The Ford Mustang

In the early 1960's Ford's General Manager Lee Iacocca pitched his vision of a fun-to-drive compact car to the Ford board members. Iacocca along with his supporters convinced Ford to move forward on the project. Frey, the Executive Engineer for Ford conceived the first prototype, the 1962 Mustang I Concept. The name Mustang was based on the legendary P-51 Mustang Fighter Plane from the World War II. The Mustang I Concept was debuted in October of 1962 at the Grand Prix at Watkin Glen, New York. There it was driven around the circuit by legendary race car driver Dan Gurney. However Lee Iacocca was looking for something different and had gone back to ask the designers to come up with something new. The idea was to design a vehicle that was cheap to produce, while still offering up the product quality of the Falcon. Although there were many similarities between the Mustang and the Falcon, the Mustang looked completely different on the outside. With that, the Ford Mustang was born. The Mustang has been imitated countless times but still remains classic and has since it was introduced in the 1960's. The Mustang has been redesigned several times over the years and although there has been numerous body styles and changes there has only been a total of five ground-up redesigns of the Mustang. Therefore there are five generations of the Ford Mustang according to Ford. The current design of the Mustang is the fifth generation which was introduced in 2005. The new design was intended to remind people of the original Mustang from the 1960's. Of course with newer updates to the engine as well as new features added, Ford has kept the Mustang up to date and is still popular today.