The Mustang is a four-seated sports car.  It is named after wild horses that live in the South West United States.  These horses are also called Mustangs.  The Mustang is made by Ford Motor Company.  It is one of the greatest success stories in the automobile industry.  

Many people call Mustangs pony cars.  An insignia of the wild horse is the Mustang's grille.  The insignia reminds people that the car is a spirited as the wild horse it is named after.

Ford wanted to develop a car that would compete, too.  Ford chose a talented executive which was Lee Iacocca.  Lee Iacocca led the team that designed the Mustang.

Lee Iacocca was the son of Italian Immigrants.  He started working for Ford Motor Company in 1946.  He was 22 years old.  Iacocca started as an engineer, but soon saw that he had a talent in selling cars.  He soon became Ford's general manager in 1960.

 Iacocca put together a team of men and women with youthful ideas.  They were called the Fairlane Committee.  The committee's task was to come up with small, light, affordable sports car.

The Fairlane Committee had meetings that were kept secrete.  These meetings were held in the Fairlane Motel in Dearborn, Michigan.  The committee work long hours.  Iacocca didn't want anybody to know what they were doing so he burned all of their notes, and any other paper they wrote on.  That way nobody could dig through the trash to learn about the committee's work

On March 11, 1964, Henry Ford II's nephew drove a pre-production Mustang convertible to a luncheon in downtown Detroit.  Pictures of the Mustang showed up in news papers and on television the next day.

The Mustang was officially shown to the public on April 17, 1964, at New York World's Fair.  The new Mustang looked and drove like a European sports car.  It cost half the price, though.  Millions of working-class people could afford one. 

People went crazy over the Mustang.  Ford had not had a car this popular since the Model T.  One million Mustangs were sold between April 1964 and august 1965.  It was a new record.