and Ford Thunderbird before it, the Mustang began as an attempted answer to sleek, sensuously curved sports cars from overseas marques ranging from Jaguar to Porsche to Ferrari. But the first-generation Mustang that finally made it to the assembly line and ended up being something quite different. The Mustang—maybe by accident—created a new category: the pony car, a much more distinctively American artifact.
As many enthusiasts know, the Mustang was John Najjar’s brainchild. Najjar, who was with Ford for four decades as lead designer and executive stylist, took the name from the P-51 fighter plane, which was one of the workhorses behind the Allied victory in World War II.
Najiar had been working on prototypes of the Mustang since 1961. The first prototype, a collaboration of Najjar and fellow stylist Philip Clark, was ready in 1962 and made its formal debut at the US Grand Prix in New York, with Formula One driver Dan Gurney behind the wheel. This convinced Lee Iacocca to champion the project and green-light production.
But for all his vision, Lee Iacocca, ultimately, was nothing else if not a practical businessman. And “practical” would not have been quite the right description for Najjar’s original prototype.
Unlike the Mustang that actually made it into production in 1964, the prototype was much closer to the traditional understanding of a sports car. In fact, it was really more of a race car—an open-top two-seater with a low windscreen and a mid-engine powertrain configuration.
The prototype itself would have been entirely impractical for street use. It was clearly purpose-built for the track, and it performed well against Formula 1 race cars when Ford put it to the test. But to make the concept car viable for consumer use, Ford would have needed to translate it to a roadster format. And that simply was not to be.
When it came to two-seater sports cars, Ford already had learnings from the original Thunderbird under their corporate belt, as did Chevrolet with the Corvette. Transitioning the T-Bird to a four-seater in 1958 was already a strong indicator that Ford didn’t see much of a mass-market future in true sports cars. For American manufacturers, sports cars seemed inevitably destined for sales to a limited niche.
The genius of the Mustang that entered production in 1964 was that it provided a “sporty” driving experience while going beyond the limits of the traditional sports car. How they achieved it, in hindsight, seems almost ridiculously simple,
They started with a stalwart existing platform, the Ford Falcon—a trusty family grocery getter, although its potential for more excitement with a V8 under the hood had already been discovered by some enthusiasts during the earliest days of the muscle-car phenomenon as it spun off from its hot-rodding roots.
Chopping the rear a bit, elongating the front, and lowering the stance gave the Mustang a sportier, more kinetic appearance than its Falcon progenitor. A lower seating position boosted the visual presence of the hoodline from the driver’s perspective, strengthening sporty feel and the sense of connectivity with the powerplant underneath. And for those who wisely opted for Ford’s small-block V8 rather than the trusty but humbler Ford inline six, there was real power and torque to back up that sensation.
Simple, yes—but the simplicity was sheer genius. The result was a nimble two-door coupe, small and light enough to chuck around corners and provide an enthusiast driver with an engaging experience.
Yet it could also comfortably accommodate a family of four. It was fun enough for weekend pleasure trips, yet perfectly capable as a practical everyday driver. These qualities gave the Mustang a wide, diverse appeal that extended from youthful enthusiasts to family men, housewives, and single career women.
The extent of the appeal showed up quickly in the sales numbers. Ford couldn’t build Mustangs fast enough. They sold millions. By 1968, the Mustang was one of Ford’s best-selling cars ever, even up against such competition as the Charger, Barracuda, GTO, Camaro, and other muscle cars and pony cars of the era.
And this is where my personal Mustang story begins. My Dad purchased a new Mustang in 1968. (I am too young to remember if or what objections Mom raised.) What I do remember is the difference between riding in the ‘Stang and our old Fairlane station wagon. It was like going from a Model T to a Model A. This baby had power. Every time I heard “We’re going to the store—who wants to come?” I wanted in.
That’s the happy part of the story. By 1978, our beloved Mustang was in decline. That lovely V8 engine, which once roared like a beast, now coughed like an emphysemic smoker.
My older brother, with two years of high school courses in auto mechanics, swore up and down he could restore the ʼStang to its former glory. As bad as the motor sounded, it probably wouldn’t have required extraordinary resuscitative efforts to make that happen.
Pony cars of the 1960s were simple machines. Remember: under the skin, a first-generation Mustang, for all of its special mystique, was basically a Ford Falcon. It doesn’t get much simpler than that. What could it have possibly taken to make our pony gallop again? Two thousand dollars, worst-case scenario, if even that?
But for my brother and me at the time, anything even close to that was out of reach. I was a struggling college student. He was a young man trying to make his way in the world through a succession of modestly paying jobs. So the dream of restoring the ʼStang to its former glory never came true. It sat in our driveway for the next five years, gathering rust and dust, until my mother got fed up and had an auto wrecker haul it away.
I’m not ashamed to say there were tears in my eyes that day. I never got to drive it, not even around the block. A part of my childhood was gone. There would be more such losses to follow, but standing in the front yard as I watched the Mustang get towed away was like watching the premier episode of a depressing TV series that gets progressively darker over the course of the season.
Cars built in that era did not withstand the elements well, succumbing quickly to rust—especially in a climate like that of the Washington DC metro area where the winters could get pretty harsh. The swiftness with which an indifferent universe could expose the fragility of these shiny objects was deeply symbolic of how ephemeral the dreams, hopes, and emotions we attached to them also were.
It’s almost elegant how well these experiences of decaying iconic vehicles paralleled what my generation saw happening in the culture around us. In the older segments of the Baby Boom cohort, former hippies had already grown up to become yuppies. Optimism was giving way to cynicism.
Nominally I’m a product of the tail-end of the Baby Boom. But being among the youngest of that cohort, my life by the 1980s was taking on a texture much more like that of my many Generation X friends who were a couple years younger. I and many of my peers were on a life path that seemed a lot rockier than what the older Boomers had experienced.
So many of us seemed to find it much more of a struggle to achieve goals like earning degrees and securing good career opportunities. The soundtrack had shifted from the likes of Ten Years After and the Buffalo Springfield to The Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop, Joy Division, and their ilk.
It’s also fitting that the automobile industry at the time I lost the Mustang was in the midst of what many enthusiasts and automotive historians call “the Malaise era.” Engineers hadn’t yet figured out how to deliver strong performance while also complying with emissions and fuel economy demands. And the Mustang series had already been through the embarrassing “Mustang II” episode, although by 1979 there were green chutes of hope with the debut of the “Fox Body” Mustangs.
So losing my family’s first-generation Mustang was more than a loss of a vehicle. It immediately became the symbol of personal losses at multiple levels. And one can easily make a case that my loss was a microcosm of losses felt by multiple generations and an entire nation.
Fast forward to today. I now live in Southern California, where we enjoy a climate that is much kinder and gentler to old cars. It preserves them in a surreal, almost too-good-to-be-true kind of afterlife that, to the close observer, has a nebulous tinge of irony.
The ironic vibe is there, but it’s difficult to get your head around it enough to do it justice with a clear explanation. But I’ll try. It feels as if you’re looking at old vehicles that shouldn’t still be here, yet there they are. The past is gone, but some of its cars are appearing before you, teasing you, like ghosts.
Sure, you see plenty of frame-up restorations into which affluent Californians have poured tens of thousands of dollars, or sometimes even beyond the six-figure threshold. But you also see many barely-touched, original “survivors” that, instead of a restoration’s exaggerated gloss, have acquired a tasteful patina over the decades—along with a powerful ability to put you in the time-warp zone when you see one.
Since losing the first-generation Mustang, I have had to deal with many, many more losses of a much more grown-up, life changing nature. These losses might make the mere loss of a vehicle seem to pale in comparison.
At the risk of getting too personal, here’s a huge “for instance.” Remember how I mentioned my brother, who dreamed of restoring our Mustang?
Today, I have no idea where he is.
Yet every time I see a first-generation Mustang on the road and hear that unmistakable note of a small-block Ford V8 paired tastefully with the right exhaust system, my heart still stings a little.