A Faster Horse Page #5

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to design the car.

Photos have leaked

on the Internet.

I think those are just

Photoshop pictures

that are out there,

and my first reaction was,

"that really doesn't look

like a mustang."

I don't want them

to water it down.

Some of the other cars,

they look so similar.

But I guess it has to appeal

to more people now.

Our customers are not

afraid to tell us what they want

and why they want it.

I want it to look like

a mustang.

If you see the first one,

you'll say, "that's a mustang."

Well, I think everyone gets

emotional about the mustang

because number one,

most people have had

a passion for the car

when they were young

and when they were growing up,

whether it was within

their family,

their dad had one,

their brother had one,

that was the first car

they ever drove,

it was the first date

they'd ever had, you know.

I grew up in Chicago,

south suburb of Chicago.

As a little kid we'd always

take things apart

and try to figure out

how they worked

and put them back

together again,

which kind of freaked my mom out

a little bit,

but my dad thought

it was really cool.

So my brothers are about

ten years older than me,

and they were into cars

way before I even was.

The mustangs just always

caught my attention.

Not everybody

that's been in that job

really knows what a mustang is,

but Dave does.

When you talk to him,

you can see

he gets the emotional

connection in a very deep way.

I was a young engineer

here at Ford.

My boss had a '94 mustang.

He was going out of town,

and I asked him

if I could borrow his car.

He said,

"yeah, sure, no problem."

So I drove it to Chicago

and took my girlfriend

out on a date.

And I pulled up in front

of the high school

where we had met, in fact,

the very room that we had met.

I told her something was wrong

with the car,

and she didn't know

any different, and I got out,

and I opened up the door

and I knelt down

and asked her to marry me

in that mustang.

For me,

this is the dream job,

and I've said this to a vice

president in this company,

"you have me in this chair

for a reason.

While I'm in it,

I'm gonna do

all of the right things

for the mustang customer."

Joining us on the

"muscle cars on the radio"

hotline, Dave pericak,

chief nameplate engineer

for the 2015 mustang.

- Welcome back, Dave. - Thanks, Gary.

Thanks for having me on the show.

I think the greatest

pleasure that I experience

is a successful product.

To see people walk in and spend

their hard-earned money

buying our products is a great

thrill and great success.

Do you have to make

great sacrifices for it?

Well, in terms of time,

surely, yes.

It absorbs most

of your weekdays

and probably a good portion

of your weekends.

It's a consuming job,

let's say that.

Do you regret that at all?

I don't think so.

I picked the business,

and I'm here,

and I sort of like it.

Lee iacocca was no dummy.

He knew the timing was right

to take the American population

and introduce them

to something different.

In 1960, Lee was made

vice president

of the Ford division,

which is a huge move.

There was an air about him

that was a little mysterious.

I can remember watching

these guys escort him

around the various studios

and smoking his big cigar.

You know, it looked like

the mafia had arrived.

It was really pretty cool.

That is so

god damn basic to running...

He knew that his ideas

were good,

and he surrounded himself

with good, creative people.

One of those people

was hal sperlich.

Iacocca was a dynamic leader,

but the guy that made it happen

was hal sperlich.

Sometime in the early '60s,

what became the mustang

project got started.

My first introduction

to it was with don frey,

my boss,

who told me that iacocca

and the market research

people had identified

a rather dramatic shift

in demographics

that was going to take place,

the arrival of the baby boomers.

The market was untouched.

It was younger buyers.

There was nothing for them

to buy,

you know,

that they could afford.

Most innovation is

how to be ahead of the market,

you know, how to be ahead of

where demand is at the moment.

Iacocca, who was very much

interested in making a mark,

decided that that

would be his mark.

When 1960 happened,

when the decade started,

none of the auto manufacturers

in the United States

were building compact cars.

The big stodgy rolling tanks

and couches

that went down the highway,

that was the state

of production in those years.

"This is the way we build cars.

Take it or leave it."

Well, that changed.

The baby boomers said,

"we want something

that brings us

into the modern times."

They wanted

modern refrigerators,

they wanted modern furniture,

they wanted a modern house,

and they wanted a modern car.

Ford didn't have a car

that was a modern car,

and that's what they discovered

was this market.

Lee decided to have

the discussions off-campus.

To discuss a business

proposition

of great mutual interest.

They met after hours

clandestinely

at the fairlane inn

without Henry Ford's knowledge.

They knew if he got wind

of them, it would be canceled

simply because of the edsel.

The design of the future

is a great question.

I don't think the cars

can get any longer.

They're plenty long enough

and actually, I think,

they're really practically

as low as they're gonna get.

Henry Ford wanted

to reinvent the industry.

He wanted new technology,

something different

and fresh and exciting,

a car that hit

all of those parameters.

The birth of this new

line of automobiles

is a once-in-a-lifetime

opportunity.

The eyes of the American people

will be on edsel.

He came out with one of

the most well-researched cars

in the history of automobilia.

It was called the edsel.

And so I am proud

and pleased to confirm

that our new line of cars

will carry the name edsel

in honor of my father,

who served as president

of Ford motor company.

When you talk edsel today,

you talk of the flop

of all time.

- It didn't sell.

- I'm ruined!

The people that actually

worked on the edsel project

became known as e-guys,

and the e-guys

were bad guys

around Ford motor company.

Henry Ford didn't wanna

have anything to do with them.

Do you think people

will ever forget the edsel?

Oh, god, I hope so.

I used to always ask him,

"why did you let them call

the car edsel?"

He said it was the management

team that beat him down.

I mean, who knows?

I just think

that it's the wrong car

at the wrong time

with the wrong design.

It didn't work out,

and the company canned it.

That's a pretty

expensive process,

and it's embarrassing,

which is why people get nervous

about innovating.

He had to bear in mind

that the likes of iacocca

and others were putting

their careers on the line.

To be for something as unique

as the mustang project

was in its time

was a high-risk game.

We go out to one of our

proving grounds out in Arizona

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