While some of us may be prone to the blues because the next season of AMC’s Mad Men won’t air anytime soon, there is consolation for ponycar-loving buyers of the Season 4 DVD and Blu-ray disc set. Hidden away among the set’s bonus features is a 30-minute video segment on the creation of the Ford Mustang.
At first glance, the bonus is a bit bewildering. Since the Mad Men series traces a fictional New York advertising firm through the 1960s, it doesn’t have much connection to the the auto industry at the time. The two share the same time period and likely to some extent similar characters.
According to USA Today, the featurette is worth seeing, as it traces through the Mustang’s predecessors and how it became a runaway success in the market. They allude to a “marketing secret” which is the Mad Men connection, apparently. You can catch a short preview below, and I have to admit that there are parts of the video that I’ve not seen before.
The Ford Mustang was publicly introduced on April 17, at the 1964 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, NY. On the day before, Ford ran Mustang commercials on ABC, NBC and CBS at 9:30 p.m. to build anticipation for the release. Henry Ford II officially unveiled the new car and introduced Walt Disney’s Magic Skyway ride, which used Ford themed vehicles to “ride through history.”
In fact, the months preceding April, 1964 ensured that a great many people saw the Mustang well ahead of time. Production models had been shipping from Dearborn since early March, bound for dealer showrooms and pre-production examples had been touring quietly since the beginning of the year.
Ford sold nearly 22,000 that first day Mustang went on sale and, in the first 12 months, Ford more than 400,000 cars had new owners.