Last we heard, Mr. Keenan of Tool fame was making wine in Arizona. Thankfully, the Mustang has continued its role as a burnout machine unabated during its entire existence.
The Mustang's story of initial success is one of those fables we Americans learn alongside George Washington and the cherry tree and Abraham Lincoln's birth in a log cabin.
Exactly 45 years ago, on April 17, 1964, Ford debuted the Mustang at the New York World's fair and put it on sale at dealers across the country. Before the day was through, they had sold more than 22,000 of the new sports coupes and convertibles with prices starting at just $2,368.
Just 12 months later, a staggering 417,000 had found buyers. By early in the 1966 model year, over 1,000,000 were out on America's highways. And last year Ford sold its 9 millionth Mustang.
Ford, never one to let a good anniversary pass unexploited, has issued a series of press releases highlighting the Mustang's history and successes and is gathering together over 2,500 Mustangs and "hundreds of thousands" of spectators in Birminham, Alabama for a 45th anniversary celebration that starts today and runs through Monday.
If you're in a Mustang-manic mood, here at Straightline we recommend starting the day by reading Inside Line's now well-aged "Generations" history of the car through, um, 2003 and then heading over to our Ford Mustang Central where Mustang road tests as recent as last month and reaching all the way back to 1997 are available for reference and amusement.
Then come back to Straightline where we'll pick the very best of each Mustang generation. And while Ford identifies four generations of Mustangs, we count ten.
Yes, that even includes the best Mustang II. The dread, lousy, totally inept Mustang II. -- John Pearley Huffman, Contributor
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