Sixty years. That’s how long it’s been since the Ford Mustang first burst onto the scene and how long Alan Mann Racing has been intertwined with the iconic pony car. The Ken Miles Cup at the Goodwood Revival became a historic race, celebrating both anniversaries and powerfully reminding everyone that these classic machines can still thrill.

The event, a one-off race specifically for first-generation Mustangs, saw a grid full of the iconic cars battling it out. As Henry Mann, Managing Director of Alan Mann Racing and son of founder Alan Mann, explained, his father actually tested the first Mustang in Europe at Goodwood back in February 1964, even before the car’s official launch.

“My father started the team in 1964,” Mann shared. “It was a Ford factory team back in those days.” The team’s connection to the Mustang is deep; their first racing Mustang victory came that same year.

The Alan Mann Racing entry for the Ken Miles Cup was a 1965 Mustang, built to FIA Appendix K regulations. This meant staying true to the period specifications while also incorporating six decades of racing knowledge.

“Incorporating 60 years of development of these cars but… still retaining the period components and the period aesthetic as much as possible,” Mann noted.

The car boasts around 460 horsepower, a top speed near 150 mph, and runs on 1965-style tires, making for, as Mann put it, a car that’s “sliding all over the shop basically.”

“It’s a California road car, it’s stripped out and as light as we can make it and as powerful as we can make it,” Henry Mann said.

For Steve Soper, sharing driving duties in the Alan Mann car with Ford CEO Jim Farley, the race was a mixed bag. “Little bit frustrating… The car wasn’t performing as well as I’d hoped,” Soper admitted. Contact with another car further hampered his progress.

However, the experience of driving with Farley was a highlight: “To drive with Jim Farley was absolutely magical he’s such a cool guy…” He also thinks that “Ken was a very underrated driver in his day he deserved a lot more credit than he got I think he was a top guy.”

The Ken Miles Cup showed that even classic Mustangs, when properly prepared, are far from museum pieces. These 60-year-old machines, with their roaring V8s and tail-happy handling, provided a thrilling spectacle, proving that raw, visceral performance never goes out of style.