If everybody is right is anyone wrong?
Iococca’s other big claim to fame was his *fathering* of the Mustang while at Ford. Even there his role was that of a con-man. The idea of a pony car was percolating around the auto industry for several year. In Philadelphia the Budd Company — which did body stampings for Ford & American motors — had built mockups for AMC & Ford. They called the Ford version the “X-Bird”.
A Ford delegation came thru to look at the “X-Bird”. Nothing happened initially. Ford hadn’t attempted a new, from-paper design since the Edsel and Henry Ford II wasn’t about to approve a new car model. A couple of years later Iococca basically told Ford what a new car would cost to design & tool, then cut that figure in half. Ford didn’t think he could do it, but the low-ball number got him to agree.
Essentially the ‘64 Mustang was a re-skinning of the Ford Falcon model, so essentially the “new model” was just a shell.