Inside the new design of the 2015 Mustang
For a car designer, the chance to re-imagine the Ford Mustang is always exciting and doing this for the famous Ford performance car’s 50th anniversary is a special opportunity.
“We spent a lot of time among the team and with customers discussing the history of Mustang and what it meant to people and concluded that we needed to move forward with a modern design that retained the essence of the brand,” said Moray Callum, Ford Vice President of global design.
Ford stated that as the brand’s performance leader, the basic parameters of Mustang were obvious: rear-wheel drive combined with the sound and performance of a V8 engine to create the visceral experience that Mustang drivers expect.
Ford announced that a typical new car program kicks off with a design brief that lays out the needs and wants for the upcoming vehicle. However, with 50 years of continuous development and production, every designer knew what to sketch and how a Mustang needs to look.
“There are a few key elements that make Mustang a Mustang. As designers, we need to edit those cues deciding which ones to retain, how to interpret them in a modern way and how to combine them to create a car that is immediately identifiable as Mustang,” added Callum. “Looking at all of the different Mustangs over the past five decades, those cues have appeared in some years and not in others, but the end result was still a Mustang.”
By 2012 they were starting to develop the Mustang into a production car. Details such as the shape and size of the grille and headlamps were refined and the rear track was widened by 70 millimetres, giving the new car an even more aggressive stance.
The elimination of the front and rear bumper shelves and the use of unified side glass with the B-pillar hidden behind the rear quarter windows contribute to the new Mustang’s more contemporary shape.
On the interior, the final theme was inspired by the wing of an airplane, with the double brow carved out of the wing. All the gauges, registers, toggle switches and other design elements are placed into the wing. Everything is where it needs to be for usability, just like the cockpit of an airplane. The toggle switches are a highlight of the modern centre stack.
The final production design of the all-new sixth-generation Ford Mustang was revealed to the world on December 5, 2013 and it will be go on sale in the US later this year. This is also the first generation of the Mustang that will be sold across the world, including South Africa, Australia, and the UK. The all-new Mustang, with V8 and EcoBoost engines will go on sale in South Africa late 2015.