Boo boo in Mustang history book?

Historybuff · #1 (**permalink**) 11-29-2007, 10:09 AM

I can't remember the exact title but there is a very hefty hardcover coffee table book currently on the market by Randy Leffingwell, the hardest working photographer in the car journalist world, on MUSTANG
and it has a two page spread early on showing a fastback concept car which I recognize as the Mach I show car. But in the captions he says this car was the inspiration for the fastback 2 plus 2 Mustang (which became the fodder for the Shelby GTY350)Now when I look at that show car, it says ""67 Mustang" to me, so I think it was a later show car. I think Leffingwell heard about a fastback and assumed that, since it was candy apple red, it was the candy apple red car that inspired Ford but I say the concept that inspired Ford to build the 2 plus 2 was one built by Andy Hotten (Dearborn Steel Tubing) , a two seater coupe. I am not knocking Leffingwell's scholarship, it's just that I saw the Andy Hotten car in person in 1964 at the Greenfield Village sports car show and it was not the Mach I concept car he pictures in his book. Or am I wrong and the Mach I Concept dates back to '64? And does anyone know if the two seater coupe or Mach I show car still exist?

Power Surge · #2 (**permalink**) 11-29-2007, 10:39 AM

I know there was the 1963 Mustang II concept....

And the 1962 Mustang 1 concept....

Either one of these what you are talking about?

Woodz428 · #3 (**permalink**) 11-29-2007, 11:42 AM

If it is the one I believe it is it was based on either a '67/'68 fastback. Had a fuel cap in the sail panel and may have had a slight chop. If that's the one, he is wrong. It was supposed to have inspired the '69 'stang.

Historybuff · #4 (**permalink**) 11-30-2007, 02:22 PM

and when he found the picture assumed that was the one.
But the real fastback was one made around '64 1/2 as a two seater.Andy Hotten's DST was involved but to get more on this car look on your newsstand. There is a story in a small Mustang magazine about the free lancer who really built it, some poor guy who built one prototype after another for other firms but never quite got properly compensated for the work he put into them and ended up committing suicide.