[1st part of early Mustang History]

They failed to see that the market had peaked by the time their first models appeared in the early 1970s and because of that failure and the lack of support, Knudson and company were gone by 1973.

They set a course for Mustang that buyers didn't like or as one account of the board meeting of 1968 has said, when asked by the company needed a bigger Mustang, there was really no good answer given. The questioner was the owner of a 1965 Mustang and quite happy with it.

Ultimately, given all of the palace intrigue going on, the outsiders were turned out and the insiders remained inside and Mustang did change back to a smaller platform. It never reached the sales levels of its early success again.

Indeed, when asked later one what he would have done differently in the early days, Iacocca said he would never have introduced the 429.

With 1970, the official era of the "small platform" Mustang was gone. The Ford insiders saw the usurper (Knudsen) and friends as interlopers who were to be tolerated until they either proved themselves of gave themselves enough rope to make sure they all packed up and left.

That's what happened as Bunkie and his boys hitched themselves to the Torino platform and the "big platform" Mustang grew and grew. In 1971 – as a homage to his Boss Knudsen – lead designer Shinoda, who came over from GM, brought out the Boss 302. The team also brought out the Mach I quickly with some moderate success.

However, no one had told them the market had peaked years earlier – indeed performance historians speculate that if his cars had appeared in 1968 or so Ford might have had a different history – but all that happened was that the Mustang (whose outline remained the same) saw a series of flat sales years, the best being 1971 with about 145,000 sold; 72, facing recession, sales dropped to 125,000, and 73, led by the convertible that was soon to be history, sales rebounded somewhat to 135,000.

The changes Knudsen and company had wrought to a signature machine were legion and included:

• The much chuckled about 1971 Sportsback (supposedly a fastback but with only a 17-degree rake)
• The much commented on addition of nearly a ton of metal and poorer performance from larger engines
• The much commented on addition of length and luxury because he listened to marketing, whose main interest always is in this area

Bunkie failed to see the curtain falling on his era so that he was likely surprised when Ford named Iacocca his successor and the new leader's act was to banish the "large platform" to history and to try to have Ford return to its roots.