1964 Ford Mustang Introduction Press Booklet — Technical Information for Press Use Only
The object and its source This booklet is the technical press briefing issued by the Ford Division of Ford Motor Company for the introduction of the Mustang. It is a comb-bound volume of a cover and twenty-six numbered pages, headed "Confidential" and marked "Technical Information for Press Use Only". Its cover carries the release instruction "For Release PM's April 13, 1964" — the afternoon papers of 13 April 1964 — and a registration-number line, which appears blank in the copy preserved. The Record Institute presents the booklet in a digital copy preserved by Over-Drive Magazine and shared with the Institute under permission from its editor, Bob Gerometta. The Institute does not hold the physical original. What the booklet shows and says The cover places the new car in the Ford line-up in a single sentence — "Falcon, Fairlane, Ford, Thunderbird, and now.... The New Ford Mustang" — above the galloping-horse emblem. Inside, a contents page maps a complete engineering briefing: a concept statement, styling, power teams, four engines, three transmissions, rear axle, chassis, bodies, specifications, standard equipment and options, closing with the locations of Ford's nine public relations field offices. The booklet describes two models only, a hardtop and a convertible, with two-plus-two seating and front bucket seats as standard equipment. Four engines and three transmissions make eight combinations: a standard 170-cubic-inch six of 101 horsepower, and three V-8 options rising to the 289-cubic-inch High-Performance engine at 271 horsepower — the last footnoted as available shortly after introduction. The specification page gives a 108-inch wheelbase, an overall length of 181.6 inches and a hardtop curb weight of 2,585 pounds, with fifteen exterior colours. Nowhere does the booklet print a price, and nowhere does it state a model year. Historical setting Ford developed the Mustang for the young buyers then reshaping the American market, and a low entry price was treated from the start as critical. The programme was championed by Lee A. Iacocca, a vice president of Ford Motor Company and general manager of the Ford Division. Production began at Dearborn on 9 March 1964. On 13 April 1964 — the date on this booklet's cover — Iacocca presented the car to the press at the Ford Pavilion of the New York World's Fair, at what he called Ford's first International Press Introduction, with simultaneous showings in eleven European capitals before some two thousand journalists. The launch press kits were controlled documents: they carried registration numbers and were marked confidential, exactly as this booklet's cover shows. The public introduction followed on 17 April 1964 at the World's Fair. The hardtop's base price was 2,368 USD. Ford had expected annual sales of about 100,000 cars; dealers took 22,000 orders on the first day, and Ford later reported 417,000 sales in the car's first twelve months. Visual language and intended audience This is a working document, not a sales brochure, and its design says so. The one piece of theatre is the cover: a saturated blue field, the horse emblem large at centre, and the secrecy markings set as prominently as the car's name. Inside, the tone is that of an engineering office. Photographs show the two body styles, the interiors and the engines; the chassis, transmission and body sections are carried by cutaway drawings, of which the unitised platform study is the most accomplished. The text presents the car as three different personalities in one — an economy car, a high-performance car, or a luxury car — while describing it in the practical vocabulary of platform, power team and twice-a-year maintenance. Its readers were the journalists who would write the launch stories, and its discipline — embargo date, registration, a closing directory of press offices — was designed to make hundreds of simultaneous accounts technically accurate. Documentary significance The booklet is a primary source for the most successful American car launch of its era, and it fixes the launch specification at the embargo moment: the 170 six as the standard engine, and the high-performance engine and the Equa-Lock limited-slip differential still to come. It is equally valuable for what it does not say. The car's model year appears nowhere, because the launch cars were marketed and titled as 1965 models; the early production run only later acquired its familiar nickname "1964½", a term Ford never used officially. The production figures underline the scale of what this booklet was briefing for: 121,538 early cars, then 559,451 for the 1965 model year — 680,989 in all. Ford's own later summaries state that the Mustang was based on the Falcon chassis; the booklet itself never says so — on its cover, Falcon appears only as an elder sibling in the line-up. Curator's conclusion and limits Read as an artifact, the booklet's force lies in the contrast between its secrecy and its subject: a confidential, registered, embargoed document in the service of a launch staged before the largest audience Ford could assemble. Two cautions govern this record. No census of surviving copies exists, and the size of the issue was never recorded; the registration system shows that distribution was controlled, not how many copies were made. And the Institute's copy is digital. The physical booklet behind the Over-Drive scan — its paper, binding and condition — cannot be examined or graded from a file, and the vendor record's page count of seventeen does not survive inspection: the file contains twenty-seven pages, and this record follows the file. References / Sources Ford Motor Company, "Mustang Facts — Generation One: 1964 to 1974" (Ford press release, archived copy), San Diego State University Ford archive mirror. Ford Motor Company, "Ford Mustang: A True American Icon" (Ford press release, archived copy). Hemmings, "1964-and-a-Half Mustang: Fact vs. Myth". Hagerty Media, "Your handy 1965–66 Ford Mustang buyer's guide". Auto Restorer, "Introducing — the Mustang!" (account of the 13 April 1964 news conference, reproducing Iacocca's address). "The Making of the Mustang", via The Free Library. Ford Motor Company, "Birth of the Mustang", corporate.ford.com. Over-Drive Magazine, "1964 Mustang Introduction Press Kit", Document Library, over-drive-magazine.com/document/1964-mustang-introduction-press-kit/ — source of the digital copy presented here. Over-Drive Magazine, "1964 Ford Mustang Fact Sheet", over-drive-magazine.com/2022/09/15/1964-ford-mustang-fact-sheet/. Credit: Digital copy preserved by Over-Drive Magazine (over-drive-magazine.com) and used with the permission of its editor, Bob Gerometta. Document record: https://over-drive-magazine.com/document/1964-mustang-introduction-press-kit/ — 1964 Ford Mustang Fact Sheet: https://over-drive-magazine.com/2022/09/15/1964-ford-mustang-fact-sheet/
Category: Cars
Year: 1964
Rarity Class: S
Paper & Print Condition
This record is based on examination of a digital scan; the physical booklet was not inspected. The scan presents a complete comb-bound booklet: a colour-printed cover and twenty-six numbered pages of black-and-white text, photographs and technical drawings, twenty-seven pages in the file in total. The plastic comb binding is visible along the spine of the scanned copy, and the cover retains strong colour, with the release line and registration line legible. The photograph leaf (printed page 2) shows show-through from the contents page behind it in the scan. Dimensions of 8.5 by 11 inches are vendor-stated by Over-Drive Magazine and cannot be confirmed from a digital file. Paper stock, toning, folds, tears and the condition of the binding of the physical original are not assessable from the scan and are recorded as unexamined.
Provenance & Rarity
The booklet was produced by the Ford Division of Ford Motor Company and issued to the working press for the Mustang introduction of April 1964. Distribution was controlled: the cover is marked "Confidential" and "For Press Use Only", carries an embargo line for the afternoon papers of 13 April 1964, and provides a registration-number line for per-copy issue — a system contemporary accounts confirm was applied to the launch press kits. The registration line is blank in the copy digitised by Over-Drive Magazine. The Record Institute does not hold the physical booklet; it presents Over-Drive Magazine's digital preservation, used with permission and credited to Over-Drive Magazine and its editor, Bob Gerometta. Rarity class S, set by the Institute's curator: a controlled-issue launch document of exceptional contextual significance, uncommon in complete physical form. No survival census exists.
Rarity & Condition Summary
