12/05/2025
AutoMotive News Centennial guest essay by Bill Ford: Legendary Mustang represents freedom, optimism to generations around the world.
After seven generations and more than 60 years, the Mustang is still the great American sports car — accessible, thrilling and made for the open road. It’s a car that creates memories, and over the years I’ve been privileged to hear countless people share theirs with me.
My memories of the Mustang go back to childhood when my father brought home a prototype Mustang that felt like the future itself. Not long after, I was at the Indy 500 where the Mustang made its debut as the pace car driven by my Uncle Benson. It was a proud day for our family and our company. A few years ago, things came full circle when I was able to find and restore that very same pace car.
My first Mustang was a high school graduation gift — a coupe in a gorgeous electric green show color. I loved that car. But being a show color, the paint wasn’t meant for extreme temperatures. After spending a frigid weekend in northern Michigan, I woke up to find the paint peeling off in strips. I was heartbroken.
Over the years, I have been lucky to have many Mustangs. I’m proud to own everything from a ’68 Shelby KR signed by Carroll to serial No. 1 of the new Mustang GTD. But I don’t think of the Mustang as a collector’s car. They are meant to be driven and enjoyed.
I am also proud that the Mustang has been an enduring part of our culture, inspiring songs and starring in movies from Steve McQueen’s GT in “Bullitt” to the Mach 1 in “Diamonds Are Forever” to the Boss 429 in the John Wick series.
There are many legends about the creation of the Mustang, but I’ll always remember a story my dad told me years ago. The design team was leaning toward one proposal, but Lee Iacocca remembered a different, more radical design he had seen months earlier. It had been set aside, literally stored in a closet. The team rolled it out, and that nearly forgotten concept became the icon we know today.
That icon now belongs to the world. Customers around the world have bought more than 10 million Mustangs. I saw the global appeal firsthand when we launched the sixth-generation Mustang in the Middle East. To celebrate the moment, the team assembled a Mustang at the top of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. I met people from all over the region wearing Mustang gear. They had formed Mustang clubs in countries where it wasn’t even sold yet!
The Mustang has never just been a car we build; it’s a feeling of freedom and optimism that we’ve been sharing with the world for 60 years. It falls to all of us at Ford Motor Co. to ensure that 60 years from now, future generations will be telling their own Mustang stories, inspired by the cars we are designing and building today.
BILL FORD is the executive chair of Ford Motor Co. He is the great-grandson of Henry Ford I and the son of William Clay Ford Sr. He joined the automaker in 1979.
