By the third week of April 1964, the Ford Mustang had become the most dangerous object in Detroit that did not contain enriched uranium.
Ford introduced it to the public at the New York World’s Fair on April 17, then bought commercial time on all three television networks the same evening. More than twenty-nine million Americans saw the advertisements. Four million visited Ford dealerships that first weekend, and twenty-two thousand ordered one before Chevrolet had finished circulating the memorandum explaining why nobody needed one.
The automobile business had seen successful introductions before. This was different. In Garland, Texas, fifteen customers bid against one another for the only Mustang in the showroom, and the winner slept in it until his check cleared. In Arkansas, nearly an entire high school descended upon the local Ford dealer. In Pittsburgh, a dealership could not lower a Mustang from the wash rack because the crowd beneath it refused to move.
Within four months, Ford had sold more than one hundred thousand. By the end of the calendar year, the total would exceed 420,000, making the Mustang the most successful new-car introduction in American history.
On the Monday following the introduction, an emergency meeting was called in a General Motors boardroom.
Nobody was permitted to use the word panic, though several men had brought antacids, two had cancelled golf, and one vice president from Chevrolet had arrived wearing two different shoes.
The boardroom occupied an upper floor of a building constructed in the architectural style then known as Corporate Invincibility. The table was long enough to accommodate every important person in the corporation and sufficiently wide to prevent any of them from being struck without advance planning. Behind the chairman hung a map of North America covered in colored pins representing assembly plants, dealerships, suppliers and other places where somebody could be blamed.
The chairman entered carrying a sales report folded lengthwise.
He threw it onto the table.
“How the hell did this happen?”
Nobody answered.
That was the trouble with becoming the largest automobile company in the world. Eventually, every man in the room acquired enough authority to speak freely and enough wisdom not to.
A representative from Accounting cleared his throat. He was one of those narrow men who appeared to have been assembled from leftover adding-machine parts.
“Our internal research suggests the Corvair Monza could be positioned to compete with the new Ford sporty coupe.”
“The Corvair?” the chairman said.
“Yes, sir. Bucket seats, available four-speed transmission, youthful image—”
“It was supposed to compete with the goddamned Volkswagen Beetle. Who were we kidding?”
Accounting lowered his eyes to the report. The Corvair had indeed developed a sporty following, particularly in Monza trim, but its air-cooled rear engine and unusual architecture limited how easily Chevrolet could stuff larger engines into it. The Mustang, by contrast, had been constructed from familiar Falcon pieces, allowing Ford to offer everything from an economical six-cylinder secretary’s car to a V-8 capable of converting rear tires into smoke.
That was the real genius of the Mustang. It looked exotic without requiring Ford to build anything exotic underneath.
“Maybe we could dress up the Nova,” someone offered.
“The Chevy II Nova is a brick turd meant to compete with the Falcon, Ford’s brick turd. It is a cheap sedan, a cheap coupe or a cheap wagon. Do you think there is enough lipstick in all of Detroit to put on that pig and make somebody wander over from the Ford dealership after looking at a Mustang and drive away in one?”
“Well—”
“There isn’t.”
Nobody from Chevrolet reminded the chairman that General Motors had approved the Chevy II precisely because it could be designed quickly, built cheaply and sold to people who believed styling represented a form of moral weakness. It had performed that assignment admirably. The difficulty was that Ford had now wrapped essentially the same sensible compact machinery in a body capable of making a twenty-three-year-old secretary feel like Grace Kelly and a forty-seven-year-old dentist feel twenty-three.
A man from Marketing turned several pages in a notebook he had not written anything in.
“We are also hearing that Lincoln-Mercury is preparing an upscale version.”
“Of the Mustang?”
“Yes, sir. Longer, more formal, higher content. Hidden headlights are being discussed. Possibly sequential rear signals. Sort of a luxury Mustang.”
The car would eventually become the Mercury Cougar, introduced for 1967 as a more refined companion to the Ford. Higher equipment. Higher price. Higher margins. Ford would soon have two divisions grazing in a pasture GM had not yet discovered.
“So we don’t have anything to compete with either one,” the chairman said.
“Not at present.”
The chairman rose.
“We got caught with our pants down and our peckers out when they came out with the four-seat Thunderbird for ’58. They created the personal-luxury market and had it to themselves for half a decade. We only answered with the Riviera last year.”
Several men studied the walnut grain in the table. None of them had participated in that decision personally, but all were close enough to the blast radius to feel heat.
“There is no way in hell we’re waiting another half decade to have something that competes with the Mustang. I damn near took the fall for the Thunderbird kicking our ass, and they were only selling seventy thousand of those a year.”
The veins in his neck had swollen into something resembling an interstate highway map. One appeared to be under construction near his right ear.
“They’re already projecting the Mustang will do six times that. And that doesn’t count everybody who walks into a Ford dealership to see one and drives home in a Galaxie, a Fairlane or, God help us, a damned Thunderbird instead.”
The room fell silent again.
At the far end of the table sat Will Wimberly.
Will had helped take the respectable Pontiac Catalina formula—wide-track stance, strong engine, comfortable interior—and distill its better instincts into the Grand Prix, a car that permitted a prosperous man to imagine he had purchased something European without surrendering enough trunk space to inconvenience his golf clubs.
Inside the boardroom, Will was known as Tex. The chairman could never remember his name, only that he had grown up in a West Texas town called Fort Stockton, which the chairman believed was somewhere outside El Paso near either Mexico or Arizona. He had once asked Will whether his family owned cattle.
“No,” Will had replied. “We knew some.”
The answer had satisfied him.
Will had developed a reputation for never getting rattled. Some attributed it to growing up around rattlesnakes and Republicans. Others credited the assortment of medications he removed throughout the day from an unmarked silver pillbox. Will never explained those, either.
He had spent most of the meeting drawing a horse on a yellow legal pad.
“Tex,” the chairman said. “You’ve been unusually quiet.”
“I usually am when everybody else is doing such good work.”
Three vice presidents looked up, uncertain whether they had been complimented.
Will closed the pad.
“Give me two weeks. I’ve got some ideas.”
The chairman stared at him.
“One week. Our asses are on the line. We meet here one week from today. You present a solution, and it better be good.”
Will nodded once.
Then he picked up his yellow pad and left before anyone could assign him a committee.
One week later, Will returned with his secretary, Miss Evelyn Palmer, both of them carrying armloads of market research, engineering estimates, product drawings and colored renderings. Evelyn also carried an easel, a slide rule and the expression of a woman who had spent seven days correcting mistakes made by men earning four times her salary.
Will’s presentation was carefully designed to last long enough to impress but not long enough to bore.
Short sentences.
Shiny colors.
Optimistic numbers.
Just enough engineering detail to support each claim, but not enough to invite an engineer to describe why it could not be done.
He began with the problem.
Ford had discovered that Americans did not necessarily want a sports car. They wanted a car that made them feel sporty while retaining a back seat, roll-up windows, a heater, a radio and sufficient luggage space to continue lying to themselves about practicality.
The Mustang was not one automobile. It was a platform upon which customers could construct an alibi.
A young woman could order a six-cylinder hardtop with an automatic transmission. A young man could choose a four-speed and a V-8. A middle-aged executive could add air conditioning, power steering and enough trim to convince his wife it was not a midlife crisis.
“And all three drive away believing Ford built the car specifically for them,” Will said.
He turned the first board around.
His proposal called for a compact four-passenger coupe and convertible with a long hood, short rear deck, low seating position and enough mechanical flexibility to accept everything from a thrifty six-cylinder engine to Chevrolet’s largest V-8s. It would borrow heavily from existing compact-car engineering, but nothing visible could remind a customer that any portion of it had once belonged to a Chevy II.
On the next board was the Pontiac.
Same fundamental structure. Different face. Different engines. Different personality. Chevrolet would sell speed to the masses. Pontiac would sell danger to people who preferred bucket seats with better upholstery.
“Two cars?” Accounting asked.
“One basic investment,” Will said. “Two divisions. Two kinds of buyer. Twice the opportunity to intercept somebody before he gets to the Ford store.”
“What about Buick?”
“Buick can sell him something after his third child.”
“And Oldsmobile?”
“Oldsmobile can wait until his first promotion.”
The chairman leaned forward.
“How quickly?”
“Engineering says thirty months.”
A vice president from Engineering appeared startled to learn what Engineering had said.
“And what do you say?” the chairman asked.
“Twenty-four, if nobody forming a committee is permitted to serve on it.”
Evelyn turned the next illustration.
The car was still conceptual, but the ingredients were there: low roof, muscular rear quarters, four distinct seats and the suggestion of considerable horsepower waiting beneath the hood.
“What do we call it?” Marketing asked.
“For now, Panther.”
The chairman studied the drawing.
“I like Panther.”
“So does every twelve-year-old boy in America,” Will said. “That’s why we’ll probably change it.”
By the end of the meeting, the future Chevrolet Camaro had been approved for accelerated development under the internal designation XP-836. The Pontiac companion was less settled; Pontiac still entertained dreams of building its own two-seat sports car, but the corporation would eventually hand the division Chevrolet’s basic F-body structure and instruct it to make something recognizably Pontiac from the pieces.
The budget was substantial.
The schedule was unreasonable.
Everyone left satisfied.
In Detroit, this was considered momentum.
Six months later, many of the same suits gathered in the design studios.
The place smelled of clay, cigarette smoke, coffee and unpaid overtime. Young designers stood along the walls with the hollow-eyed alertness of men who had not seen daylight since the previous model year. Nearby sat full-sized tape drawings, dimensional bucks and skeletal wire forms over which the shape of a new automobile was being negotiated one contour at a time.
A clay model occupied the center of the studio.
It had acquired a long hood, tight passenger compartment and abbreviated rear deck. The sides curved inward at the center, giving it the suggestion of a muscular animal drawing breath. It did not resemble the Mustang closely enough to be called a copy, but it addressed every reason the Mustang existed.
The chairman circled it twice.
“This is the Chevrolet?”
“Yes,” Will said.
“And the Pontiac?”
Evelyn removed the cover from a second rendering. The Pontiac wore its own split grille, distinctive rear treatment and enough attitude to suggest it considered the Chevrolet a relative only when filing taxes.
“What happened to Panther?” the chairman asked.
“Marketing happened.”
A fellow from Advertising raised one finger. “Consumer clinics indicate Panther may be perceived as excessively aggressive.”
“We’re trying to eat a horse,” Will said. “Aggression would seem useful.”
“We’ve selected Camaro.”
The man from Accounting frowned.
“What the hell does Camaro mean?”
Will never hesitated.
“Whatever you want it to.”
“Is it Spanish?”
“No.”
“Italian?”
“Not on purpose.”
“French?”
“Only if the French buy some.”
The eventual public explanation would claim that a Camaro was a small, vicious animal that ate Mustangs, which was not a recognized zoological definition but was considerably better than admitting somebody had gone hunting through old dictionaries for another pleasant word beginning with C.
A middle-aged man from Sales Support studied the Pontiac drawing.
“Isn’t Firebird awfully close to Thunderbird?”
Will looked at him.
“About as close as your wife and your secretary.”
The man stopped smiling.
He wondered how Will knew.
Evelyn did not look up from her notes.
The Camaro reached Chevrolet dealerships on September 29, 1966, as a 1967 model. The Firebird followed in February 1967, wearing Pontiac styling and Pontiac power on the shared F-body foundation.
They did not kill the Mustang.
Nothing did.
But they stopped Ford from owning the entire pasture.
Chevrolet sold 220,906 Camaros during the 1967 model year. Pontiac added 82,560 Firebirds. The Mustang still moved roughly 472,000 units, but that was down by more than 130,000 from 1966. The horse had not been eaten, but for the first time it had looked over its shoulder and discovered teeth.
The competition continued for decades.
In 1977 and 1978, buyers preferred the broad, muscular Camaro in sufficient numbers for it to outsell the downsized Mustang II. The Camaro did it again in 1984 and 1985, when both cars had been reborn as angular hatchback warriors whose dashboards contained enough red illumination to guide aircraft. It edged the Mustang again in 1991.
Contrary to some later retellings, the Camaro did not quite win 1994: Chevrolet sold about 119,800 while Ford’s redesigned Mustang managed roughly 123,000. It was close enough to start an argument at any parts counter in America but not close enough to change arithmetic.
After Camaro production ended in 2002, the Mustang spent several years without its oldest Chevrolet rival. Then the Camaro returned for 2010, helped considerably by retro styling and its employment as Bumblebee in the Transformersfilms. Chevrolet sold 81,299 that year and beat the Mustang for the first time in twenty-four years.
Neither side ever achieved permanent victory. The Mustang endured. The Camaro left, returned and left again. The Firebird burned brightly until Pontiac itself disappeared. Yet the argument outlived several corporations, two oil crises, emissions controls, insurance surcharges, disco, cassette tapes, catalytic converters and enough plastic body cladding to roof Midland.
Will Wimberly remained at General Motors long enough to enjoy the beginning.
For four years following the Camaro’s introduction, Chevrolet furnished him with a new company car. Each arrived equipped according to whatever combination of engine, transmission and color made the division look most confident that particular year.
Will drove them to work Monday through Friday.
He drove them to engineering meetings, dealer conferences and product presentations. He parked them prominently. He spoke sincerely about their balance, their performance and the importance of maintaining General Motors’ position in the youth market.
On weekends, however, Will and Evelyn climbed into the Mustang convertible he had bought for her after they married.
Evelyn had been a pretty young thing from the typing pool when Will first noticed her, though she possessed an organizational ability exceeding that of several operating divisions. She had helped assemble the original presentation, corrected his numbers, reorganized his drawings and quietly removed a page on which he had proposed calling the Pontiac the Comanche.
The Mustang was Wimbledon White with a red interior and a power top. Evelyn chose it herself.
They drove it with the top down whenever Michigan weather permitted and sometimes when it did not. Will wore sunglasses. Evelyn tied a scarf over her hair. They never discussed what would happen if somebody from Chevrolet saw them.
Years later, a former executive claimed Will bought the Mustang strictly for competitive evaluation.
That was not true.
He bought it because Evelyn wanted one.
And perhaps because, beneath the budgets, clay models, horsepower ratings, market studies and decades of corporate warfare, Will understood the original problem better than anybody in that boardroom.
Ford had not merely introduced a new automobile in the spring of 1964.
Ford had built something people desired before they had developed a sensible reason to desire it.
General Motors responded with the Camaro and Firebird—two of the finest competitive answers Detroit ever produced. They were fast, handsome, profitable and occasionally victorious. They gave the Mustang a fight that lasted more than half a century.
But every Sunday afternoon, with a fresh Camaro sitting in his driveway and Evelyn beside him, Will Wimberly lowered the Mustang’s top, turned the key and headed north out of Detroit.
Somewhere behind him, in a boardroom several floors above the ground, the original question was probably still hanging in the cigarette smoke.
How the hell did this happen?
Will knew.
Sometimes the other guy simply thought of it first.
One response to “HOW THE HELL DID THIS HAPPEN?”
I love the story of the Mustang – not especially the car itself – but the sociological, cerebral, historical impact – the BIG PICTURE of it, that (my mind doesn’t know all the words that go here) of it.
It destroyed the past and introduced the future of the American “being.”