Cruising toward oblivion, few could see what a trouble the automaker would have to make just over 125,000 sales, including cutting dealer invoicing and pricing for a $200 savings. Few could have guessed the pony car era was almost at an end.

Although he probably didn't think much about this when the calendar and clock ticked from 1971 to 72 that the handwriting was on the wall, he just hadn't seen it yet. That's the way it must have felt to Bunkie Knudsen and his right-hand designer Larry Shinoda, developer of the real Chevy Z28 performance vehicle, as they tried to design their way out of the hole they had dug for themselves with their Torino-based platform/chassis Mustang.

Adding 8 inches in length; 11 inches in wheelbase; 8 inches in width and about 600 pounds, while, at the same time, watching performance peak and go down must have been disheartening for Knudsen. As the new bright guys from General Motors, they had set out to reinvent the world with a new Mustang and they ended up with a stylized, overbloated machine whose power specs were slipping backward daily, even as projects moved forward.

Granted, much of the slippage was due to added federal emissions, safety and pollution control requirements, but, nonetheless, Ford could have adjusted if it had stayed the course with its original small Mustang program. Even Lee Iacocca, who was president of Ford following Knudsen's departure, acknowledged the automaker should never have built up the Mustang to take the 429 Big Block in 1966.

In reality, 1972 was a year of rest and minimal change for the Mustang. Until this time, it had consumed inordinate amounts of development money for sales that finished model year 1972 with 125,000 Mustang sold. Of course, the country had weathered a brief recession, but that still begs the question why go so large in the first place? The answer is that this is what Knudsen and Co. wanted to show to their former masters at General Motors – they could build a competitive sports sedan that would deliver on the performance promise – it didn't. Instead, Ford ended up dropping prices about $200 by cutting dealer discounts and after Washington cut out the federal sales tax.

The big options for 1972 were the A and B Sprint packages, available for the base and Grande models. It was mainly a cosmetic package (the A version) which offered which paint and offsetting blue inserts. The "B" version, about $140 or so, was the more serious version and offered mag wheels and a competition suspension.

Whatever way you look at it this was just a marketing gimmick to boost sales, which it did not. Instead, Ford turned over two former Mustang plants in San Jose and Metuchen, NJ to Pintos and Mavericks. Dearborn was still the only plant making Mustangs.

Interestingly, "Hot Rodding" magazine called the Mustang its "Car of the Decade" about the middle of the year, however, as commentators has pointed out, the entire news release announcing the award was couched largely in in the past tense.