Skip to main content

The Unexpected

By


The Mustang turns 50 next year, April 17 to be exact, but I wasn't giving it much thought until I heard the introduction of the 2015 model a few days ago.  This is probably the most iconic American automobile and is apparently popular enough in Europe that Ford plans to distribute new models abroad for the first time.   Ironic, given that European styling was what make the Mustang unique in the American market at the time.  I see a few of these little "ponies" running around Vilnius, but to me it is hard to beat the early models.  Clean and crisp with enough horsepower to satisfy me.  But, as my son pointed out to me, still doesn't have independent suspension which is standard over here.

Above is the 1965 model as shown at the 1964 World's Fair in New York.  Here is the press kit that came with it.  It didn't take much to get people to notice.  The sports car exceeded all expectations.  Over 550,000 models were sold with a basic sticker price of $2,320 (about $16,700 adjusted for inflation), which made it affordable to a large segment of the middle class.



The car bred a whole new line of "pony class" cars including the Chevy Camaro, AMC Javelin and Plymouth Barracuda.  All had a "muscle car" version with extra horsepower and other modifications for the racing aficionado.  But, it has been the Mustang that has lasted the longest and made the most indelible mark on the automobile industry.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
183 comments
Read more