Those of us auto enthusiasts who grew up in the teeth of "The Malaise Era" have our pick of the litter (make that used kitty litter) when it comes to what cars epitomized that period of time when it seemed the Big Three couldn't do anything right. From the AMC Pacer to the Chevrolet Citation, Ford Granada to GM Diesels to the Cadillac Cimarron, there's no shortage of stinking turds that just wouldn't flush away. In my opinion, though, the epitome of them all was the Ford Pinto based Mustang "II". I found this 1976 Mustang II Cobra on Facebook Marketplace recently and it brought back a lot of memories; none of them good.
What with the folks across the street from my family and I where I grew up on Long Island having a 1965 Mustang "Hardtop" and a 1972 "Grande", I was fairly versed in "Ford Mustang" and when I heard that Ford was coming with a new Mustang for 1974 based on their Pinto, nine-year-old me instinctively knew it was not going to be good. And I was right; the teeny-tiny Mustang II was no "Mustang" at least not in comparison to what I saw on a daily basis across the street from me. I doused my sorrows in Nestle's instant chocolate milk making it with whole milk - desperate times meant desperate measures. Little did I know at the time the homely little car was also a putrid transportation conveyance.
The fact that the Mustang II was more than a foot shorter than the elephantine 1971-1973 Mustang wasn't the issue with its aesthetics - just because a car is small doesn't mean its design should suffer. However, the "II's" design did suffer along with driving dynamics that were decidedly non-European with Ford softening the Pinto's suspension and adding heavy sound proofing and insulation to cull the Pinto's raucous. Built on a slightly lengthened chassis the Ford Pinto was built on, it was almost two-inches wider than a 1964 Mustang meanwhile six-inches shorter lending to its stubby proportions. Stubby proportions accentuated by huge front and rear overhangs - proportionally, some of the largest in history to that point. 13-inch wheels only adding to the "bulked up Pinto" axiom which, again, the car actually was.
Wouldn't you know it, though, timing being everything, Ford sold tons of "II's" for model year 1974. In fact, it became one of the best first model-year selling cars of all time just as the car it purportedly emulated did just a decade prior. What a difference ten years can make, though. Whereas the original Mustang was a seminal, niche creating design that transformed the market if not the auto industry, the 1974 Mustang II was but a benefactor of timing with the start of the OPEC oil embargo coinciding with the new model year.
Ford sold nearly 386,000 "II's" in 1974, that number dropping by roughly half for 1975 as the embargo ended, fuel prices stabilized and buyers came to their senses. A decade prior, after the initial fervor, Mustang sales remained strong as a, err, horse. "II" sales hovering around 175,000 a year through the end of production in 1978. Granted, that number is nothing to sneeze at but pales in comparison to the 600,000+ sold in 1966 and the million-plus out the door in the Mustang's protracted first model-year. Ford is lucky to sell 100,000 Mustangs a year these days.
Revisionist history being what it is, Ford didn't introduce the Mustang II in response to the OPEC embargo, planning for it began as far back as 1971 when Ford realized they had a turkey on their hands with their new-for'71, "big" Mustang. In fairness, give Ford product planners some credit for deciding to downsize in a day and age of relentless upsizing. Then again, with sales shrinking, what choice did they have? Make it even bigger? Then again, the did upsize the Mercury version of the Mustang up and out of the pony car segment starting in 1974. Ah, my wonder years. How they sucked.
The only thing "Mustang" about a "II" was Ford's use of disparate Mustang styling cues their designers had used on Mustangs for the previous decade. The Ford Mustang II was a hodge-podge of ideas, themes and eras with one, sorry, hoof, stuck in the 1960's, another, (don't say it) glued in the 1970's. Us Mustang cognoscenti could only hope for better days to come and they eventually did, sort of, come 1979 with the introduction of the Fox-body Mustangs. Shows you just how desperate we must have been if the trucky, boxy Fox-body Mustang was construed as the second coming of the original. It wasn't, of course, but it was a marked improvement and wasn't a design evolution of the "II".
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