In 1964, appeared a ufo in the ford galaxy, the Mustang and its galloping horse. Legend has it that the first day it went on sale, 22,000 were sold. An immediate success for this car which is the symbol of an era, the marker of a generationand which after all these years is still there, revamped and in an electric version.
At the time of the Mustang’s launch, Ford’s bet was to offer the young generation of baby boomers, those who were 18-20 years old in 1964, a vehicle that suited them “to allow them to celebrate the end of their studies and be able to go, especially with several people, a car which could be a convertible and which had to be financially accessible“, says Louis-Carl Vignon, CEO of Ford France.
Ford’s great strength has been to succeed in creating a sports car at an affordable price.”It’s a bit like the “people’s car” but sporty. And it really was a revolution. I think that it hasn’t been imitated since. There are almost no other cars or other brands that did the same thing as Ford at the time,” estimates Christophe Bourroux, auto specialist at RTL.
Mustang’s new challenge
Sixty years after its creation, the Mustang must face a new challenge: its electrification. In 2020, an electric Mustang, the Mustang Mach-E, was launched. Ford thus attracted a new audience and above all lived with the constraints of an era marked by global warming.
“It is undeniable today that we must take a certain number of actions to fight against climate change. This is also one of the convictions of the Ford family. We must not forget that the Ford brand, and this was originally, since Henry Ford, the idea was tohelp improve people’s lives. And today, when we look at the mission of the company in this improvement of people’s lives, there is the fact of contributing to this fight against climate change. So we have two solutions. Either we kill the icons. Or we try to make the icons survive.to continue to give them life for the years to come,” explains Louis-Carl Vignon.
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