Prized Pony

Some cars are born special. You know the ones: ordered new by owners who fretted over the ticking of every box on the order form, slathered in bright colors, stuffed full of high-performance powertrains. The cars looked it, they sounded like it, they oozed it. And if they were lucky, their owners knew it and treated their machines accordingly.

But for every instant street legend in the hometown of your choice, there are dozens, nay hundreds, of cars that people just drove. Nice cars, something a new owner could be proud of, bought off the lot after the dealer ordered a popular array of options, maybe something more attuned to comfort, with a dash of style. They are the ones that, over time, people stopped looking at; they got left alone to live their lives, to be used and used up.

You could argue that any Mustang is special, but in those early, heady days when Mustangs were everywhere, when Dearborn was building and selling half a million a year or more, was a two-barrel Mustang coupe really special?

To consider that, we must look back to the Mustang’s first revision