The enduring mystery of the “lost” 1965 Bertone Mustang

The death last month of L. Scott Bailey, the founder of one of the most esteemed automotive publications in the 20th Century, revived a long-standing mystery surrounding this car: a one-off Ford Mustang styled by Italian coachbuilder Bertone and then-unknown designer Giorgetto Giugiaro. I'd show you a more modern picture than this, but the car hasn't been seen in public for decades. Yet there's evidence it's still intact, somewhere.

Bailey, 87, founded the advertising-free Automotive Quarterly in 1962. Less a magazine than a series of books, AQ set a standard for automotive writing that's not been met since. Every issue was filled with a level of care and obsession that simply can't be found today, from exhaustively researched stories by noted historians to high-quality paper and beautiful photography. In 1964, at the height of the Ford Mustang launch, Bailey had an idea after a meeting with Italian designer Nuccio Bertone: what could Bertone do with a Mustang chassis?