Mustang turns 60

First, I’d like to apologize. This blog was supposed to have been posted yesterday, April 17, for reasons you will soon learn. Second, if two Colorado blue spruce trees fall in your yard and you’re sitting in the kitchen, does it make a sound? Yes, but only if someone puts it on Facebook.

Forget the tree talk. What I heard was, “Oh. My. Gosh. OH MY GOSH. OHMYGOSH!”

I swear, Rebecca never swears — even amid unanticipated natural events for which no human is responsible. Forever to be called an Act of … Gosh.

Remember those Chiffon margarine ads from the 1970s? Mother Nature tastes what she thinks is sweet creamy butter, and an off-screen voice tells her it’s actually soft-whipped margarine in a plastic tub. Annoyed, she declares in a somewhat threatening voice, “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.”

She raises her arms, thunder roars, lightning flashes and jungle animals scamper. Then the catchy jingle plays: “If you think it’s butter, but it’s not … it’s Chiffon.”

If yesterday’s weather was Mother Nature’s idea of a welcome home for us after being away for two weeks, believe me, I’m never crossing her.

The story: Around 3:45 p.m., severe storms with wind gusts of 60 mph rolled in and yanked out those two 35-foot trees like cocktail toothpicks in canapes — one narrowly missing the Beast RV and the other landing on our neighbor’s property a few feet from his parked car.

Luckily, that same tree also avoided a row of arbor vitae and three cable boxes. A local tree service arrives tomorrow with chain saws and muscle to wood-chip away the mess.

Rebecca and I are grateful we were home, no one was hurt and nothing was seriously damaged. But we were without WiFi most of last evening, which is why I couldn’t post this blog. All I can say about that is … WOW.

You knew that was coming.

Anyway, here was my planned post for April 17, 2024, a.k.a., “National Mustang Day,” marking 60 years of the iconic Pony Car that will always be near and dear to my heart:

The Ford Mustang is going nowhere — and I’m not talking about the one that’s been stored in our garage under a cozy fleece blanket for five months. No matter the forecast, the old girl starts right up, unlike other vehicles of ours which shall remain nameless.

Sixty years ago, at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, Ford Motor Co. introduced the car that would soon become a legend: Mustang.

Now entering its seventh generation, the 2025 Mustang will be available with anywhere from 315 to 500 horsepower (or 800 HP, if you consider the barely street-legal supercar Mustang GTD with its estimated starting price of $300,000).

That sticker price might have shocked Lee Iacocca, along with the buyer of the very first Mustang sold in the United States. Speaking of which …

In spring 1964, Gail Wise taught third grade at Sunnyside Elementary School in Berkeley, Illinois, a small suburb east of Elmhurst. She was still Gail Brown then, a 22-year-old single woman whose job was a dozen miles south from where she lived with her parents.

“Back then, you lived at home until you got married,” Wise said in a recent Chicago Sun-Timesstory. She needed her own wheels.

On April 15, 1964, she and her father went to the Johnson Ford dealership in Chicago. Her father had always driven Fords: a ’57 Fairlane 500 and a ’63 Thunderbird. And always convertibles.

Sadly, there were no convertibles on the dealership’s showroom floor. When the salesman saw Miss Brown’s disappointment, he told her they had something special in back that they weren’t supposed to sell yet. He pulled the tarp off a “Skylight Blue” Mustang convertible.

No Mustangs would officially go on sale for two days, until after the World’s Fair unveiling in New York on April 17. If she wanted this one, she’d have to buy it without a test drive. She wanted it. She bought it.

“I just fell in love. It was sporty. It had the bucket seats, the transmission on the floor,” she said. “He started it up. It went ‘zoom zoom’ and made that nice, loud noise. I was just so excited to buy it. I was in heaven. I told the salesman it was for me.”

Wise still tools around in that same 60-year-old convertible with her husband, Tom. Zoom, zoom.

I believe the Mustang’s popularity is rooted in its ability to evoke emotion. For me, it’s not so much the roar of the engine — mine is a 1964-½ straight 6-cylinder/170 cc — but the iconic silhouette. Clean lines and cool curves.

Driving it is a whole other story. I can’t stop smiling, especially with the top down and the wind in my (mostly) salt-and-pepper hair. You actually feel young again. It’s better than a facelift.

According to Ford, they have “sold more Mustangs in our history than the population of major cities like Chicago, London or Seoul.”

That’s a lot of ponies.

When the Mustang was finally released to the public, the car practically sold itself because it looked much more expensive than it was. In 1964, the base price of a Mustang was $2,368. That came with a 6-cylinder engine, bucket seats, full carpeting, padded instrument panel, all-vinyl upholstery and full wheel covers. It had the look of luxury. Whitewall tires were extra.

The cool targeted ads didn’t hurt sales either.

Ford’s advertising agency at the time was J. Walter Thompson, which came up with a full campaign and creative ads that painted an exciting picture for potential buyers.

I’ll leave you with some images of those Pony Car ads. (That bottom one is an artist’s rendering of my Mustang Sal drawn by a young man named Ethan Cummins in 2021. If you’re out there, drop me a line.)

My hope is that they take you back to a simpler time – when spruce trees were saplings and butter was actually made from cow’s milk.