Media Inquiry Spoils Contest, But Solves Mid-Engine Mustang Mystery

DEARBORN, Mi. –
Rreaders will recall that last year at this time we ran another in our series of interactive Ford product mystery stories that called on you – Ford enthusiasts – to help us solve a Mustang history question. We know that Ford’s product history is stored in your garages, and that owners of classic Fords often know more about their cars than many of the so-called “experts.” So we regularly tap into our reader knowledge base to help us shed light on long-unanswered questions or little-known Mustang product anomalies.

Because Ford Performance serves as the online home for Blue Oval enthusiasts both inside and outside of Ford Motor Company, our vehicle interests range from everything preserved in the Ford Archives to everything that’s appeared in Ford dealer showrooms – in the past, now, and in the future. And because we connect with enthusiast owners from across the globe every day, there’s little we haven’t seen or heard about, especially for those of us who’ve logged many years of service at Ford. But every once and a while we come across something that we can’t readily find out, so we ask for your input. That’s been the case with us trying to find a Yankees Edition Mustang, or a Black Widow Mustang, or a real W-Code Mustang – and not just a 427 installed in a first-gen Mustang, but one from the factory with an actual “W” (and not a “S”) in the VIN.

While your responses have not always provided exactly what we were looking for, they have always been both enlightening and entertaining. And that was certainly the case last April when we asked your help to identify a mid-engine 1966 Mustang project car that was captured in four Ford Design Studio photos taken on May 2, 1966. When we couldn’t find a definitive answer, we not only asked you to send your insights to ClubHub@Ford.com, but also made a little contest out of it by offering up a special prize for the person who supplied the best info to help unlock this mystery for us.

We got a Ford Performance mini-flag ready to mail out to the person sending us the best clue -- except that just as your responses were starting to come in, the answer came in – and from a totally unexpected source. Turns out that an automotive media website writer saw our mid-engine Mustang mystery story and decided to contact Ford Public Affairs to see if they could find the answer and post it on their site before Ford Performance reader responses could even be tallied. The writer was put in touch with Ted Ryan, Ford’s Archives and Heritage Brand Manager, to see if Ryan could shed light on the old Ford Design Studio photos. Consequently, in the same week that our story first appeared, that auto website posted a piece entitled, “Ford Solves The Mystery Of The Mid-Motor Mustang,”

The web reporter wrote: “Ted [Ryan] revealed to me a key bit of information about these pictures, and others like it; they’re referred to as styling negs, for negatives, because, traditionally, these pictures of design works-in-progress were stored as negatives. Every day starting in the early 1950s, in the design studio, active projects were photographed and categorized with an S-XXXX number.”