We already know that the first will be the last – again.
Ford’s Mustang didn’t just precede the Chevy Camaro and the Dodge Challenger. It inspired their creation. Had Ford – under Lee Iacocca – not created the 1964 Mustang, there would never have been a Camaro or a Challenger. Both of these cars were developed hurry-up style in response to the startling success of Ford’s pony car – as the Mustang came to be called. That term came to be used generally – much the same as muscle car became the appellation for all the cars inspired by Pontiac’s GTO, which – interestingly – also made its debut in 1964.
It was a very good year for people who liked cars.
The Mustang is now the last such car.
It has been before.
Dodge stopped making the original Challenger (and its Plymouth sibling, the ‘Cuda) after the end of the 1974 model year – chiefly because the ’75 models would have had to have been fitted with catalytic converters to comply with federal regs – and that would have been the mechanical equivalent of wrapping the face of a pretty girl in a “mask.” Dodge decided not to – and the Challenger was gone for the next 34 years, until a latter-day resuscitation in 2008.
The ‘Cuda was gone forever.
Along with Plymouth, soon thereafter.
GM almost dropped the Camaro, too – and did drop the Z28 version of it after 1974 (and for the same reason). It came back in ’77 (in appearance rather than substance) and Camaro, itself, enjoyed a remarkable Indian Summer all the way through the early 2000s, when GM cancelled the car that – along with its Pontiac-badged sibling, the Firebird – had been one of its best-selling cars ever.
After the end of the 2002 model year, Mustang was all by itself – again.
It is about to be exactly that, again.
Dodge has had to cancel the Challenger – not for lack of demand but on account of government demands. History repeats – only this time, as farce. In ’74, there was air pollution. In 2024 there is “climate change” – which is the air quality parallel of “asymptomatic spread.” It does not matter that no one’s actually sick. Or that the skies are blue.
What matters is the government is controlled by people who are very sick.
GM is cancelling the Camaro for similarly sick reasons. The company is not the same company that tried to keep the Camaro alive during the dark days of the early-mid ’70s. It is a company that internally despises cars like Camaro because they are not battery-powered devices and as such stand at odds with battery-powered devices, which the current management of GM regards as “the future,” having bought into the one decreed by the government that bought GM back in ’08 at a bankruptcy-sale price – and has owned it ever since.
The Mustang stands fast. It will be the last – again – come 2025, which will be the year Camaro goes away (again) and this time it looks like for good.
But for how much longer can the Mustang last?
An ugly rumor was going around back in December – during the UAW strike contretemps – that the Mustang-as-we-know-its’ last year would be 2028. The italics are important for the same reason it is important to bear in mind that while names continue, what they mean can change.
For example, “vaccine” used to mean a substance that, when introduced into the body of a healthy person, rendered that person immune from getting (or giving) a particular sickness. It now means a drug that – supposedly – reduces the severity of the sickness it doesn’t prevent the individual from getting (or giving). Kind of like aspirin, which doesn’t prevent headaches but can make the sufferer feel less headachy.
“Mustang” already means something not the same as it did.
There is the “Mustang” Mach E – which is a battery powered device shaped like a five-door crossover. It is a “Mustang” in the same way that drugs that don’t immunize are “vaccines” – in that both are materially different things, in the literal meaning of the latter term. The Mach E isn’t just shaped differently. It is entirely different in every meaningful way – other than using the same name to describe what it isn’t.
Ford, of course, has the legal right to call anything it likes (that it sells) a “Mustang.” The name could be affixed to a battery powered scooter. The question is whether people who like Mustangs will accept a battery-powered device using that name.
Probably not. It will be like trying to persuade people who like steaks to eat ze bugs by calling ze bugs “steak” – and perhaps molding ze bugs into the shape of a steak.
Ford says the rumor about the Mustang’s forced retirement come 2028 is “not accurate.” But Ford does not say the Mustang-as-we-know-it will not be retired – and replaced by a device called “Mustang” after 2028.
GM is going to make a battery powered device called “Corvette.” But it is just another device under a different name. A name that used to mean something else.
Will it be the same for Mustang, which isn’t – yet – another device? Will the car that started it all be the last such car?
And this time, for good?
It probably will be, if the psychological sickness that has metastasized into a global pandemic – about a “climate” that’s “changing” in some vague but apocalyptic way – isn’t cured in time to prevent it.
. . .
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The only thing keeping the mustang alive is the stubborn 25% of hold outs that will only buy a v8 f150 so they can economize the motor across multiple platforms. Logically its sales should double/ triple now that its natural competitors have been cancelled.
Awesome article Eric!
Who knows what the future holds but the unrelenting march toward a successful total control control grid, I don’t see it. Difficult times are certainly ahead but these large, lumbering, bureaucratic dinosaur systems seem to be in a dumpster fire race to the bottom. It doesn’t take much for them to break down, especially considering how complex system are being operated by incompetent people. The sun is rising and the darkness in high places is panicking.
This article by Robert Gore posted over at TheBurningPlatform was an read:
Sorry, forgot link:
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2024/01/07/the-transition/#more-325467
The older Mustangs were cool muscle cars, the new ones are full of computers and safety crap, they have been bastardized, but at least they are ice powered…except the MachE…
The other problem is they are big heavy cars, something far lighter would have been a better sports car.
The lightest Porsche ever made was the 909 Bergspyder, it weighed 385 kg…..849 lb and had an air cooled flat 8 cyl engine making 275 HP……it went 0 to 100 kph in 2.5 seconds….it would lift the front wheels off the ground…..this is a far more exciting car then the modern over weight cars…….it makes a 1200 lb Caterham/Super 7 look over weight….cars were cooler in the 1960’s……
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsQG9YP-QPQ
Ferrari made a light weight hillclimb car too……the 212E….it weighed 500 kg…1100 lb, it had a flat 12 cyl engine with 300 HP at 11,800 RPM…..a cool sound…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJIhrv8aps0
Hi Anon,
I agree with you in re the current Mustang. It’s a good-looking, formidable performance car – but I despise the “safety” crap and I will not own a car with a touchscreen that’s “connected” to anything.
Men and women. The TWO genders are different in many ways.
Women are genetically programmed for SAFETY. They bear children and want to protect them. Women are defenders.
Men are genetically programmed much more aggressively because for the species to survive requires more than defense. It requires offense, or everyone will starve and the species will die.
Cars in the 60’s were made by men and for men.
Almost all cars today are made for women, and as a result, they don’t do what men want.
When government forces business to only serve the market segment who are not able to thrive on real competition based on merit, business will produce products that can’t serve people who insist on better performance (including economic performance.)
In fact the entire design of the products will do the opposite and all the virtues that are appreciated by people who can perform on merit will be ignored and even thrown away as unimportant and the people who value them will be denigrated.
Many men have become slaves who let others make decisions that are counter-productive to survival of the species and the country. Those people are now running government and the auto industry. We will get whatever shit they feed us unless we resist with force.
Who was buying the muscle cars?
Fighting age young men who like fast cars and sports cars….
They are a threat to the nobility slave owners, they are under attack now….so take away their cars…..
But when the nobility control group/slave owners have an internal dispute….they get the fighting age young men slaves, to fight their battle for them….they are wimps…can’t fight their own internal war……
Another part of the war on the patriarchy…..
war on the patriarchy….assisted by women and the LBGQT gang….
These over weight, over computerized, always connected new cars have an added benefit……
it is easier to steal them now…thieves/hackers…or the government …same thing…can control/steal them remotely now….
Pay $10,000 to have your car unbricked…lol
https://driving.ca/column/motor-mouth/ransomware-automotive-industry-cyber-attack-security
The Week in Ransomware – March 18th 2022 – Targeting the auto industry
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/the-week-in-ransomware-march-18th-2022-targeting-the-auto-industry/
HI Eric:
Great points. There is just not much to get excited about nowadays.
However, one small correction: The 2008 Dodge Challenger was not technically the second generation – it was the third.
We have the Re-badged Mitsubishi Galant from 1978-1983 Model years sold under the Dodge Challenger emblem.
https://www.streetsideclassics.com/vehicles/0535-tpa/1978-dodge-challenger
The 2.6L Mitsubishi engine was even marketed as a Hemi. All 105 hp of it.
I actually liked these cars back in the day. If I could find one that wasn’t total rust bucket, I’d consider buying it.
Thank you for that post, I forgot all about these
I think we forgot about those on purpose………….
A simple survey would give you an idea if people would be interested in purchasing a battery-powered vehicle.
Would you buy an EV?
Yes or no, easy answer, you can then decide how many can be built.
Survey 10,000 potential buyers, any potential buyers that consider an EV will become a statistic, extrapolate, build that many.
The auto industry is being schooled on what to do, rather, what not to do.
Gather some facts, don’t have to stick your neck out too far, won’t have to learn the hard way.
Not a difficult job. Ask questions first, you’ll have answers.
When you are losing 36,000 dollars on each Ford EV, the handwriting is on the wall.
Measure twice, cut once.
Recipe for success. But that’s not what they’re after it seems. Chaos, death and destruction (of capitalism) is the soup du jour.
Best wear a napkin. I’s going to get messy.
[Chaos, death and destruction (of capitalism) is the soup du jour.]
True that!
Capitalism,,, different from a ‘free market’ has been dead for a century or more.
The brains/intelligence for capitalism doesn’t exist anywhere on the planet in our time period.
The definitions given are fraudulent. It has been changed in the way the definition of vaccine or pandemic has been changed.
There are no Eli Whitney’s or Henry Ford’s in our time period. Only financial terrorists like Vanguard and BlackRock which are Anti-Capitalist which own pretty much everything including government.
Ken,
I would argue that all economies are capitalist. The only difference is who controls the capital. Those who create it, or those who steal it.
Also, though every day I fight it…
Everything Dies.
https://youtu.be/NJ3aiM8K6D0?si=IxO8pGfXhueAh8kK
I was frankly surprised about the Mach-er-E. When I first encountered the thing, I saw the Mustang sigil on a fairly repulsive big-baby car (how I’d describe it). Christ, at least make it look attractive.
They didn’t even TRY to shape those bugs like a steak.
Well, now, everything dies, baby, that’s a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back
Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty
And meet me tonight in Atlantic City
-Atlantic City, Bruce Springsteen.
For most of the population, the name Mustang doesn’t mean the same thing it did in 1965. Nor Challenger, or Camaro. It’s as if Winchester brought out a new M1 Carbine as a modern “assault weapon,” with carbon fiber stock and fiber optic sights. Would it be the same as an M1? No. Would anyone grouse about it? Probably. But then they’d get used to the new one, and there’d be positive reviews, and eventually people would remember it as the best M1.
Keeping product names around for 60 years is just bad marketing. Better to let them go and move on.
Just like the STG 44, if someone were to put out an “updated” M1 Carbine, they wouldn’t be able to make them fast enough, no matter how impractical the rifles are or how anemic both rounds are.
Good riddance. The mustang will never be what it was during it’s peak anyway. I hope all the car companies wither away and make room for a new renaissance of American muscle made from start-ups. It can happen, and it will if the market demands it.
Government has to be pushed out of the way, first. In the absence of safety and emissions standards, new car companies can emerge from the ashes of this electric dumpster fire. In many other countries where they aren’t trying to comply with UN homogenized vehicle safety and mileage standards, reasonable vehicles are still being built.
There will always be a market for reasonbly priced transportation as well as high-performance machinery, however teh current regulatory structure prohibits them on a large scale.
Mustang has been an American Icon. We should let it leave with at least a bit of dignity intact.
It has already been afflicted with the digital spyware and “in”conveniences common to all new cars. And now, its charismatic styling has been debased. That blue Mustang featured at the top of the page has been given a horrific, garish “Pep Boys Spinner Special” look. That Mustang is so ugly that it could be a Camaro.
Worse. The inside is three computer screens. Disgusting. You couldn’t pay me to even sit in one.
Note that the funny business with the Mustang did not start until Iacocca passed.
My father, a Ford lifer, told me that the Probe did not receive the Mustang name as intended because Iacocca heard about the plan and started making phone calls to Dearborn.
Chairman Lee never would have tolerated an EV “Mustang”, especially a “GT”, because it violated the three principles he established for the nameplate:
1) Affordable
2) Appeals to everyone, even if they are not car enthusiasts.
3) Rear wheel drive.
#3 alone killed the Probe getting the name so Ford continued with the Fox platform through the 90s, reskinning in 94.
Maybe. I think Iacocca was an establishment stooge from teh start. He pushed the minivan on the American public when he was at the head of Chrysler in the 1980s to 1990s.
He was a showman most of all. There is no way a car guy would have also pushed aaaairbaaaags like he did. There is just no way.
Maybe.
Bill Ruger was a gun guy but he suggested limiting g magazine capacity. I think it was a bit of a feint—he figured he was going to lose this one, but magazine limits would be easier to come back from in the long run, vs. banning semi-automatics.
The ‘80s and ‘90s were a completely different world vs. now, where that issue is concerned.
As for Mr. Ruger, he’s taken a lot of flak from diehards over what he did but as it turns out he wasn’t entirely wrong.
Iacocca was a lot of things. Smart was one of them. You can’t win every battle, so focus on the ones you can win and if possible try to position yourself to pick up the other ones later, or failing that to cover your own butt so as not to lose all of the gains you just made.
Old guy logic.
This is why they can be very wily opponents.
Wanting more gun restrictions is what all the major gun manufacturers want. Whenever there’s polls, even anonymous ones, very few if any manufacturers can dream of something so small as getting rid of the ATF, let alone truly liberalising gun laws.
Well there are a number of import-related restrictions that work to protect the domestic firearm industry from having to compete with milsurps and other less expensive imports.
I’m sure they love that aspect of things.
Swamp, what’s wrong with minivans?
I saw a very succinct comment about EVs recently:
“EVs, a prohibitively expensive and wholly impractical solution to a non-existent problem.”
“Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.” – Milton Friedman
That quote says it all. Once people no longer get exited about buying new cars they realize that maybe they can squeeze a few more years out of their old one and when a new pick up costs more than the house you bought years ago some people might think twice before buying a new car.
When I was young and Dad went to buy a new car, I’d say buy the sporty looking car and he’d say “No, we need a wagon”. But now when all the cars look alike, how long before gm builds a 4 door crossover SUV and calls it the E-Corvette? Funny that we’re smart enough to recognize the brand dilution going on but their not.
Maintain what you own and hopefully you can buy a “real” car when you want another one.
‘how long before gm builds a 4 door crossover SUV and calls it the E-Corvette?’ — Landru
Oh, jeez, Landru. Hope you filed for a design patent on this.
EeeVee Mary just forwarded your post to GM’s entire top brass, calling it ‘an outstanding example of consumer-led innovation.’ :-0
You know Jim I might have but I would have felt dirty about doing it. I know it’s wrong, you know it’s wrong but they’ll do it fur sure. Heck isn’t the ’24 already a hybrid?
On the other hand if you could copyright the name “E-Corvette” and variants thereof it might help protect the dignity of the “Corvette” name.
How we got this way:
Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency (2007)
‘By a 5-4 vote the Court reversed the D.C. Circuit and ruled in favor of Massachusetts. The opinion by Justice John Paul Stevens held that Massachusetts, due to its “stake in protecting its quasi-sovereign interests” as a state, had standing to sue the EPA over potential damage caused to its territory by global warming.
‘The Court rejected the EPA’s argument that the Clean Air Act was not meant to refer to carbon emissions in the section giving the EPA authority to regulate “air pollution agent[s]”. Finally, the majority ruled that the EPA was unjustified in delaying its decision. The Court held that if the EPA wished to continue its inaction on carbon regulation, it is required by the Act to base the decision on a consideration of “whether greenhouse gas emissions contribute to climate change.”
‘Chief Justice Roberts’ dissenting opinion argued that Massachusetts should not have had standing to sue, because the potential injuries from global warming were not concrete or particularized. Justice Scalia’s dissent argued that the Clean Air Act was intended to combat conventional lower-atmosphere pollutants and not global climate change.’
https://www.oyez.org/cases/2006/05-1120
tl;dr: Five hacks in black tried to play ‘scientists’ on TeeVee. Hilarity did not ensue.
Why would a state government sue part of fedgov to say, “you MUST expand your scope of regulation, you’re harming us if you don’t”. This isn’t real. This isn’t an organic thing. This is an inside job.
“had standing to sue the EPA over potential damage caused to its territory by global warming”
Shouldn’t the entity causing the global warming be responsible (supposing such a thing existed), rather than the EPA?
A case like this only makes sense if the very intent of the case is to shape national and global policy. To make something that wasn’t law, have the effect of law, through the courts. What incentive did the EPA even have to win this case? If they lost the case, they’d have a mandate for more jurisdiction/power, and would need an increased budget to support such a mandate. Very smart strategy by the oligarchs.
Thanks for posting.
As for Ford putting the hallowed Mustang name on a golf cart, it tracks in this day and age.
We have a fake president who doesn’t know the day of the week, can barely read off a teleprompter and was elected by a miraculous infusion of midnight ballots in ALL of the key states that mysteriously broke for him 100%.
We have fake women: Men in drag. Worse yet, they think beating physically inferior women in sports is a VIRTUE.
We have fake engine noises from these glorified golf carts to fool the unwise.
A fake economy done with fuzzy math that camouflages that our financial predators on Wall Street have sold off everything in our once mighty industrial economy, fired everyone, scrapped our factories for parts and sent the remaining components overseas so they can make a few extra bucks.
Fake resumes bolstered for diversity’s sake.
Everything in this culture is fake and gay and frankly, I’m sick of it.
The real car people know what’s going on. I’m done with buying new cars. Between 2.0 turbos, giant screens in the dash (who the hell wants that?) and now EVs, cars suck now. And that’s on purpose because our demonic ruling class hates a free and independent people.
‘cars suck now’ — dr_mantis_toboggan_md
Axiomatic truth.
Unfit for purpose. Rolling heaps of chips potted in resin-impregnated dogshit.
AVOID
Welcome to Cuba Del Norte where we drive old cars, healthcare is free and worthless, but our Dear Leader is saving us from the boogie man of climate change, and MAGA supporters.
Welcome to the USA: Cuba without the nice beaches and with the bad weather.
The Big 3 can continue to self-immolate for all I care. Why they are willing participants in their own demise is beyond my ability to understand. All I know is that I have a long memory & as an unreconstructed Southerner can carry a grudge in perpetuity.
Article on Zero Hedge: Sorry President Biden, But Nobody Wants A Glorified Golf Cart
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/sorry-president-biden-nobody-wants-glorified-golf-cart
I am aggravated. They stole my phrase for EVs!
Of course, now, I just tell people that they cost twice as much, go half as far as an ICE car and weigh twice as much!
Dont forget they pollute a whole lot more and more dangerously. And they are far more dangerous (fire) by their very nature.
I suspect the “driver assistance” and driver monitoring tech already installed on Mustangs has rendered the Mustang not a Mustang anyway
‘It was a very good year [1964] for people who liked cars.’ — eric
Ouch. That hurt.
Why? Because arguably, there hasn’t been a good year for people who like cars since I was a lad in short pants.
Today’s horrid CAFE regime which has altered our vehicles beyond recognition goes back to an event fifty years ago, Oil Shock I. In response, the Energy Policy and Conservation Act was introduced by the loathsome Senator Henry Jackson (Demonrat, Washington state), and signed into law by president Gerald Ford on Dec 22, 1975 — another ‘Christmas gift’ to the American people, like the sodomization Woody Wilson administered them 62 years prior when he signed the Federal Reserve Act on Dec 23, 1913.
A distinction between cars and light trucks; the ‘window stickers’; NHTSA’s usurped authority to regulate fuel economy — it all started with this poisonous, unconstitutional power grab, whooped through by a Demonrat Clowngress and signed by a Republiclown president.
‘People who liked cars,’ writes Eric, in the past tense. Yeah, you nailed me, bro. If I were a teenaged kid today, I totally would not give a shit about soulless cell phones on wheels. Actual cars, with engines, were things that existed back in grandpa’s day.
So bugles blow golden and banners fly blue
But these days the castle’s just drywall and glue
And tiltin’ at windmills is the best you can do
With the black knight of time on your lawn
So i wouldn’t know if he left or he stayed
Prospered or starved by the promise he made
Or maybe he straggled and maybe he strayed
While the bright world went barrellin’ on
— Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer, Lancelot
Hi Jim,
“If I were a teenaged kid today, I totally would not give a shit about soulless cell phones on wheels. Actual cars, with engines, were things that existed back in grandpa’s day.”
It’s so true, Jim – and so sad.
I’ve been witness to the last stages of the decline. I have had the good fortune to have been able to drive Hellcat Challengers and Raptor F-150s and many others besides. But fun as those cars are, they are so expensive that only a handful of mostly middle-aged and older men can afford one. What’s fun that’s affordable, today? What new or even recently new cars are examples of cars that a guy in his young 20s might be interested in?
If I think long enough and hard enough I might be able to think of one or two.
I would think the Charger/Challenger would be suitable. Got my daughter one in HS. It was the only one in the HS parking lot. The guys ogled over it (and it was only the V6, but it ‘looked’ good, Dodge did these things unlike other manuf.) Within 6 months, there were 4-6 more at her HS, one was our neighbors kid.
Too bad they are toast now.
ohhh, and she still drives it today, about 7 yrs old now. It was basically their stripper model that Dodge made look a little better with nice wheels and a little spoiler (smart). I still see boatloads of them.
She was pissed at me that I bought a 300 with the V8. yeah, too bad. buy the V8 yourself.
Hey ChrisIN,
My mom and dad had the V6 Charger. 2010, I believe. That car booked. My dad said he’d often find himself doing 100+ without trying in the least. Not sure I’d get one for a high school kid, but kudos to her for not wrecking it!
Right on. I have advanced the football…… 🙂
I wrecked every car I owned from 16 to 24’ish.
I think 2 totals, 4-6 smashes. all might fault.
Neither of my kids have wrecked (yet) in that same age range. And they are just as nuts about cars/speed, etc….
I can only assume it was teaching them how to drive/ride things from 5’ish up on the farm, which didn’t happen w me. And I let them get in trouble too. All of my shit has been upside down, in trees, etc…. but don’t care at this point (did then though haha).
Haha, well done, man, on both accounts. Learning from one’s own mistakes is one thing, but teaching others from your own mistakes is a higher stratum.
Subaru WRX with the 6 speed?
In slapping the Mustang nameplate on the Machwerk-E, Ford has made it adamantly clear that it doesn’t care about the legacy and meaning of this nameplate, beyond the prospect of milking it for whatever cachet it holds in order to flog its lousy dEVices, and apparently with no concern about tainting the very idea of what constitutes a Mustang in the minds of car buyers. I think this alone tells us something about the real Mustang’s likely fate, whatever the timeline may be.
Better to kill it than to turn it into … that … gelding-mobile.