BOOK REVIEW: MUSTANG: 40 YEARS
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Published on Thu, Dec 25, 2003
By: The LACar Editorial Staff
Book Review
MUSTANG:
FORTY YEARS
Review by BRIAN KENNEDY
There were about one million
Mustangs made in 1965-66, and at least two million of them are now restored and
on the road again. Or that's how
it seems, anyway. The people driving
those early cars, and all the other Mustangs since, will buy this gigantic
Mustang book no matter what anyone says. But
in case there's anyone out there who needs permission - here it is:
This is a gorgeous, luscious feast of a volume, worth its price tag. There are a bunch of reasons to
pick up Mustang: Forty Years, from the abundant photography to the inside
stories which apply not just to the Ford corporate scene, but anywhere big
companies make cars. Readers will
learn about how focus groups worked as long ago as the 1960s to dictate car
design, about the precursors to the eventual first Mustang design, about how the
sometimes-hated 1974-78 cars fit into the Mustang family tree, and about the
technical decisions that drive corporate racing enterprises and end up having an
effect on what enthusiasts drive.
Early Shelby Mustang GT350 It takes reading but one of the
book's sixteen chapters covering the post-War period to the present to get the
feeling that the authors must have spent much of their free time since, oh,
Reagan was in office, compiling this material.
How else could they know the range of facts, insider stories, and
historical information that fill this book?
Third-generation Shelby Mustang Just a couple of examples,
which readers can check out for themselves once they've bought a copy:
There's great engineering information about the 1967s in chapter six as well
as an interesting tidbit on Edsel Ford, something most might not have known
about 428 engines in chapter eight, a funny and revealing story about the
Mustang II in chapter eleven, and a nice history lesson and explanation of how
the Mustang fits in in chapter fourteen. These
don't begin to indicate the scope of the book, which is vast.
1970 Ford Mustang Boss 302 That's not to say that the
book is perfect. First impressions
suggest that the photography is sometimes strange, such as in interior shots
which use distorting wide-angle lenses, and crops and angles of photos which
leave the viewer wondering what the center is (see the top of page 73 or 121 for
instance). But this reaction is
probably a function of one's assumption that the book will be a giant
catalogue of everything in the Mustang universe, presented in the
straightforward style of an encyclopedia, and it's not meant to be that.
Rather, it's a look at the cars over their lifespan and a new
contextualization of their meaning in the collector world and the world at
large. And we car people have to
realize that this is not a magazine full of exactly similar restoration stories.
It's much more. So what if
the shots aren't always conventional? They
present the Mustang in dimensions that give us new ways to look at our own cars.
Current-generation Mustang Cobra Some oddities of grammar
suggest that the volume was hurried to press, and a couple of more basic facts
seem to need checking, such as the claim that "the fastback model was one of
three body configurations offered when the Mustang debuted in April 1964"
(77) - of course, the fastback was not offered until September of that year.
The only other oversight is that the recent 40th-anniversary
model needs mentioning, but these things shrink in comparison to the wealth of
the book.
Mustang Concept Car introduced at the Detroit Auto
Show in 2003 Mustang: Forty Years is
not a simple compendium of features and models.
It's not, thus, the one Mustang book that you can have to the exclusion
of all others, but it is one Mustang book that you must have.
If it's your first, you'll be bathed in knowledge that some in the
hobby haven't been able to acquire despite years of reading other books and
every mag out there with "Mustang" in the title.
If you're like me and already have a shelf devoted to books about these
cars, this one will nicely take the lead position.
Mustang: Forty Years, $50.00, MBI Publishing
Company
Available in bookstores everywhere, through Classic Motorbooks at (800) 826-6600
or on www.motorbooks.com. For more information on this book,
go to MBI's Mustang: Forty Years site.
