Bonsai Mustang

quite an obvious strategy in the early 1970s. With the intention of breaking into the North American market (and thereby opening the door to other global opportunities), they had a bit of rethink among their various design studios and hit upon an ingenious line of thinking. American buyers were notoriously patriotic, at a time when Detroit was hysterically prolific. So if Japanese brands were to convince American consumers to buy their cars, they needed to design them to look a bit more American. And it kinda worked – take the first-generation Toyota Celica, for example. Here was a car which took the proven Carina sedan platform, and clothed it in a body that was clearly cribbing from the Ford Mustang’s lecture notes. The liftback model, which