Ford’s sixth-gen Mustang is wider, faster and meaner-looking; it’s also designed to woo drivers around the globe.
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A plan emerged to replace the Mustang with the Probe, a four-cylinder, front-wheel-drive coupe designed by Ford's Japanese partner Mazda. But as word of the Probe plan spread through the company, a counterrevolution formed. Its supporters included one relatively junior Ford executive whose first car, a high school graduation gift, had been a Mustang. The thought of a Probe with a Mustang badge (a Probestang?) was too much to bear. "I spoke up very much out of turn and said, you know, 'Over my dead body can this happen. This is not a Mustang.'"
The body in question belonged to Bill Ford, and the voice speaking from it carried a tad more weight than that of the average automotive suit. He was hardly alone, though. The Mustang gang, aided by public outcry, prevailed. The Mustang was reborn in 1994; the Probe would die as a Ford brand.
WORLD TOUR
The Mustang has never been sold by Ford outside its home country for reasons both technical and cultural. Creating a Mustang that could be sold worldwide would require what's called homologation--the car would have to be re-engineered to meet different safety and pollution standards. That would have added significant cost. It was too, well, American to appeal widely in the likes of Germany or Italy, where narrow roads, high gas prices and small engines dominate. "There was the perception of it's a muscle car--straight-line performance vs. the nimbleness needed in Europe," explains Nair.
In anticipation of going global, Ford began conducting market research on consumer attitudes around the world toward the Mustang. The company says it got a surprising set of responses. "They all had the same imagery," says Farley. "It was weird. We'd go to China, we'd go to Brazil, we would go to Russia--they would all have the same imagery. Very much like the western U.S., the hair down, road trip, up the coast highway." In Brazil, the Mustang registered as a top-five automotive brand, even though Ford doesn't sell it or advertise it there.
The research gave Ford permission to build a global Mustang, but it didn't tell the company what it should look like. "The challenge is to take what people [understand] are Mustang cues, edit them and make them look like a modern car," says Moray Callum, a Scotsman who heads the Mustang design team.
The most important cue is called the fist: the way the front end punches forward, as if the car were in motion even when it's not. Today it's not popular among designers who increasingly favor more aerodynamic (and efficient) shapes. The second is the almost catlike stance of the front and rear haunch lines. The third, more enigmatic feature is that a Mustang is supposed to exude masculine cool--the touchstone is Steve McQueen and his dark green Bullitt model.
Deep into the new Mustang's design phase, Ford executives realized the car they were creating was a dud by those standards. "We wanted to accentuate the silhouette of the car, we wanted it lower, we wanted it wider, we wanted it as compact as possible from an engineering profile," says Callum. American drivers were after something a little tougher-looking. The engineering team wanted it to turn and brake better and ride smoother for global buyers.