Twenty years is nothing, but not even forty … At least judging by the state of this one Ford Mustang Mach 1 since 1970 which was found abandoned in a barn after being parked there since at least the early 1980s.
The discovery was made on a farm in Ithaca, Michigan, a town of less than 3,000 inhabitants located in the heart of the United States, about 200 kilometers northwest of Detroit. And it was so forgotten in there that it was easier to remove part of one of the barn walls to get it out than to move all the farm machinery, trailers, RVs and other cars around it.
Despite such negligence, it attracts attention the good condition the Mustang was in at the time of its recovery: Just a little bit of corrosion on the hood and rear fenders. The rest, immaculate, from the original exterior paint to the cockpit, with the red leather upholstery dominating the entire interior of the car in perfect condition. He even kept the Goodyear tires he left the factory with more than half a century ago.
In part this is explained by the fact that the barn has clearly managed to protect him perfectly from water and rain during all this time, but also by the low mileage that his odometer shows: during his days of activity, which will have been about 10 years , the Mustang in question has covered just 80,391 kilometers.
At the time of abandonment, with that mileage the engine still had a useful life ahead of it. Under the hood hides this Mach 1 a 7 liter 428 V8 engine which, thanks to the four-speed manual gearbox, transmits a power of 335 hp to the rear.
The discovery was posted on YouTube by Jerry Heasley, the American journalist specializing in “Findings in the stable”which translates into “stable finds” and alludes to the increasingly popular activity of hunting these types of relics lost over time.
In the video, which is already nearing half a million views, Heasley showed the entire process for the Mustang to come into existence after 40 years. And he was also there when he did the first wash from his long break.
Ford Mustang Mach 1: a living legend
Racing performance, but in a street sports car: the first generation of the Ford Mustang Mach 1 broke all the rules, which is why it is perhaps also the most appreciated by collectors.
They produced it between 1968 and 1971, only with fastback bodywork and some aesthetic details that made it unique, such as the black stripe on the hood, the round auxiliary headlights inside the grille and the chromed exhaust vents. Those details caught the eyes of all sports lovers right from the start, even when the Mach 1 didn’t reach the performance that the brand new Shelby GT350 and GT500 achieved at the time.
In addition to the powerful 7.0 V8 that equips the version found recently in Michigan, the Mach 1 could be made with other V8 engines, such as the 5.8 Windsor, the Cleveland of the same displacement, and with another 6.4 liters. And that offer was completed with options in manual gearbox, 3 or 4 speed and automatic 3.
So it’s no surprise that it’s been a bestseller since day one: in 1969, for example, 72,458 Mach 1 units were patented, nearly 25% of the total of 299,824 Mustangs that left the factory that year. And it prompted Ford to discontinue production of the GT, which only sold 5,396 cars in the same period.
After several years, in 2021 Ford relaunches a Mach 1 based on the sixth generation of the Mustang and reminiscent of the first models. Both in terms of image and performance – today it mounts the same 5.0 Coyote as the GT version and reaches 475 HP – this Mach 1 makes the myth of the great Ford icon gigantic.
Source: Clarin
