Mustang hits 10 million milestone
A little over 54 years after the Mustang first went on sale to the public, America’s (and now the world’s) Pony Car has reached a major milestone, with the ten millionth Mustang rolling off the line at Ford’s Flat Rock Assembly Plant in Michigan on 8 August.
The milestone car was an MY19 GT V8 manual convertible, finished in Wimbledon White in homage to the first serial production Mustang, also a Wimbledon White V8 convertible, from 1964. That car, as Mustang lore has it, was sold ahead of the official on-sale date of 17 April, 1964, to Canadian airline pilot Stanley Tucker. After the Mustang’s popularity exploded, Ford persuaded Tucker to part with his significant car in exchange for the millionth Mustang built.
Those first million sales were achieved in record time – less than 18 months after launch and in spite of a North American new car market overflowing with choice. Eclipsing the Plymouth Barracuda (which actually arrived earlier) and the raft of competitors that followed, the Mustang has been America’s top-selling sports car for the past 50 years. With recent expansion into new markets and factory production in right-hand drive for the first time, Mustang has also been the #1-selling sports car globally for the past three years.
While today’s sixth-generation Mustang is produced at Flat Rock, the first-generation was built at nearby Dearborn, but overwhelming demand saw Ford supplement production at plants in New Jersey and California. Production at these latter two ended in the early 1970s, but Dearborn continued to build Mustangs up to 2004, when manufacture was moved to Flat Rock.
At Dearborn, the 10 Million milestone was celebrated with an employee party and a flyover by vintage P-51 Mustang fighter planes, before a convoy of Mustangs - including the first and ten-millionth cars – cruised to Flat Rock for a display of all generations of Mustang, including 60 examples used to spell out ‘10,000,000’ in the factory grounds.
“Mustang is the heart and soul of this company and a favourite around the world,” said Jim Farley, president of global markets, Ford Motor Company. “I get the same thrill seeing a Mustang roll down a street in Detroit, London or Beijing that I felt when I bought my first car – a 1966 Mustang coupe that I drove across the country as a teenager. Mustang is a smile-maker in any language.”
According to Ford, the Mustang has featured in more movies than any other car in the world and also has more facebook followers. Apart from identifying graphics on the doors and a dash plaque, the ten-millionth Mustang doesn’t appear any different from a regular MY19 GT convertible. Whether the milestone car will be retained by Ford, auctioned for charity or sold like the first Mustang has yet to be revealed.
