With that number clearly seen in the mystery photos, Ryan told the writer that the number indicated “we’re dealing with the S-9955 series, of which there are multiple negs, this one being the first. The S-neg collection has over 350,000 negatives, over 50,000 of which have been scanned. The original inventory was destroyed in a flood, but there’s still a huge collection available.”

From there, Ryan was said to have reached out to Jim Farrell, who has , to get his input. Farrell reportedly sent the photos to 13 designers or clay modelers that were at Ford in 1966. One of the retired designers, Bud Magaldi (yes, the same Bud Magaldi who was responsible for the design of the SN-95-era Mustang), responded that he believed the photos were of an engineering project car that eventually became the Mustang Mach 2 concept car (that Magaldi himself had sketched).

The website story concluded that, “what we see in these photos is for the Mach 2, but it didn’t originate in the styling department. This was a mockup that was started in engineering as a packaging study, then sent over to design once the basic packaging issues were worked out. It’s likely that this mockup frame could have provided the proportions for, or maybe actually be the actual base of the Mach 2 clay model. So, the takeaway here is this mystery Mustang was an engineering packaging study for what would become the 1967 Mach 2 concept car.”

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