Dubai, UAE: For more than a decade, the Ford Mustang has been the world’s best-selling sports car, amassing over 1 million sales since going global in 2015 and more than 10 million since it was unveiled on April 17, 1964, at the New York World’s Fair.

The Unveiling of the 1964 Ford Mustang

With its long bonnet, short deck, and sporty features, the Mustang hit the sweet spot, and dealers were swamped with 22,000 orders on the first day of sales. The 1964 Ford Mustang went on sale at a price of USD $2,368, weighed 1,166 kg, boasted a 170-cubic-inch six-cylinder engine, three-speed, floor-mounted automatic transmission, and seated four people. To say it was an instant hit is an understatement. In Texas, when 15 people bid on the same car, the winner asked to sleep in the car overnight so that it wouldn’t be sold underneath him while his cheque cleared.

Ford predicted Mustang would sell around 100,000 cars in its first year. It racked up 417,000 sales in its first 12 months on sale, and the one millionth Mustang had been sold by 1966. It wasn’t just the real Mustang that sold up a storm; parents purchased a staggering 93,000 pedal-powered children’s Mustangs during the 1964 Christmas season.

Capturing the Spirit of a Generation: From Prototype to Global Icon

What was Mustang’s appeal? With the 15-29 age group expected to grow 40 percent in the US (and around the world) between 1960 and 1970, Ford laid out plans for a new kind of vehicle that would appeal to a younger generation not interested in the conservative cars their parents drove. They wanted bucket seats, floor-mounted stick shifts, and high-performance engines.

Ford determined this new vehicle should be small (no longer than 180 inches), light (no heavier than 1,100 kg), and inexpensive (no more than USD $2,500 – most vehicles started at USD $3,500). Styling needed to give a nod to the low profile of the Ford Thunderbird, seat four people, and be fun to drive.

The Mustang I and II prototypes were named for the legendary P-51 Mustang fighter plane from World War II, although now they’re synonymous with the wild horse, so much so they’re known as the pony car.