When Ford decided to join the muscle car race back in the mid-1960s, it probably had no idea that the Mustang would become the world’s best selling sports coupe in about half a century. Yet it did, and that makes early Mustangs even more valuable.The Internet and auction houses are filled with 1960’s Mustangs, some more valuable and more special than others. What the Internet and auction houses lacked so far was a proper pre-production Mustang to sell.
Decades ago, as the Blue Oval was getting ready to unleash the model, it of course made pre-production cars for testing purposes. In the case of the convertible variant in the gallery above, it is one of about 200 of them that rolled out the factory doors.
Needless to say, because these were not the actual cars Ford would later start selling, nobody really cared about them, and most have been destroyed since. It’s believed only 12 of them are still around (at least, they’re whereabouts are known), and this one here is one of them.
Reconditioned by Buckeye Muscle Car Restoration, in Canfield, Ohio, the 1964 ½ Mustang comes with all the original parts, and documents to prove that. The interior (down to style vinyl trim, rally pack, and factory push button AM radio with antenna) is factory-correct, and so is the engine, which comes as a numbers-matching unit 260ci (4.3-liters) in displacement and linked to a cruise-o-matic automatic transmission.
The car is currently for sale on one of the specialized website, and as you can imagine it does not come cheap. In fact, it is on the opposite side of the spectrum. The Mustang sells complete with rebuild documents, including pictures, invoices, and a “Concours Judging Aid” report attesting that this is a pre-production car “and 99.9% of the car was untouched before the restoration process began.”