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| Reinvented Hopeful: The Mustang II
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I had recently been hired by Ford as a studio designer and my first assignment was with the Montego, Cougar and Comet production exterior design studio. I was very excited by the prospect of participating in the Mustang design competition.
Soon after the concept sketch phase began, several hundred theme sketches were displayed for review. Fritz Mayhew, later head of all North America Ford design, divided all our studio sketches into basic design group categories, including one called "Jellybean Shapes." That particular category would prove to be very prophetic as a guiding Ford design philosophy many years later for such cars as the 1983 Thunderbird and the radical 1986 Taurus and Sable, with which Ford would achieve design leadership over rival General Motors.
Of several sketches I had completed and displayed during the early stages of the program, one had caught Iacocca's eye. This sketch just showed the frontal area of a high-performance "Boss-302" flavor on the smaller Mustang theme. Even though it was obvious there would no longer be a place for the ground-pounding Mach-1 429s and high-revving Boss 302s of the recent past, Iacocca still liked the idea of a strong visual performance image on some models of the newly proposed Mustang. He actively encouraged the development of my "Boss-302" sketch theme, as it came to be called by the studio staff.
The final design our studio submitted was a three-door fastback-only proposal created by staff designer Howard "Buck" Mook. Our Lincoln-Mercury proposal was personally selected by Lee Iacocca over all the other studio efforts.
This proposal had wound up as something of a disappointment to the designers involved. Its exaggerated, curvaceous lines and heavily dipped beltline combined with massive nonintegrated bumpers and small 13 inch wheels, resulted in a stubby overworked appearance. All this was a far cry from the sophisticated "domestic Capri" concept originally hoped for.
The design went on to be extensively "Clinic" surveyed. It received encouraging responses in most markets, but San Francisco felt the omission of a traditional coupe body style was a mistake. We then received instructions at our L-M studio to create a coupe alternative as quickly as possible. We spent a few days developing coupe roofline sketches and full-size tape drawings. We utilized the approved lower body design for the hatchback and modified only the upper body.
One of my proposal sketch designs was selected and I was instructed to direct and oversee its development on a full-size clay model followed by a finished fiberglass full-size model.
Among the coupe sketch themes I submitted, one featured a "formal" quarter window shape with a thick bright molding outline around the window's nearly vertical back edge. A variation of this idea was later used on the 1983-1988 Thunderbird quarter window treatment.
Another coupe theme I proposed was influenced by the recently introduced Mercedes-Benz 450 SLC four-place luxury coupe. I felt the louvered quarter window treatment imparted an elegant semi-privacy character that would have worked well on the Mustang.
An interesting side note on the development of the Mustang II involved a potential sheetmetal-forming problem on the rear body corners. Several different surface planes and creased line breaks came together in a sharp, pointed shape, and the body engineering people felt the sheetmetal would split and tear during stamping operations, and thus could not be produced as designed.
One of the more adventurous body engineers was positive he had seen formed section like this before. He had. The full-size 1963 Chevrolets had a similarly shaped rear fender corner. We proceeded to locate a 1963 Chevy rear quarter from a local junkyard. We then displayed the part, rust and all, in our studio for review, and made our point! On seeing this 11-year-old example from competitor G.M., the body engineering department made our design proposal work as it was originally shown.
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