When Ford introduced its 1958 Thunderbird, it had something that made purists cringe: a back seat.  What the purists didn’t know was that the idea of a sporty small car was not dead in Dearborn.  In just a few years, Lee Iacocca was busy assembling a team of engineers, designers, and P.R. men that would essentially produce the Ford Mustang. While the Mustang did have a back seat, it was still true to the T-bird’s original concept…a long hood, short deck, lightweight and with a sporty presence that appealed to young people.  Based on the successful Falcon platform, Ford’s new pony car was much more than just a gussied-up economy car.  The car’s styling and performance, combined with an image-building marketing blitz, secured the 1964-1/2 Mustang’s place as the forerunner in its class…a class that came to be known as pony cars. 

In the following years, the Mustang got larger and more powerful, and it spawned a legion of imitators, including the Camaro, Firebird, and AMX. The Mustang answered those challenges with unforgettable performance models like the Cobra Jets, Boss 302s, Boss 429s, and the ultimate ‘60s performance cars, the Shelby Cobra Mustang.