New Ford Mustangs journey from sketch to concept

For a car designer, the chance to re-imagine an icon like Ford Mustang is always exciting. Doing this for the famous Ford performance car’s 50th anniversary is the opportunity of a lifetime.  By mid-2009, with the substantially updated fifth-generation Ford Mustang in production, Ford designers, engineers and marketers turned their collective attention to what would come next: the design that would mark more than five decades of continuous Mustang development and production.

Ford’s Vice-President of Global design Moray Callum stated that to the people working in Ford consider the Mustang to be the heart and soul of the company; hence this is a very important product. He carried on, “We spent a lot of time amongst the team and with customers discussing the history of Mustang and what it meant to people and concluded that we needed to move forward with a modern design that retained the essence of the brand.”

As Ford’s performance leader, the basic parameters of Mustang were obvious: rear-wheel drive combined with the sound and performance of a V8 engine to create the visceral experience that Mustang drivers expect. A typical new car program kicks off with a design brief that lays out the needs and wants for the upcoming vehicle. However, with 50 years of continuous development and production, every designer knew what to sketch and how a Mustang needs to look. Similarly, sketches of the interior featured the distinctive symmetrical instrument panel with a double brow design and large analogue gauges. Part of the appeal of Mustang over the years has been the way it combines style, performance and everyday usability thanks to its four-seat cabin and sizable trunk. These attributes had to be part of the new design. With these basic parameters, Ford designers established a footprint to work with roughly the same as the fifth generation model.