FORD MUSTANG 1964-66
LEE IACOCCA'S PONY CAR, THAT RESTORED US FORD'S POST-EDSEL SELFRESPECT, TOOK NO TIME AT ALL TO WIN ITSELF AN AUSSIE FAN-BASE
Ford’s ground-breaking Mustang was never designed or intended to be a performance car. The concept of a cheap, compact two-door ‘secretary’s car’ was set in stone well before ratbag motor racers discovered that a Mustang with a V8 under its long ‘hood’ made an ideal weapon with which to subdue a range of rivals.
Australia saw its first privately-imported Mustangs in late 1964, just months after the model caused a stampede to US Ford dealerships. Converting the cars to right-hand drive was relatively easy, with many parts compatible with locally-sold models.
The first cars to be raced here appeared in 1965, driven most prominently by Norm Beechey who won that year’s Touring Car title in a car sponsored by Neptune fuel and the late Bob Jane. The following year, Beechey was in a Chevy Nova and finishing second in the Championship to Ian ‘Pete’ Geoghegan who had acquired a Mustang to replace his four-cylinder Cortina GT.
By this time, road-spec Mustangs were becoming common sights in race circuit and company carparks as well. Ford was still more than a year away from having a GT Falcon that could rival the Mustang for power and presence, so to capture a share of buyer interest it imported and converted around 200 cars for sale through its dealer network.
Suddenly the Mustang was adopted as a fair dinkum Aussie performance car. It even scored a role on television with the star of local spy-spoof series ‘Hunter’ driving around in a Mustang. Possibly not the most innocuous thing for shadowing bad guys in their Holden EHs but it guaranteed that car buffs would be watching every week as actor Tony Ward grinned through the trendy Ford's open, pillarless window.
Mustangs marketed in the USA as affordable, economy cars were pitched to buyers here as luxurious performance models with the potential to steal sales from Jaguar and the new Valiant V8.
The cars seen in Australia almost always used 4.7-litre, 167kW engines with three-speed automatic transmission. A few manual Mustangs arrived but possibly didn’t survive their interaction with overly-enthusiastic owners. Crashed and theft-recovered vehicles did have an after-life however; rebuilt and repainted and by the late 1960s appearing as front-running contenders on speedway tracks across the country.
Most of the original arrivals were notch-back coupes with a few convertibles and 2+2 Fastbacks thrown in. That mix would change during the 1980-90s when helpful exchange rates and low US values would see a rush of freshly-imported soft-tops and Fastbacks. Australians who attended weddings during that time might remember the excitement generated when the bridal party arrived in a fleet of open-top Mustangs.
Those cars survive literally in their thousands and during the past 20 years they have taken the place of the MGB as Australia’s most prolific hobby car.
A glut of that magnitude would in most circumstances have a pretty adverse impact on values, but not on the resilient Mustang. Even cars that aren’t going to be taking home any ribbons from the local car show are finding buyers in the $25-35,000 price bracket, with really good 2+2s and some convertibles stretching the purse strings to more than $60,000.