The 1974-78 Mustang II doesn’t get a lot of love from Ford enthusiasts—and that’s a shame, because it saved the breed from extinction.

From its original introduction at the New York World’s Fair in April of 1964, the Ford Mustang was one of the great success stories of the Motor City, with more than one million cars sold in the first 18 months. But in the following years, as the trend-setting design grew bigger, fatter, and more luxurious, its sales volume steadily slipped away as well. By 1973, the Mustang was now almost intermediate in size, and meanwhile, sales slipped to around 135,000 units. The pony car was no longer earning its place in the Ford lineup.

Ford executive Lee Iacocca, often called the father of the Mustang, observed that Mustang buyers had not abandoned the Mustang, but rather, the Ford Motor Company had abandoned them. For the 1974 model year, it was time for a reset. The economy was slowing and fuel prices were rising. The Mustang would be returned to its small-car roots.

​After Ford management studied a dozen or more packages based on the Pinto and Maverick platforms, Iaocca personally gave the green light to a Pinto-sized fastback coupe drafted by Lincoln-Mercury staff designer Howard “Buck” Mook. After nine years, there would finally be a Mustang hatchback. Meanwhile, market research identified a strong demand for a traditional notchback coupe, so designer Chuck Nesbitt spun off a handsome formal coupe version. The decision proved to be a wise one, as the coupe consistently outsold the three-door by a wide margin throughout the ’74-’78 production cycle.

More than a foot shorter than the ’73 Mustang and rolling on a 96.2-inch wheelbase, the Mustang II was loosely based on Ford’s Pinto subcompact platform, although Iacocca was quick to insist that the two cars actually shared few components. Among other key changes, the Mustang II used an independent front subframe (labeled the “toilet seat” by Ford engineers) to isolate the cabin from drivetrain noise. Engine choices the first year were limited to a 2.4-liter four with 85 horsepower and a German-built 2.8-liter V6 good for 105 hp. From ’75 on, a 5.0-liter V8 was available, but with just 122 hp, later bumped to 138 hp.

​The Mustang II’s cabin remained true to the original pony car theme with a sporty instrument panel, bucket seats, and a floor-mounted shifter and parking brake lever. Changes to the Mustang II package were relatively few and small over the five-year model run: parking lamps, fuel filler location, quarter windows, a few other items. No factory convertibles were offered, but there were Mach I, Cobra II, and King Cobra versions to provide some performance image, if not actual performance.

While it wasn’t a real performance car by any stretch of the imagination, the Mustang II proved to be the right car for the times. Iacocca and crew had found the sweet spot in price, style, and packaging for the Mustang buyer of the ’70s. Sales zoomed up to nearly 386,000 units for 1974, a level the Mustang hadn’t seen since 1967—and hasn’t matched since. There would be four more generations of the Ford Mustang, and they all owe their existence to the 1974-78 Mustang II.

To soup up its product line for 1963, the Studebaker Corporation returned to a familiar method: supercharging.
In preparing Studebaker for the 1963 model year, President Sherwood Egbert had a daunting task before him: How to inject new life and performance into a rapidly aging product line, and with very little budget to do it. Egbert reached for a method that, as as a former vice president of McCulloch Corporation, he knew well: supercharging.  McCulloch had spun off its supercharger business in 1958 to the Granatelli brothers, and in early 1962 the company, now known as Paxton Products, was acquired by the Studebaker Corporation. Meanwhile, Studebaker had some experience with blowers as well, on the McCulloch-equipped 1957-58 Golden Hawks. It was a natural fit all around.
The supercharger adopted by Studebaker for ’63 was the Paxton SN60, a simplified, fixed-ratio version of the original McCulloch VS57 blower, here  tuned to feed up to six pounds of boost into a sealed Carter AFB carb. When bolted to the aged but willing 289 CID Studebaker V8, the R2 Super Jet Thrust package, as it was called, was rated at 289 horsepower, nearly 50 hp more than the normally-aspirated R1 version. (There were also R3, R4, and R5 engines, and adventures at Bonneville, but that’s another story.)
Available across the Studebaker model line—Lark, Cruiser, Gran Turismo Hawk, and the stunning new Avanti—the R2 blower setup provided satisfying midrange punch and a considerable jump in top speed, to 132 mph in the Lark and 140 mph in the Hawk. There’s bragging aplenty in the original Studebaker commercial below.

Guided by George Romney, American Motors was busily reinventing itself in 1957. Here’s the station wagon piece of the puzzle.

Under the leadership of chairman and president George Romney, who would later become governor of Michigan and a presidential candidate, major changes were afoot at American Motors in 1957.  The big Nash and Hudson models were quietly phased out by the end of the year, and the venerable Nash and Hudson nameplates were sent into retirement as well. 

With the slate wiped clean, the company would now pin its hopes on the Rambler brand and a more modestly sized package spun off the 1951-55 Nash Rambler platform. Unveiled in 1956, it was larger than a compact or an import, but smaller than the Motor City’s typical full-sized sedans. At 191 inches, it was more than a foot shorter than the ’57 Ford, while the 108-inch wheelbase allowed a six-passenger cabin. AMC’s beefy Single Unit Construction kept squeaks and rattles to a minimum, and there were two available engines, a 195 CID inline six and the company’s brand-new 327 CID V8. The optional automatic transmission, the Flash-Away Hydra-Matic, was supplied by General Motors.

​To appeal to the rapidly growing suburban crowd, the ’57 Rambler lineup naturally included a full complement of station wagons under the Cross Country name. These included the base-model Super and the fancier Custom, and there was even a pillarless hardtop version of the Custom. First offered in ’56, this was the industry’s first four-door hardtop wagon, it would appear.

However, the fast-paced commercial we have here features the Custom Cross Country in the more conventional post body style. In our favorite moment, the frame rate is comically cranked up to show the wagon screaming through an intersection. Wagons paid off in a big way for little AMC in ’57, accounting for more than a third of the company’s sales volume. Video follows.

The 1958-60 Ford Thunderbird was a master stroke in marketing, carving out a whole new vehicle category: the personal luxury car.

​This seldom happens in the new car biz, but check this out: With the 1958-60 Ford Thunderbird, sales actually rose each year over the car’s three-year product cycle. The Squarebird, as enthusiasts call the second-generation Thunderbird today, sold almost 38,000 units in 1958, nearly doubling the volume of the original two-seat ’55-’57 Thunderbird—which had been a sensation everywhere but in the showrooms. From there, sales continued to climb in in 1959 to 67,000, and then blew past the 90,000-unit mark in 1960.

Far more often, the opposite occurs: Sales tend to be strongest early in the cycle, then trail off as the limited market demand is satisfied. But in this instance the Ford product and marketing team was really onto something. With the four-passenger Squarebird, essentially they had invented a new vehicle category: the personal luxury car.

​Years later, in an interview with historian David Crippen, General Motors styling VP Bill Mitchell would express his annoyance with this development. In the mid-’50s, he and his design staff had developed a number of sporty four-place coupes and sedans for the Motorama car show circuit, but none ever got the green light for production. (One example was the 1956 Corvette Impala.)

Meanwhile, the Ford guys would stop by the GM display with their tape measures and carefully inspect the sporty touring cars. When the four-place Thunderbird was rolled out in February of 1958, Mitchell knew GM had missed its opportunity. “By God, out comes the Thunderbird,” Mitchell remembered. “Oh, [they] caught us, and we didn’t have a four-passenger, and that thing took off.”

​One signifying feature of the personal luxury car, as the market segment developed, was a sporty and elegant cockpit, and in this department the Thunderbird did not disappoint. Instruments were closely clustered around the driver, while a full-length center console and bucket seats set the ‘Bird apart from the herd of family sedans and wagons that then dominated the industry.

In other ways the T-Bird was a fairly conventional Motor City offering, though it was the first Fomoco product (along with the ’58 Lincoln) to employ unit construction. The 113-inch wheelbase chassis and squared-off styling by Bill Boyer remained virtually unchanged over the three-year product cycle, as the grille and side trim received very minor tweaks each season, and for 1960 the four tail lamps were replaced by six. And the sales continued to climb.

With the Squarebird, Ford general manager Robert McNamara and crew had shrewdly identified both the original T-Bird’s most endearing feature, its sporty, youthful character, and its greatest handicap in sales volume, the lack of a rear seat. Ford continued to mine the personal luxury category over the next four decades with eight more generations of four-and-five-place Thunderbirds, then finally returned to the original two-seater theme with the 2002 Retro-‘Bird.

The original Ford Mustang was a major success for the Dearborn automaker, and so was the Mustang’s swanky offspring, the Mercury Cougar. 

When the Mercury Cougar was introduced on September 30, 1966, members of the automotive press reached for a handy trope. This new upmarket pony car, they typed, was “a Mustang in a tuxedo.” Based on the Ford Mustang, the pioneer of the pony car movement, the Cougar boasted a luxury interior, a slightly longer wheelbase, and a more generous list of standard equipment. And in its own way, the Cougar was as successful as its low-priced sibling.

​Ford made no secret of the fact that the Cougar (project name T-7) was, under the skin, essentially the Mustang package with a few critical upgrades. The wheelbase was stretched from 108 inches to 111.2 inches, while the front shock towers were engineered from the start to accommodate the FE series big-block V8.  But in contrast to the Mustang, there was no six-cylinder Cougar; the base engine was a 289 CID V8. The top powerplant choice for the inaugural year was a 390 big-block with a four-barrel Autolite carb and 320 hp, offered as part of the GT performance package. Transmission options included manual three and four-speeds and the trusty Merc-O-Matic, available here with the Select-Shift manual-ish floor shifter.

​With a comfy base-price cushion of nearly $400 over the Mustang ($2,851 vs. $2,461) the Mercury crew was able to build a number of deluxe styling features into the Cougar’s exterior presentation. The upgrades included hidden headlamps, an elegant fine-tooth grille, and elaborate tail lamp assemblies with sequential turn signals, a neat gimmick first seen on the 1965 Thunderbird. Speaking of Thunderbird, more than one observer recognized that the Cougar might be more than simply a pony car. Potentially, it could eat into the T-Bird’s sales at the lower end of the personal luxury category.

​The Cougar’s cabin was equally swank, with premium vinyl fabrics, an upgraded dash, and deep-pile carpeting. And though it wasn’t standard, most were equipped with the snazzy Sports Console between the bucket seats, a $57 extra. Additional extra-cost options included Tilt-Away Steering Wheel ($60.05) and the AM Radio/Stereo-Sonic tape deck setup ($188.50). In mid-’67 the XR-7 package arrived with leather interior trim, an overhead console, and special badging.

With sales of nearly 151,000 units in 1967, the Cougar was not in the same league as the Mustang at more than 472,000 cars produced, but for the Mercury brand it was a smash hit, accounting for nearly half the division’s total volume that year. Motor Trend magazine named the Cougar its 1967 Car of the Year, and other accolades followed. While the first-generation Cougar was discontinued in 1970, Mercury continually rebooted the nameplate over the years, often with products that shared little with the original pony car theme. The final, eighth-generation Cougar of 1999-2002 was a compact three-door coupe with front-wheel drive.