The Ford Mustang was conceived in 1961 at a lunch at the Detroit Athletic Club by Lee Iacocca and other Ford executives. Despite initial skepticism from Ford leadership, the Mustang became a huge success, selling over 400,000 units in its first year. The Mustang helped spawn the "pony car" segment and established Ford as the leader in affordable, sporty cars. Over the decades, the Mustang evolved while maintaining its core identity, thanks to innovations and guidance from DAC members like Iacocca, Frey, and Bordinat who were integral to its creation and success. Now in its sixth decade, the iconic Mustang remains one of the world's most popular and recognizable sports cars.

1. 36 DAC NEWS DECEMBER 2014
Conceived 50 years ago during
a lunch at the Detroit Athletic Club,
the celebrated Ford Mustang remains
popular with the public after five
decades on the road.
The Mustang’s success spawned
the original “pony car”segment –
affordable, sporty automobiles with
long hoods, short decks, V-8 or six
cylinder engines, and fast acceleration.
While rivals such as the Plymouth
Barracuda and Pontiac Firebird fell into
the automotive dustbin of history, the
Mustang survives.
Not only was the Mustang
conceived at the DAC, other DAC
members were involved in designing
and recreating the car over the years.
“Mustang represents the freedom
and fun of the open road; a timeless
appeal that never gets old,”said Bill
Ford, Jr., executive chairman of Ford
Motor Company and a DAC member
for nearly 24 years, in a statement for
the DAC News. “When it launched
in 1964, there was a substantial
demand for a small, sporty car that
provided an ideal balance between
performance and practicality.”
The “father”of the Mustang, Lee
Iacocca, a DAC member from 1959-
1981, said in a DAC News interview
that: “The Mustang was built for the
Baby Boom Generation. It was a time
when our population had shifted in
attitude and lifestyle.”
The original Mustang was
developed to meet four goals, Iacocca
continued, as a car for two car families
with surplus cash to spend; for young
drivers with very little money to
spend; as a woman’s car with easy
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Mustang
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2. 37DAC NEWS DECEMBER 2014
maintenance; and a sporty new car for
those seeking new toys.
“I think the initial goals have
consistently been adhered to for the
last 50 years, making the Mustang
highly recognizable and maintaining
what some believe is a ‘cult like’
following,”Iacocca said.
Iacocca credited his team for
bringing the car to fruition. Several
other DAC members were among
the Ford personnel who figured
prominently in the creation of the
1964 ½ Mustang including Ford Chief
Designer Eugene Bordinat, Jr. and
Donald N. Frey, who spearheaded the
car’s design and development.
For the early 1970s Mustang, which
were much larger and more
powerful than the original ‘Stang,
former DAC President Semon
E. “Bunkie”Knudsen even had a
hand in its creation.
A LUNCH AT THE DAC
The story of the Mustang
starts with Iacocca, who was born
90 years ago on Oct. 15, 1924, in
Allentown (PA). Graduating from
Pennsylvania’s Lehigh University, he
earned a fellowship at Princeton before
joining Ford in 1946 as an engineer.
Discovering he excelled at sales, he
quickly rose up the corporate ranks.
When Henry Ford II named Robert S.
McNamara as president of Ford Motor
Company in November 1960, Iacocca
became vice president and general
manager of the Ford Division.
Iacocca’s idea for the Mustang
arose at one of his frequent luncheon
meetings at the DAC in early 1961,
according to the 1987 book “The
Fords: An American Epic,”by Peter
Collier and David Horowitz. He and
his top lieutenants, including his close
aide Hal Sperlich, were discussing how
Chevrolet was introducing the Monza,
which was a sportier version of its
Corvair.
Determined to have a new car
that was unlike anything else on
the market, Iacocca instructed the
Ford Design Department to create
something “bold and brassy.”Club
member Don Frey, who was Ford
Division’s assistant general manager
and chief engineer, assembled the team
that worked on the Mustang.
Born in St. Louis in 1923, Frey
grew up in Waterloo, IA where his
father was chief metallurgist at a
John Deere factory. After serving
in the Army during World War II,
he earned bachelor’s, master’s, and
doctoral degrees in metallurgy from
the University of Michigan.
Joining the DAC in 1963, Frey
went on to become chairman and
CEO of Bell & Howell Company, but
at Ford he kept the Mustang project
going despite the fact Henry Ford II
rejected the proposed car four times
before he finally approved it.
The Mustang project was
“bootlegged,”Frey once told USA
Today in a 2004 interview.“There was
no official approval for this thing. We
had to do it on a shoestring.”
Lacking resources, Frey, Iacocca,
designers and engineers met in a
storage facility by day and a motel at
night.
Although Iacocca claimed that
extensive market research had been
conducted to identify the youth market
for which the Mustang was
created, Frey told the enthusiast
publication Mustang Monthly
in 1983 that all the reports were
made up afterwards “to sanctify
the whole thing”for Henry Ford
II and the financial executives.
For the Mustang’s chief
designer, Frey picked Joseph
E. Oros, Jr., who had worked
on the four-seat 1958 Ford
Thunderbird.
Opposite, Lee Iacocca and Don Frey stand with one of the first Ford Mustangs (the plate refers to the goal to sell 417,000
Mustangs by April of 1965). Photos for this story courtesy of Ford Motor Company.
Above, Bill Ford, Jr., drove a Mustang off the line in 2004 representing the company’s 300th millionth vehicle produced.
DAC member Eugene Bordinat introducing the Mustang to the press at the 1964
New York World’s Fair.

3. 38 DAC NEWS DECEMBER 2014
Ford Chief Designer Gene Bordinat
was also involved. A native of Toledo,
OH and educated at the Cranbrook
Academy of Art and U of M, Bordinat
had just become Ford’s head designer in
1961 as the Mustang project got rolling
and oversaw the styling of all Ford
Motor Company vehicles.
To save tooling costs, Sperlich
suggested using the Ford Falcon
platform.
FALCON TO THE MUSTANG
The Falcon was a lightweight,
efficient, and low cost platform that
had been championed by McNamara as
a simple, affordable family automobile
but was soon derided by
critics as a “granny’s car.”
Presented with the
marketing research and
estimates on how low the
production costs were,
Henry Ford II – company
chairman and grandson
of the founder – finally
authorized the Mustang,
but looked at Frey and
told him in several
unprintable words that he
would be fired if the car
didn’t succeed, according
to Frey’s 2010 obituary in
The New York Times.
Ford introduced the new car to
the press at the New York World’s
Fair on April 13, 1964. Although the
automaker’s financial experts predicted
that only 80,000 units would sell the
first year, Iacocca told a reporter that
the “Mustang will go 417,175.”
The car went on sale halfway into
1964, hence the reason it is often
referred to as a 1964 ½ Mustang rather
than being a 1965 model.
“The Mustang was a huge hit,”
noted DAC member and famed
automotive executive Robert A.“Bob”
Lutz in an interview.“Not all were
fire breathing V-8s – a whole batch of
them had the Ford inline six engine
– but the low-cost Mustang became a
good ‘secretary’s car.’”
While production of the Mustang
was scheduled for the Dearborn
Assembly Plant at the Rouge, Ford
moved very fast to add production
space elsewhere. Actual sales for the
Mustang’s first full year were 418,812
units.
With an overall length of 181.6
inches and a 108 inch wheelbase, the
car offered buyers a choice of coupe or
convertible styles and four engines –
ranging from the base 101-horsepower
inline six-cylinder to the 271
horsepower V-8 – and a starting price
of $2,368.
Less than two years after the first
production Mustang was made, on
March 2, 1966, the one-millionth
Mustang came out of the Rouge,
eclipsing the Falcon’s record.Thanks
to the efforts of Ford Public Relations
Manager and DAC member Walter T.
Murphy,Time and Newsweek featured
Iacocca and the Mustang on their
covers in the same week.
FORD REVEALS A MARKET
Creating the original car was risky,
noted Lutz, whose career included
working at General Motors, Ford,
and BMW, and is an acknowledged
all-around automotive enthusiast and
Above, the final inspection is made of Mustangs at the Dearborn Assembly plant in 1968.
Below, Frey stands besides a 1960 Ford Falcon with Iacocca next to his offspring – the 1965 Mustang.

4. 39DAC NEWS DECEMBER 2014
CONTINUING LEGACY
Improvements were made to the
Mustang, but one of the biggest
changes came after Henry Ford
II recruited Semon E.“Bunkie”
Knudsen to become Ford Motor
Company’s president in January
1968.
The former DAC president,
Knudsen had led Pontiac’s early
interested and it was rush, rush, rush
to get the first Camaro out.”
Although the Plymouth Barracuda
had debuted two weeks ahead of the
Mustang, it took General Motors and
Chrysler nearly two years to respond
with competing models including the
Chevy Camaro, Pontiac Firebird, and
Dodge Challenger. Even American
Motors Corporation released its own
pony car – the AMC Javelin.
expert. At Chrysler, Lutz was vice
chairman for a time, having been
recruited by Iacocca.
In his 2011 book “Car Guys vs.
Bean Counters: The Battle for the
Soul of American Business,”Lutz
looked at the Ford Mustang success
from the General Motors perspective.
GM had toyed with making a
small, sporty car like the Mustang,
but the automaker’s financial analysts
– or “bean counters,”as Lutz called
them – had figured that only 100,000
such vehicles sold annually in the
United States. With the right car
and marketing, GM might carve out
50,000 sales away from brands such as
MG, Jaguar,Triumph, Mercedes-Benz,
and Porsche.
“You can’t do a marketing program
for 50,000 cars, so GM rejected the
idea,”Lutz said.“But when Ford
demonstrated that the true market was
half a million cars, now GM became
Working on the Mustang coupe in 1964.

5. 40 DAC NEWS DECEMBER 2014
potent, and more capable, but they
moved farther and farther away from
the original concept of a smallish,
lightweight, and attractive sports coupe
and convertible,”Lutz said.“Basically,
all of those cars were improved to
oblivion where no one could afford
to do the next cycle because the sales
volume wasn’t there anymore.”
Knudsen and stylist Larry Shinoda
are credited with making the larger-
bodied Mustangs that appeared in
1971, offering even bigger engines,
more performance, improved brakes
and tires.
revival before going to
Chevrolet. Apparently
upset that he was passed
over for promotion to
become General Motors
president in favor of
fellow DAC member Ed
Cole, Knudsen accepted
Ford’s offer.
About the time Knudsen moved
to Ford, GM’s and Chrysler’s pony
cars were dividing the market and the
“horsepower war”began.
Nearly one-third of buyers
wanted great acceleration, plus air
conditioning, automatic transmissions,
eight-track players, and roomier
back seats. Yet, it was difficult to fit
all of those features into the Falcon/
Mustang chassis.
The answer? The typical Detroit
solution was “bigger is better.”
“The Mustangs, Camaros, and
Barracudas all got heavier, more
The 1971
“Knudsen bodied”
Mustang was eight
inches longer, six
inches wider and
600 pounds heavier
than the original
1964 ½ pony car.
But buyers were
turned off as sales slid from 299,824
units in 1969 to 149,678 units.
However, well before the launch of
the new pony car, Henry Ford II fired
Knudsen in September 1969. When
asked by reporters why he had been
fired, all Knudsen would say was that
Henry Ford II “wanted to resume
control of the company.”
In an effort to rejuvenate the car,
Iacocca turned to the Italian design
firm of Carrozzeria Ghia to help
come up with the Mustang II, which
was introduced in September 1973.
Weighing 3,000 pounds less than its
The 1966 Ford Mustang is showcased in a publicity photograph.

6. 41DAC NEWS DECEMBER 2014
predecessor, the car was even shorter
than the original Mustang.
Mustang II sales were boosted
by the aftermath of the oil embargo
by the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting States (OPEC). Its
production climbed to 385,993 units
for the 1974 model year.
Again seeking changes at his
company, Henry Ford II fired Iacocca
in 1978. Not giving up, Iacocca
moved on to
Chrysler –
where Sperlich
was already at
– and worked
to save that
company from
bankruptcy
with new
products such
as the minivan.
“I am
best known for the Mustang, but
the minivan saved a company and
thousands of jobs,”Iacocca said in the
DAC News interview.
Ford continued to reinvent the look
of the Mustang with the 1979 model
that had European styling and was on
the “Fox”platform.
The Fox platform served the
Mustang for nearly 26 years, before
being replaced by a more modern
chassis.
“Throughout the years, it has
remained a sporty car that is affordable
and versatile with a design that has
kept the classic essence of what makes
a Mustang a Mustang,”noted Bill
Ford, Jr.“The new 2015 model is a
great example of that and our best
Mustang ever.”
Immortalized in songs such as the
song “Mustang Sally”and appearing
in movies ranging from Bullitt to
the Transformers franchise, the Ford
Mustang is alive in the pop culture
even as the next generation of the
car comes out of Ford’s Flat Rock
Assembly Plant.
Lee Iacocca