By Zach Doell
Ford did in fact name a Mustang after Bruce Jenner and Sylvester Stallone’s movie character Rambo. And another after the Governator himself — Arnold Schwarzenegger By 1993, the existing Ford Mustang had begun to look and feel a little long in the tooth and was in need of a freshening up. Thankfully, Ford had been hard at work cooking up the next iteration of its iconic pony car, especially after a plan to drop the ‘Stang in favor of the Probe went over so poorly.
However, you only get one shot at reinventing the Mustang, and that car, dubbed SN-95 during development, needed to hit all the right buttons. So by 1994, the design team finalized the car’s styling to three different proposals, which bore the names of Bruce Jenner (much fitter in those days), John Rambo (albeit fictional), and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
All three included what execs pegged as must haves for the new model: side scoops, triple-element taillights, and the recognizable notchback design.
The most pedestrian of the bunch, the Bruce Jenner (above), didn’t do much to excite those included in secret consumer test-clinics nor the higher-ups at the Blue Oval. Project manager Bud Magaldi remembers the design’s critiques as “too smooth, too clean and friendly,” which isn’t exactly a good jumping-off point for a hard-charging muscle car. Remember, this was Ford’s aero age that brought forth the Taurus fishbowl.
On the flipside, the Rambo (above), which featured snarling front effects, took the design too far, though we’ve taken a strange liking to it. Magaldi described the car as a “Batmobile-type thing, very aggressive and gutsy and dramatic like a Stealth Bomber.”
That left it up to the middle-of-the-road Schwarzenegger concept (below) to make the production cut, with only minor changes made. Odd, we don’t think Arnold has ever been thought of as middle-of-the-road.
These three concepts eventually did pave the way for the future look of the Mustang, though. Why Ford ever thought this was a good idea will probably be left to the history books.