Images Courtesy Ford Motor Company
Let’s say you’re the great-grandson of Ford Motor Company’s Henry Ford, and the son of then-Ford Motor Company CEO and President Henry Ford II, and it’s 1964. You can see where this is going, right?
It’s a great story about a true custom Mustang that was built and delivered to one very special boy – Edsel Ford – on Christmas Day in 1964, just a few short months after the Mustang had debuted to record sales levels.
The car was sent to the paint shop and covered in a pearlescent white coat that wore blue racing stripes on the top of the body and along the rocker panels, and delivered right to Ford’s driveway. The interior had a blue leather gut and aluminum trim throughout, with a HiPo 289 engine under the hood.
Other custom touches were the fender-mounted rear-view mirrors, a functional hood scoop, and unique chrome trim on the headlight bucket “gills”. The rear fuel-filler cap was covered with the initial EBF II; Edsel’s 16th birthday was December 27th of 1964, and the car was in the driveway just two days before – a present any youngster would be thrilled to have.
“I came downstairs that Christmas morning with my sisters, and my father indicated I should take a look outside,” said Edsel Ford, Ford Motor Company director. “This amazing Mustang was sitting in the driveway, and I immediately grabbed my coat and shoes and went outside to check it out.”
Edsel drove the car for the rest of his high school days and during college, but it was destroyed in an accident by a friend who had borrowed the car four years later, and thankfully, nobody was hurt in the accident.
The images seen here come from the Ford archives and are a neat trip back through time.
