Can't believe all you stang lovers missed this:
http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-22-5596789.html
On March 9, 1964--exactly 41 years ago today--the first production model Ford Mustang rolled off the assembly line in Dearborn, MI, beginning a four-decade affair of automotive passion. While it would take far too much time and space to detail all of the many automotive firsts embodied by the Mustang, a few areas of distinction stand out above the rest.
* The Mustang was the first of what the industry would come to refer to as "pony cars," a subclass of high-performance muscle cars built on compact frames. In fact, the term is a reference to the Mustang itself.
* In its first two years of production, the Mustang sold almost 1.5 million units, a sales record that no make or model of any car has managed to break in the past 40 years.
* The Mustang was the focus of arguably the first "media blitz" advertising campaign, receiving simultaneous promotion on all three major U.S. television networks of the era, as well as a gala unveiling at the 1964 New York World's Fair.
The man behind the media blitz, as well as the very idea of the Mustang itself, was legendary Ford product developer (and future Ford president) Lee Iacocca. According to legend, Iacocca foresaw the coming-of-age of the Baby Boom generation, and he wanted to produce an affordable sports car for this then-new market segment.
In 1962, Iacocca undertook a redesign of the markedly successful but otherwise unremarkable Ford Falcon. It was an experiment that produced one of the most famously successful automobiles of all time.
The Falcon, however, has a history of its own--a history that nearly prevented the Mustang from ever rolling off the assembly line in the first place. In 1959, Ford shut down its two-year-old woefully
unsuccessful Edsel division, and the financial pinch meant that daring projects such as Iacocca's Baby Boom roadster were no longer an option.
Instead, money-conscious Ford executives championed the Falcon--a small, inexpensive, high miles-per-gallon (for the era, at least) compact car. The Falcon sold well, yet excited almost no one, except for Ford's numbers-oriented upper management and particularly the "Whiz Kid" product manager who oversaw the Falcon's development.
By some accounts, it took the departure of this "Father of the Falcon"--also a future Ford president and a historically significant political figure--for the Mustang project to get the green light.
WHAT FUTURE POLITICAL FIGURE SPEARHEADED THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FORD FALCON?
The figure in question is none other than Robert McNamara, the controversial U.S. Secretary of Defense under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. McNamara presided over the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs, and major stages of the Vietnam War.
Before all that, however, McNamara was a fast-rising, number-crunching product manager at Ford. Many have credited his cost-conscious management principles with righting the automaker's financial ship after the fiscal difficulties of World War II. In fact, many automotive historians view the Ford Falcon—which sold in record numbers before the Ford Mustang redefined the term "record sales"—as emblematic of McNamara's reign: effective, cost-conscious, and bland.
On Nov. 9, 1960—one day after JFK won the U.S. Presidential election—Robert McNamara became the first president of the Ford Motor Company who was not a member of the Ford family. One month later, President Kennedy asked McNamara to become Secretary of Defense, and the rest is history.
In the meantime, Lee Iacocca was forging his own name at Ford, and he became the "stepfather" of the Falcon model group following McNamara's departure. Two years later, Iacocca finally obtained permission to build his compact sports car, and the Falcon served as the perfect basis for the now legendary Mustang, sort of the less-famous older brother of an automotive rock star.
In car collector circles, the Falcon still boasts a loyal following, though nowhere near that of the Mustang. (Of course, if Steve McQueen had driven a Falcon instead of a Mustang in the famous car chase sequence in the hit 1968 film Bullitt, who can say which would be more famous today?) While Ford no longer manufactures the Falcon in the United States, Australia still produces new models of the Ford Falcon, and the Falcon remains one of the most popular Ford cars sold Down Under.
