Why things went completely wrong with the Ford Mustang in the 1970s

Vroom-vroom-vroom! In the front of the green Mustang II the V8 roars unabashedly, behind the two Magnaflow exhaust pipes gurgle. Get in, the wide door falls heavily into the lock. Automatic in D and gas on it. The big car thunders off. The rear wheels sing, the driver’s eyes wander from the left fender through the hood, hood, more hood… ah, there’s the right fender. What a showpiece! Everything is wide, thick, big, made in macho land.

Ford Mustang II, considerably shrunk compared to previous Mustangs.

At least the 1971 Ford Mustang is still nice and thick.

Mustang-II is soft coupe

Next to it is his immediate successor. With a steeply sloping front spoiler, white-lettered tyres, front mudguards marked ‘V8’, ‘T5’ and ‘Mach 1’… But let’s face it: his appearance is as impressive as an eight-year-old in a Batman suit. The Mustang II is a soft coupe, not narrow, but two classes shorter from head to tail than its brutal 1971 brother, even shorter than the primal ‘Stang. It stands on 13-inch wheels and its wheelbase is the same as that of the first Ford Ka. Moreover, its design does not radiate the sharpness of the first pony car. Displacement junkies still shake their heads with disdain that the Mustang II was initially only available with a 2.3-liter four-cylinder (88 hp) or a 2.8-liter V6 (105 hp) from Cologne. A 4.9-liter V8, around 140 horsepower, throughout the production run of the Mustang II, it was the biggest engine you could get, even in the King Cobra. As desperately as Mustang II fans fight for their darling’s reputation, no generation has been more reviled by Mustang aficionados than this one. What the hell happened there? It’s not because of the oil crisis, that much is clear.

The 1973 Ford Mustang, downsized and with undersized engines.

It already went wrong with model year 1971

To understand the shuffling of the Mustang II, it helps to first understand the shuffling of its predecessor. Because with this fat horse, Ford boss Semon “Bunkie” Knudsen hit a dead end, which the American legislature was mainly building. In the late 1960s, a wealth race was raging between the American automakers. The highlight at Ford was the 429 cubic-inch V8 in the 1969 Mustang. A seven-liter V8 so huge that mechanics complained about the tightness under the hood. So Bunkie simply had the next generation made wider. And longer. And heavier. Mustang creator Lee Iacocca didn’t like it at all and expressed that openly. When Henry Ford II fired Knudsen on September 11, 1969, it was too late: the 1971 model year Mustang had already expanded widely and was presented in September 1970.

Emissions down, and on unleaded

It was precisely at that time that the American environmental watchdog EPA announced that emissions of hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide had to be reduced by 90 percent by 1975. Nitrogen oxides (NOx) were also criticized by the EPA. And the engines had to be able to run on unleaded petrol.

How could all this be achieved at the same time? The manufacturers had no idea, the catalytic converter was only invented in 1973. They experimented with all kinds of sensors and with a lower compression ratio. Result: low performance and high consumption. And to emphasize that, the manufacturers also changed the measurement method for power. Until 1971-72, SAE horsepower was measured gross, excluding alternator, fan, and water pump consumption. After that, net power was measured at the crankshaft, so the performance figures dropped even further.

Back to Ford: Mustang sales took a big hit. But that wasn’t the only problem facing Lee Iacocca, who had become Ford chairman in late 1970: sporty cars were completely out of favour, buyers were at a loss as to what to buy, and the Japanese were on the rise. Moreover, Ford had no real solution for the polluting exhaust gases and since the Chevrolet Corvair scandal it was now crystal clear that manufacturers are held responsible for the products they send out into the world. Iacocca’s answer: We’re radically shrinking the next-generation Mustang and selling it not as a sports car, but as a small luxury coupe – a whole new segment.

The interior of the Ford Mustang II.

Based on Pinto

Under the code name Arizona, Nat Adamson developed a car based on the small Ford Pinto, from which only the front suspension, rear axle and trunk floor were adopted. Iacocca had demanded that the new Mustang be ‘a gem’. Especially thanks to the completely new front axle and subframe for the engine, it drove a lot more civilized than the Pinto.

To make it clear to customers that this was not just any 1974 model year Mustang, but a car that was rebuilt from the ground up, Ford called it Mustang II. That does not mean that we should suddenly call the 1971 copy Mustang I, because it is already of the fourth generation.

Unveiled in 1973

It was unveiled at the end of August 1973, it was at the dealers on September 21. The responses were disappointed and disappointing. In the first month, the planned 31,000 units were not sold, but just 18,000. The Mustang II was quite heavy, under-motorized and more expensive than its large predecessor.

But then came the oil crisis. On October 17, 1973, the price of a barrel of crude oil rose by 70 percent, and until 1974 the price even quadrupled. A shock for the US, a blessing for the Mustang II. En masse, customers rejected their V8 and bought the ‘jewel’. No less than 385,993 units in the first model year – by a gigantic coincidence, the flop became a hit.

Today, both generations have few fans. A 1971 Mustang is like Elvis in 1976: an overweight superstar, while a 1976 Mustang is like Shakin’ Stevens in 1971: an insecure copy of a superstar. In both cases you are not waiting for that, but they are interesting from a historical perspective. At least they both rock more than Cliff Richard.