Currently running at the Saginaw Museum of Art is the exhibit “Designing an ICON: Creativity and the American Automobile”, is a collection of about one hundred design sketches from Detroit’s muscle car and pony car days. While they are considered significant these days, at the time they were just working tools and were thrown out by the thousands when design studios “cleaned house.”

For enthusiasts of that period and the cars it produced, they are also enlightening views into both the design process and the views contemporary to that time. They can also lead you down paths that never became popular, but could have just as easily as the one that did.

Such is the case with a couple of sketches included in the exhibit. Both are by Graham Bell, a name not commonly encountered in stories of Mustang history, yet the man was Chief Designer at Ford from 1974 through 1998. As a result, we’re not dealing with the miscellaneous output from some transient design intern. Bell started his career as a designer with British Airways in 1955, moving five years later to GM as an Assistant Chief Designer.

Competing design groups have long been used to independently explore new styling and design directions at Ford. This kind of clean room approach was documented in the development of the 1994 Mustang and visuals of the three final contenders, code named Jenner, Rambo and Schwarzenegger can be readily found with an Internet search.

This late 1978 sketch of Bell’s explores the concept of a four-door Mustang. Clearly Mustang sheet metal is shown from the A-pillar forward. The center section could be an almost direct lift from the 1978 Fairmont 4-door sedan, including the lightly modified outside mirrors. The rear section appears to be more rounded than the Fairmont of the day, but the idea may have carried forward into the downsized Ford LTD. The rear glass appears to be an enlarged version of the 1979 Mustang notchback’s gently curved, but aero-enhancing, backlite.

The general two-panel design of the instrument panel is consistent with the “New Breed” interior styling of the Fox-based cars of the day, with the bucket seats perhaps suggesting a higher level of luxury than was evident in production models of the day. This, of course, is easy to do in design sketches, but also suggests an underlying recognition that Mustang interiors of the day were not the best they could be, possibly as a result of overriding weight concerns.

Another of Bell’s sketches, prepared in September of 1982, may have been looking toward the Fox platform refreshing that came in 1987. This appears to be a rather clean sheet design with little reference to previous Mustang styling DNA. Note that the side scoops are missing entirely, the front end treatment is very aerodynamic – lacking the vertical grille of previous generations.

The overall effect seems to suggest something that later appeared from Chrysler, with only the round, passenger side fuel door and the fender emblems seeming to draw from the Mustang’s styling heritage. While the design is not unpleasant, it seems to lack any significant visual identification as a Mustang… something that designers of the day would have known to be important.

Still, under different conditions, this might have been the 1987 Mustang convertible. Perhaps, out there in a parallel universe, it is.

Retired from the position of Chief Designer, Ford Motor Company, Graham Bell attended the Designing an Icon exhibit premiere in Louisville, KY, in September, 2007.