4 posts tagged “1965”

Here’s a dose of retro: a Ford promotion featuring 1960s concept cars and the styling of the 1965 Mustang. The Mustang part is in the second half.
   It’s interesting to see what Dearborn thought was practical in the ’60s, and the station wagon concept, the Aurora, does have some ideas in seating that are familiar today. But it was the Mustang II show car and ’65 Mustang segment that interested me.

After chatting with Pete about Von Ryan’s Express and the late Adolfo Celi on his blog, I found this photograph:

The library does not give a caption other than ‘Sergio Fantoni, Frank Sinatra and Adolfo Celi, Von Ryan’s Express, 1965’ but an appropriate one might be, from Signor Celi, ‘Hey, Sergio, can you lend me your eye patch for my next film?’
   If he didn’t do that, we wouldn’t have had Emilio Largo in Thunderball:
which in turn means we would not have had Number Two in the Austin Powers films:

The trailer to one of my favourite films—but it’s very 1960s. A modern audience won’t exactly get excited over this. That’s ironic though: if you see the film, there are plenty of scenes which could be edited in a modern fashion to create a very impactful trailer. But since it was the 1960s, this was perfectly acceptable and there’s just enough of Sophia Loren in a state of undress to get her fans along. And plenty of Christian Dior dresses and shoes (oh, the shoes—they were in Loren’s contract and written in to the script as a fetish of Alan Badel’s character). Gregory Peck, meanwhile, is still one of the top stars of the time—doing a role originally written for Archie Leach (Cary Grant to the rest of us). Note the prominence of Henry Mancini’s name, too. 
   As a movie it holds up remarkably well, far better than the trailer.

Un pub pour le film Arabesque, de Stanley Donen, avec Gregory Peck et Sophia Loren.

For Timothy, Zak and the other Americans who remember these great cars … So very easy to write about—it just flows for these popular models. From Autocade at http://autocade.net/index.php/Ford_Mustang_%281964%E2%80%936%29.

Ford Mustang (1964–6)

Ford Mustang/Ford T-5. 1964–6 (prod. 1,288,527). 2-door coupé, 2-door fastback, 2-door convertible. F/R, 170, 200 in³ (6 cyl OHV), 260, 289 in³ (V8 OHV). Incredibly successful sports car from Ford, based around Falcon bits, but with its own long-hood, short-deck proportions borrowed from European sports models. Ford identified the baby boomer segment and division head Lee Iacocca pushed the concept from engineer and product planner Donald N. Frey. Created the “pony car” segment. Teaser campaign, massive marketing blitz, including three-network TV ad buy on April 16, 1964. Launched at World’s Fair on April 17, 1964 with base price of $2,368—a thousand dollars less than what original survey respondents thought. Original model retrospectively called the 1964½ model year, though should be ‘early 1965’ model. Sporting appointments, such as bucket seats; car could be extensively personalized. Brakes, steering not class-leading but performance acceptable, V8s the cars to go for. Shelby high-performance model from 1965. Sold 418,812 in first year, and a million by March 1966. Called T-5 (its development name) in Germany due to trade mark conflict. Set template for Mustangs to follow, including current model.