TZ250
07-26-2011, 05:44 PM
I am reading Lee Iacocca's Autobiography for a history class. The class is about the changes in culture do to technology.
Lee Iacocca is the father of the Mustang; everyone knows that. The Falcon had been Robert McNamara's car. He was an accountant and he only cared about thrifty cars. Lee Iacocca based the Mustang on the Falcon components and saved Ford $225 million dollars in develop costs.
Internally the new car was called the Cougar, before Mustang was picked. Mustang was meant as a reference to the airplane. "The study he (Arjay Miller) commisioned projected that the Cougar would sell eighty-six thousand units." (p.72)
Prior to the unveiling of the Mustang, Ford kept 8,160 Mustangs in stock so that they could send every dealer in the U.S. one car each. When the Mustang went on sale, the public started standing in line to buy one. Dealers could not keep them in stock.
What you may not know is that Dayton, OH was a testing center for Ford to determine if they should open another plant to produce the Mustang. On pages 78-79 of Lee Iacocca's Autobiography he says "Because the cars were in such short supply, it was hard to know how many we could really sell. So a few weeks after the Mustang was introduced, Frank Zimmeran arranged for an experiment in Dayton, Ohio, known as a GM town because GM had several plants in the area."
"He met with the Ford dealers in Dayton and told them: "Look, you guys are in a tough, competitive market here, and the Mustang's a hot car. We want to see how hot it really is, so we're going to give each of you ten cars to put in stock and we'll honor your retail orders as quickly as we get them."
"The results were amazing. We got something like 10 percent of the entire car market in Dayton. That was all the ammunition we needed, and by September we were starting to convert the San Jose plant."
Ford sold 418,812 Mustangs the first year, setting a new record for volume and profit.
Lee Iacocca is the father of the Mustang; everyone knows that. The Falcon had been Robert McNamara's car. He was an accountant and he only cared about thrifty cars. Lee Iacocca based the Mustang on the Falcon components and saved Ford $225 million dollars in develop costs.
Internally the new car was called the Cougar, before Mustang was picked. Mustang was meant as a reference to the airplane. "The study he (Arjay Miller) commisioned projected that the Cougar would sell eighty-six thousand units." (p.72)
Prior to the unveiling of the Mustang, Ford kept 8,160 Mustangs in stock so that they could send every dealer in the U.S. one car each. When the Mustang went on sale, the public started standing in line to buy one. Dealers could not keep them in stock.
What you may not know is that Dayton, OH was a testing center for Ford to determine if they should open another plant to produce the Mustang. On pages 78-79 of Lee Iacocca's Autobiography he says "Because the cars were in such short supply, it was hard to know how many we could really sell. So a few weeks after the Mustang was introduced, Frank Zimmeran arranged for an experiment in Dayton, Ohio, known as a GM town because GM had several plants in the area."
"He met with the Ford dealers in Dayton and told them: "Look, you guys are in a tough, competitive market here, and the Mustang's a hot car. We want to see how hot it really is, so we're going to give each of you ten cars to put in stock and we'll honor your retail orders as quickly as we get them."
"The results were amazing. We got something like 10 percent of the entire car market in Dayton. That was all the ammunition we needed, and by September we were starting to convert the San Jose plant."
Ford sold 418,812 Mustangs the first year, setting a new record for volume and profit.