Instead of a spin in Mustang 1 (only 2 of which were built), our happy couple is about to blast down the road in a closed coupe with amenities like a radio and heater, with Ford's 289 V8 rumbling behind the cabin in front of a ZF 4-speed transaxle. The Mach 2 was first shown to the public at the Chicago Auto show in March 1967. How did this happen? In 1966, the year Ford wins Le Mans with the GT40, the corporate masterminds of the Total Performance program are already thinking that they could transplant some of the GT40's mid-engined glamor to a production car. They send a Mustang convertible chassis to Kar Kraft, and the company transforms it into a sort of concept chassis borrowing as much from the Ford parts bin as possible. This includes Mustang front suspension, front disc brakes and Galaxy rear drums. The independent rear suspension comes not from the GT40, but from engineer Klaus Arning's patented multi-link design for Mustang 1, which includes anti-dive and anti-squat features along with a bit of dialed-in understeer.
You're probably wondering how the cost-saving move of using a Mustang (i.e. Falcon) floor pan affected the handling of the Mach 2. In addition to the bare chassis engineering mule, Ford built 2 running prototypes with fiberglass bodies styled by Gene Bordinat's team. The first, a white car Ford proposed as an SCCA-ready weekend racer that would succeed Shelby's Cobra, had so much chassis flex that its roof made loud popping noises under hard cornering. The second car, a red example provided to car mags for test drives and sent onto the auto show circuit, had a reinforced chassis that flexed less. These pictures show that car...
Use of the highly modified Mustang chassis resulted in a long wheelbase that would not look out of place today; 107 inches is also the wheelbase of the new, mid-engined Corvette C8. Other items taken directly from Ford's parts stocks included instruments and interior hardware, a Mustang rear bumper, and wheels. With a weight around 2,600 pounds, performance was lively. Ford's idea was to price the car around $7,500, a bit more than Shelby's AC 427 Cobra; 1967 was that car's final year of production. But instead of pursuing the Mach 2 program, Ford sent the white test car to the crusher, and returned the red test car to Kar Kraft, which closed in 1970, after its last show appearance.
What went wrong? Well, ironically, success on other fronts may have caused problems for Mach 2. Shelby was selling plenty of his modified Mustangs (some to SCCA racers), and Ford was selling every garden-variety Mustang it could make. This meant that Mach 2 joined other projects like Robert Cumberford's '66 Mustang sport wagon* (and a knock-off mocked up by Ford) in a garage full of stillborn ideas. There was briefly an attempt to revive the Mach 2 when Bunkie Knudsen came from GM to take over as Ford's president in 1968, bringing stylist Larry Shinoda, who dreamed up the Mach 2C shown below. It was planned for 429 power, but remained a somewhat crude mock-up, unlike Shinoda's stunning mid-engined Corvair Monza GT*. Instead of the Mach 2, Ford and Ghia were already working to adapt De Tomaso's Ford-powered, mid-engined Mangusta to US safety regulations. The resulting Pantera would show up in Lincoln Mercury showrooms in 1971, the year after the last sighting of the red Mach 2. There have been no reported sightings of that red prototype in the decades since, but also no convincing evidence that the car was destroyed. So there's the tantalizing possibility that Ford's first prototype for a mid-engined V8 production road car could still be hiding in a barn somewhere, waiting to be discovered...
Photo Credits:
All photos were sourced from the Ford Motor Company, and posted at the following sites:
Top: performanceford.com
2nd: flickr.com
3rd & 4th: performanceford.com
5th & 6th: drives.today
Bottom: performanceford.com
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