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The birth of the Ford Mustang also saw the birth of the phrase 'pony car' which is a term used to describe an American car that is both sporty and affordable. Most Pony cars are epitomized by their inexpensiveness, small compact size and over powered engines.

In the late 1950's Ford saw sales of its 2 seat Thunderbird decline and in 1958 introduced a new larger 4 seater version which after its introduction in 1958 was incredibly successful.

The competition between Ford and Chevrolet has always been fierce with both large companies trying to appeal to similar markets. This lead to the introduction of the Chevrlet Corvair in 1960 that was the catalyst that forced Ford to create the Thunderbird's successor which was called the Futura and Futura Sprint. The competition lead the other manufacturer to follow Ford's example with Plymouth introducing the Valient Signet and Dodge creating the Dart GT and it wasn't long before Oldsmobile, Pontiac and Buick joined the competition.

All of these cars were a commercial success but some top auto executives including Ford's Lee Iacocca believe that there was a bigger market that they could capture. They saw that there was a niche market of younger car buys with a disposable income looking to purchase affordable cars with a more sporty image.

This lead to the creation of the Ford Mustang in 1964 which proved to be an enormous success. Ford initially forecasted sales of just a mear 100, 000 but orders totalled 22,000 in the first day alone. By the end of that year sales had reached a staggering 618,812 units.

The Ford Mustang became the car that all the other manufacturers wanted to emulate and lead to the new phrase 'pony car' being adopted. The term was first used by Dennis Shattuck who was the editor at Car Life magazine around that time and created it based on the equestrian sounding Ford Mustang.

The Ford Mustang is one of Ford's oldest running names together with the F-Series and the Falcon which is still in production in Australia. Over the years there have been 5 generations of Mustang with the 1970's seeing a diversion from the lightweight original Mustang urging fans of the early 1964 design to force Ford to go back to its 1960's roots.

First Generation

The first generation of Mustang was created under the watchful gaze of Ford's Lee Iacocca and chief engineer Donald N. Frey and took 18 months. The original prototype saw the car having a mid-mounted V4 engine and only 2 seats but this was abandoned in favour of a 4 seater 2+2 design due to the low sales figures of the Ford Thunderbird. The 2+2 design was believed to have been chosen due to the success of cars like the Jaguar E-Type.

The new body design was created by Joe Oros which produced a winning design in a competition introduced by Iacocca.

"I told the team that I wanted the car to appeal to women, but I wanted men to desire it, too. I wanted a Ferrari-like front end, the motif centered on the front - something heavy-looking like a Maserati, but, please, not a trident - and I wanted air intakes on the side to cool the rear brakes. I said it should be as sporty as possible and look like it was related to European design." --Oros

In order to keep the costs of development to a minimum the car was based on components from cars already in production such as the Ford Fairline and Ford Falcon.

Second Generation

The second generation of the Mustang was fuelled by the energy crisis in 1973 which caused the large petrol thirsty earlier cars to fall out of favour due to the rise in fuel costs.

The new smaller Mustang II was released in 1973 and Ford goal was to compete against the small Japanese imports such as Toyota Celica. However the final car was much heavier than its early counterpart adversely affecting the performance.

Third Generation

In 1979 the third generation of Mustang was introduced relying heavily on the Japanese market for its design. The car was designed to be more accommodating to 4-passengers, the trunk size was increased and the engine bay was enlarged to make maintenance easier.

Fourth Generation

In 1994 the Third Generation Mustang underwent a major restyling taking cues from the original 1964 design and for the first time since 1973 the hatchback version would no longer be available.

The original engine was a 3.8 OHV V6 rated at 145 bhp but over the years this was upgraded to a 4.6L V8 producing a massive 225 bhp by 1998.

Fifth Generation

2005 saw the introduction of a completely redesigned Mustang based on Fords new D2C platform. The body took a lot of detailing from the earlier 60's Mustangs which Ford's Vice President of design termed "retro-futurism".

If you would like to add a car wallpaper of the Ford Mustang to you desktop then you can find one in our wallpaper section on the Just Customz website.

This article was written by the owner of the Just Customz website that is popular with the car customising community. The website features galleries of some fantastic modified cars and much more.

The Muscle Car and the Tyrannosaurus Rex-a Study in Similarities

When you saw the headline you probably wondered, what is this guy smoking. Just think about it for a moment, neither one of them is still around but both are a big part of our culture. Who hasn't heard of the T-Rex(as he's better known as) or a GTO? I think by the end of this article you'll agree with me,at least a little bit, that there are at least some similarities.

First of all let's take a look at how T-Rex evolved could have evolved. I would imagine the 1st dinosaurs were fairly small, egg layers and most likely plant eaters. Suppose (you really have to use your imagination) there was a nest of newly hatched reptiles and as usually happens the most agressive got the most food and grew to be the biggest. Now suppose the mother wasn't able to bring any more food (for whatever reason) to the babies. They would probably start fighting over what ever scraps they could find and the largest one might take a bite out of one of the others. Finding he or she liked it he would eventually eat all the rest of them. By then be he would be big enough and bad enough to take on the world. Now suppose this same scenario happened close by but with one of the opposite sex. I think you can get the picture of how T-Rex evolved. Eventually some outside forces caused the T-Rex along with all the other dinosaurs to die out, exactly how is the center of much debate about the subject.

Now then we come to the muscle car evolution. Of course we know how the muscle car died out. It took the muscle car roughly 60-70 years to evolve in comparison to the millions for T-Rex, although the life span of our subjects compared to the overall span of existence could be similar. We know the muscle car existed for approximately 9 years or about 12% of the life span of the automobile up the end of the muscle car. It's possible the T-Rex was around for the same percentage of time.

When the automobile became more than just an idea, it was inconceivable to anyone that eventually it would become the fire-breathing monster machine called the muscle car. Let's examine how this happened. The first machines that qualified as an automobile car had less than 20 horsepower while the advertised horsepower of the most powerful production muscle car was 450 horsepower in the 1970 Chevy 454. Of course today you'll find modern cars with even more but we're talking about the classic car age.

I would say the horsepower race really started in 1955 likely due to the rivalry between Ford and Chevrolet, even thought Oldsmobile had an overhead V8 clear back in 1949. In 1954 Ford came out with an overhead valve engine followed by Chevrolet in 1955 and Mopar in 1956. Chevy's was larger than Fords and Mopar's bigger still and away went the horsepower race. Even though the horsepower was starting to climb at a dizzying rate,the engines were still being put in the standard configuration of the bigger the car the bigger the engine.

1959-1960 was when the compact car made an appearance (and set the stage for the muscle car along with the bigger engines) with the Big 3 all having them. The American public had a taste of horsepower and now they were asked to go back to little 6 cylinder engines. Needless to say it was a tough sell for the compacts, but their day was coming.

Things were pretty static for the next few years with the horsepower wars marching along. Chevrolet had the 348 CI engine in 1958 and then made it into the 409 in 1961. In 1962 it was the first production engine to hit 1 horsepower per 1 cubic inch. They got to a 396 CI in 1965 and the 427 in 1966. In 1970 they were up to 454 CI.

Ford engines were kind of lagging behind until 1961 when they came out with the 390 CI and then a 406 CI engine in 1962. In 1963 they were up to 427 CI and 428 CI in 1966. The biggest one, the 429 CI came in 1969.

Mopars were up to the 392 Hemi in 1958 and the 413 Wedge replaced the Hemi in 1959. In 1966 they came out with a 426 Hemi and in 1967 a all new 440 CI monster. 1971 was the last year for these engines.

Meanwhile Oldsmobile jumped into the horsepower race with a 330 CI engine in 1964 and a 400 CI in 1965. In 1970 they came out with their biggest at 455 CI. Buick pretty well stayed out of the race until 1963 when they came out with a 401 and 425 CI. In 1967 the 430 replaced the 425 CI.Their huge 455 CI debuted in 1970. Pontiac brought out the 389 CI in 1961 with a 400 and a 428 CI coming out in 1967. Their big 455 CI came out in 1970.

During all of this engine one-ups-manship the boys at Pontiac used a GM technicality to their advantage and stuffed a 389 CI into a Tempest. Although this was reported as the first muscle car the Olds had the 442 and a number of other models had bigger engines for 1964 and earlier years.

Looking back,because GM dropped their engine cubic inch restrictions in 1970 most of the cars increased the cubes to even bigger sizes. I imagine this is one reason the insurance companies put huge premiums on the muscle cars. 1970 was also the goverment passed the Clean Air Act. Those two things started the demise of the muscle car and then the oil crisis finished them off. By 1972 all the manufacturers except Pontiac hhad thrown in the towel and that was the real end of the muscle car era. The Pontiac TransAm came out as a muscle car in 1973 and 1974 but it was a fairly toothless T-Rex.

If you follow the auctions or keep up with the prices of muscle cars you'll see that they are getting their revenge for being killed off in the prices they're bringing nowadays.

Hopefully no one will take this article too seriously and challenge me on my suppositions and treatment of history. I think the engine and car facts are correct but if not don't get too bent out of shape over it. It's intended to be entertaining rather than a treatise of history.

Just like the T-Rex the muscle car had a brief but illustrious life in the overall scheme of history. They both packed a lot of dynamics into the short time they were on earth and will both forever be a part of history that is engrained in our hearts and minds.

About the Author

Don Levy has a 60 year love affair with all classic cars, muscle cars and hotrods. He lived through the times that he writes about and witnessed evolution of the automobile first hand. His website at http://classic-car-hunter.com has over a thousand classic cars and trucks, muscle cars, hotrods, street rods and assorted cars for sale along with an area to list your car for sale.
This and other articles about the classic car hobby appear in his blog at http://classic-car-hunter.blogspot.com

overheating question?

If my car gets to 2/3 of the way to red, is that overheating? I can burn my hand on the dipstick when I check the oil, and just opening the hood, you get a blast of hot air. specifically what is the temp considered overheating on a 99 olds intrigue with the 3800 series 2. engine is shared with the pontiac GP GT and buick regal. so temps should be the same. I just have a ahrd time believing 55-65% of the way to red is okay.

It is probably in the "Normal range". That engine produces a lot of heat. Keep a close eye on it. It is not truly overheated until it hits the red, but when it gets much past 1/2 way, it's likely to climb quickly. Coolant level OK? No grey foam on oil dipstick or oil in coolant? Electric fan comes on OK when hot?
No problem. I consiter 212 degrees overheating. But boiling point for coolant is much higher.

2005 Volkswagen Beetle GLS from North America - Comments
Nothing has gone wrong at all with this car since I have owned, since new. I have the convertible and have been very satisfied with build quality and overall ride quality. It's not the fastest, but not the slowest either. Gas mileage is 25 MPG, with the automotic, combined city and highway.

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