In case you weren’t already aware—and how could you not be?—an all-new Ford Mustang has arrived. Like all long-running nameplates such as 911 or Suburban, questions of whether the new Ford pony car will live up to the ghosts of its past dog the latest model. To acquaint myself with what it is, exactly, that those ghosts have to say, I strapped myself into a fully restored, classic 1964½ Ford Mustang and took a cruise down Detroit’s legendary Woodward Avenue.
The 1964½ Mustang notchback you see here belongs to Hagerty Insurance, which purchased it last year before treating the car to a full yet sympathetic restoration at its Traverse City, Michigan, headquarters, as a way to celebrate the model’s 50th anniversary. Driving any old car is an event for this near-vintage-virgin author, so I was particularly stoked the morning of my rendezvous.
Perhaps it was my Bullitt-clouded vision of what an ideal early Mustang looks like, but in person this particular car appeared frail. Unlike a bad-ass Highland Green GT fastback, this upright notchback wears nondescript Wimbledon White paint, and it seems as if the exhaust pressure from, say, a 2015 Mustang GT could cause it to tip over. It is nearly bone stock, the sole concession to performance being a set of radial tires mounted on contemporary GT-spec wheels, fitted to ease the car’s 250-mile journey from Traverse City to Detroit.
Our photographer Michael Simari and I are given a quick walkaround of the car, with our Hagerty host pointing out its early-build status and the fact that, aside from the paint, interior upholstery, radiator support, and right-front fender, the car retains most of its original parts. In Mustang parlance, this is an “F-code,” meaning it has the small 260-cubic-inch V-8 that was nixed from the options sheet within a few months of the Mustang’s April 1964 debut, largely due to the vastly improved performance and drivability of the available 289 V-8.
With no experience driving a car this old under my belt, I had imagined that the starting process would require choke-fiddling and perhaps sprinkling some River Rouge sediment into the carb, but a simple turn of the ignition key fires the V-8. The floor-mounted 3-speed manual may be down at least 2 gears to most modern self-shifters, but with reverse occupying the gate typically reserved for first and that gear living down and to the left—it’s a dogleg ‘box, so second is up and to the right with third below that—a surfeit of confusion obfuscates the deficit of choice for uninitiated folks like me.
Nevertheless, I get the hang of it and ease out of the parking space as our chaperone warns me that the Mustang lacks power steering, power brakes, a tachometer, or an alternator. Early Mustangs came with a generator, which doesn’t run at low engine speeds. I am told the “GEN” light beside the steering column will illuminate every time the car is at rest—this is totally normal—but that we’d have issues if it popped on at speed. I think conditional dash lights need to make a comeback; the masses might pay more attention behind the wheel if bulbs had multiple meanings and one of them was an eventual total loss of electrical power.
Pulling out onto Woodward’s wide stretch of blacktop, the V-8 makes noise, but it’s a cacophony competing with a lot of other sounds. Stirred in with tire roar and gear whine, the serenade is more droning Zamboni than thundering Motor City muscle. Shifts must be executed deliberately and are rendered almost pointless by the 8’s flat torque curve and the tall gearing. It may have been the opening salvo in the pony-car wars, but the Mustang certainly isn’t much for a frenetic pace. A yellow Smart For2 pulls away from us at a traffic light, a tragedy that prompts me to bin further assessment of the Ford’s acceleration.
Stopping is way more exciting. Having experience with unboosted brakes, I avoid a fitful, “oh s#$ t!” first stop, but getting all 4 drum brakes to halt in a manner that fits within the urgent pace of modern traffic flow nonetheless requires excessive pedal force. Similarly, cranking the unassisted steering takes muscle at low speeds. Once underway, the wheel goes surprisingly light and unsurprisingly vague, with reinlike on-center feel exacerbating the Mustang’s tendency to leisurely sashay within Woodward’s wide lanes. Settling into a steady cruise, the pony trots happily if drunkenly, the ride smooth and composed.
Between keeping the thing pointed straight and planning my next stop—is that a red light? fiddlesticks—I’m plenty busy. Turning around at one of Woodward’s countless median crossovers, the steering rack’s glacially slow ratio demands hand-over-hand flailing. Back on the avenue, windows rolled down and an elbow perched atop the door, life is good—and less sweaty. Soon, though, I’m parking the little coupe, the V-8 going quiet as sweet gasoline fumes hang in the air.
It is, predictably, tough not to love the ’64½ despite it being so flawed and crude by modern standards. It comes from an era when cars dripped with personality, when the connection between man and machine was still relatively unfiltered, when driving was viewed as a rite of passage and a privilege rather than a right. The Mustang was an affordable and frisky bomb dropped on an unsuspecting car world during a period of social upheaval, when the definition of freedom was expanding to include so much more than hitting the open road. Yet that simple act remained at the core of the American experience, and so did cars; the Mustang helped spur the muscle-car movement, wherein auto companies gleefully peddled their wares to the increasingly horsepower-addled and restless youths who gave voice to an entire generation. This year, the new Mustang will battle with a new iPhone for young peoples’ attention.
Yet, curiously, current events seem to echo those of 50 years ago—there’s an escalating muscle-car horsepower war, the U.S. is squabbling with Russia, and people have gathered in a southern town to protest racism and abuses of power. But a rough, unrefined pony car like the 1964½ Mustang isn’t viable today, and even the outgoing version, for all the voodoo Ford engineers performed to get its live axle to behave, was somewhat pigeonholed by nostalgia. Modern buyers demand refinement, safety, and vastly improved performance, and the remastered 2015 Mustang will attempt to resonate with today’s young enthusiasts with its newly independent rear suspension, its sleek styling, and its modern gadgetry. In the meantime, you’ll be able to find me cruising the classifieds—online, of course—for an affordable 1964½.
Dream Cruise: Driving a Brand-New, 50-Year-Old Ford Mustang Down Woodward Avenue
