Posted on 09/16/2019 10:53:48 AM PDT by FreeReign
As I drove my 1998 Mustang GT out of the garage, it started raining. Pulling into the street, the engine got louder, a sound I’d only heard a few times this year. The radio tried to compete with the loud V8 and played Coldplay’s Hurts Like Heaven: ‘On every street, every car, every surface a name. Tonight the streets are ours.’ I knew today would be an awesome day.
Except for a few years in the 60s, Ford did not sell the Mustang in Europe for 50 years. If you wanted one, you had to import one yourself and get it approved by the authorities. This changed in 2015, when Ford started selling a Euro-spec Mustang via its dealers. The new Mustang sold like hot cakes in Germany and France, but nowhere it was more popular than in Belgium. In this small country the number of Mustangs per 1000 people is the highest in the world – higher than in the US.
It is no surprise Ford Belgium came up with the idea to break the world record: the most Mustangs at one place at the same time. In previous record was from December 2017, when the Mustang Club of Mexico got 960 Mustangs together. Ford Belgium reached out to the biggest Mustang specialist in Belgium, the Mustang Garage, and arranged the Ford Lommel Proving Grounds as location. The Ford Mustang 1001 Event was born.
(Excerpt) Read more at oppositelock.kinja.com ...
The original Mustangs sold in Europe could not be called Mustangs because the name was previously used by a truck manufacturer, although it had been out of production for over a decade.
The Mustangs carried model number designations.
The company that owned the name offered to sell the name to Ford for $100k but Ford turned down the offer...........................
With a P-51 flyover.
Very classy.
That seems short sighted. $100k to them is couch change.
Don’t think I’ve ever seen a 427 Mustang. Plenty of 428’s and 429’s tho.
I believe the problem was only in Germany.
A friend stopped by this morning and took me for a ride in his sons 2016 Mustang Drag Pack with Coyote engine with supercharger rated at 760 whp, let me assure you that car knows how to get out of it’s own way and the sound is like it’s from another planet.
pffft- my toyota corolla will beat the pants off it- j/k jealous am i-
Of course a V8 would drown out soy music. Get ‘Red Barchetta’ on the stereo.
Bob434, I had to laugh when I seen the 434 after your name as I have a complete set of Brodix 11x cylinder heads sitting on a shelf with brand new Jesel rockers just daring me to build another 434. I lost my licence for five years with my last 434 so you might say i’m a little older and wiser this time around.
The name brings to mind a song by blues singer Buddy Guy;
“Mustang Sally”.
“Mustang Sally, I think you better slow your Mustang down!
All you wanna do is ride around, Sally
Ride, Sally ride!”
It was 2015, right? If so your calculator shows it to be worth $108,244.56 today.
As some of my friends would say, “now that’s Merica!”
Everything I see has the reason as being too costly to retool for right hand drive, and the different safety and emissions regulations, which often vary from country to country. A range of engineering specifications from how headlights are configured to the height of a hood need to be met before a vehicle can enter a market.
Not saying that you are wrong, just that I can't verify it.
SOURCE of above, but I didn't do a straight copy & paste of all of what I wrote above.
I confess i just picked an easy to remember number- there were already folks named bob here-
I originally got the info from a book about the History of the Mustang, I read a few years ago...................
Oh okay. I just couldn’t find that information no matter how I framed the search. I figured you probably were right, but I could find anything that even broached that reason.
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