(EXPANDED FROM 5/11/2020)
Automobile magazine is dead but its Facebook page continues to recycle old articles. Yesterday the one million followers of this page were blessed with a reposted history of the Ford Mustang. Aaron Gold (2020) included the shocking news that the pony car blimped out in the late-60s and early-70s. I should quickly add that Gold did not explicitly call the Mustang obese, but three subheads noted how the car grew when it was restyled in 1967, 1969 and 1971.
Meanwhile, Gold didn’t say anything about the Mustang putting on the pounds when restyled in more recent decades. This is odd, because one could reasonably argue that Ford pushed the Chevrolet Camaro out of the market in 2003 because pony car customers vastly preferred the Mustang’s smaller size. Yet in 2005 — when Ford gave the Mustang its most substantial redesign in a quarter century — the car grew to match the size of its deceased competitor.
The result was exceptionally weak sales in recent years. And in a 2015 reskinning, the Mustang gained even more size and weight.
The Mustang — much like the current iteration of the Camaro and Dodge Challenger — isn’t really a pony car anymore. Here we have the automotive equivalent of an obese, middle-aged man prancing around in a swim bikini.
The Mustang sold more poorly as it got bigger
As the pony cars have been given bigger, glitzier and more powerful redesigns, their sales have tended to shrink. The last time the Mustang hit 170,000 units per year was way back in 1995, when it was still on the relatively small and light-weight Fox platform. And while the 2015 reskinning resulted in a temporary increase in sales, since then Mustang output has fallen in half to roughly 61,000 units in 2020.
Sales for the Camaro and Dodge Challenger have been even lower. In 2020 Camaro volume fell under under 30,000 units. This fueled speculation that General Motors would ditch the nameplate. However, the timeframe for the six-generation Camaro’s discontinuation is fluid and the Camaro could return with electric power (Lopez, 2021).
The Challenger has done better, with sales almost hitting 53,000 units in 2020. That is getting within shouting distance of the Mustang even though the Dodge is bigger and heavier. However, one could argue that this is like comparing oranges and grapefruits. The Challenger is more like a mid-sized muscle coupe of yore than a pony car.
For example, the Challenger’s wheelbase is 116 inches. This is one inch more than the 1971 Charger and eight inches longer than a 2021 Mustang — which translates into more than 300 pounds of extra weight.
Is getting bigger the normal order of the universe?
One could posit that Automobile didn’t question the Mustang’s recent weight gains because — like pretty much all buff magazines — it was hesitant to criticize an advertiser. One might also speculate that the magazine’s aging staff assumed that the natural order of the universe was for cars to grow in sync with their own bodies.
Or perhaps Automobile’s omission was primarily a function of class. The magazine catered to an upper-crust readership, so it didn’t notice how the pony cars had lost their populist appeal. Or didn’t care.
NOTES:
This is an expanded version of a story originally posted May 11, 2020. Chevrolet Camaro, Dodge Challenger and Ford Mustang output figures come from the Wikipedia (2021) and Carsalesbase.com (2021). Specifications come from the manufacturers as well as the Automobile Catalog (2021).
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Automobile Catalog; 2021. “Search Automobile Catalog.” Accessed Nov. 12.
- Carsalesbase.com; 2021. US sales for Chevrolet Camaro, Ford Mustang and Dodge Challenger. Accessed Nov. 10.
- Gold, Aaron; 2020. “The Ford Mustang: History, Generations, Models, Specifications.” Automobile magazine. Posted May 1; accessed May 10.
- Lopez, Jonathan; 2021. “Sixth-Gen Chevy Camaro Discontinuation Timeframe Is A Moving Target.” GM Authority. Posted June 1.
- Wikipedia; 2021. “Chevrolet Camaro,” “Dodge Challenger” and “Ford Mustang.” Accessed May 10.
While I prefer lighter, more nimble cars to those that are overweight, the author ignores the current business case for these cars: The Mustang and Camaro have their own unique platforms with all of the engineering virtues of that ability to stand alone from their assembly-line brothers and sisters; however, the Challenger is a derivative of the Chrysler 300 / Dodge Magnum / Daytona / Charger platform. There was even a proposal back in the Daimler-Chrysler days of an Imperial spin-off. Perhaps the Challenger needs a stablemate called the Cordoba ! Add in all the crash standards since 1997, plus the financial ups and downs of the past 25-years, why would a manufacturer invest in lighter, more nimble car that likely won’t generate more sales than the present models ?
James, the point I was making was that Mustang sales tended to drop off as the car got bigger. I’d go as far as to argue that if the big redesign in 2005 had kept close to the Fox body’s size and weight that the Mustang would have sold meaningfully better since then.