…and the first Mustang

Atotal of 22,000 Mustangs were sold on the rst day the original model went on sale. The rst new Mustang owner in the world was Chicago resident Gail Wise – although Gail herself remained blissfully unaware of the signi cance of her purchase even 40-plus years later.

Gail and husband, Tom, still own it today. It spent 30 years gathering dust in their garage before Tom persuaded his wife to let him spend the money on returning Gail’s sky-blue automatic convertible Mustang to its former glory.

It was only during the mid-2000s restoration that Tom became aware that their car was a very early edition Mustang. A look at the sales invoice con rmed it had been purchased by Gail on April 15, 1964 – two days before the Mustang officially went on sale.

Gail, then a 22 year-old school teacher, had gone to her local Ford dealer looking to buy a new convertible. But the dealer had no stocks of convertible models, so rather than risk losing the sale, he pre-sold her one of the convertible Mustangs the dealership had hidden under wraps, awaiting the April 17 on-sale date.

Gail paid $3447.50 for her Mustang in 1964. Fifty four years later and the rst Mustang ever sold has an estimated worth of at least $350,000. “It’s like being a movie star at 76,” Gail told

Detroit Free Press. “I felt like a movie star at 22 when I bought the car. I mean, that was 54 years ago and we’re still talking about it.”

Gail and her Mustang were special guests of Ford at the special celebration of the 10 millionth Mustang (at Ford’s Dearborn, Michigan, headquarters.