Ford Mustang

The Ford Mustang, welcome. The original ‘pony’ car, long in hood, short in deck and often vast in engine, has too long lingered in the tall grass of European car culture.

In the US, its fame in Ford’s canon is rivalled only by the impossibly influential Model T and the unimaginably big-selling F-Series trucks.

Since its launch in 1964, the Mustang has never been off sale, even if its popularity has waxed and waned. But away from North America, and certainly in the UK, the car’s import status has rarely progressed beyond ultra-low-volume novelty – despite widespread nameplate recognition.

The reasons for this are simple enough. From Ford’s perspective, it did export the Mustang, but it was the idea, not the metalwork, that was dispatched across the Atlantic.

Thus Europe’s cheap-to-build fastback coupé was the wildly successful Ford Capri, followed, inauspiciously, by the charmless Probe, a car we suggested should not make a comeback.