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Ford Motor Co.’s Mustang sports car. celebrates its 60th anniversary this month. Some models may have more influence on popular entertainment, but not many.
The Mustang was championed by Lee Iacocca when he was a Ford executive. After its performance in New York in mid-April 1964, it became a hit. The model was already on her way to the cinema.
The third James Bond film, Goldfinger, went into production in early 1964. In a sequence shot in Switzerland, a mysterious woman (Tanya Mallet) drives a Mustang. She is eager to overtake Bond (Sean Connery), driving an Aston Martin DB5, who is following the film’s villain Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe).
Not long after, the Mustang makes a pass. Connery’s Bond initially wants to chase him down before letting off the gas.
“Discipline, 007,” says Connery/Bond. “Discipline”.
However, Bond has to stop because Goldfinger has pulled over to the side of the road. Bond watches until the mysterious woman in the Mustang fires a shotgun.
Once the Mustang is back on the road, Bond gives chase. He uses the DB5’s gadgets to perform a Ben-Hur-esque move, blowing out the Mustang’s tires and sending it off the road.
The film has a twist or two after that. Suffice to say, the Mustang made an impression in its recreational debut. Goldfinger was released in the UK in September 1964 and in the US in December of that year.
Ford invested everything in the next Bond film, Thunderball in 1965. The femme fatale Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi) drove a Mustang, while her co-stars drove other Ford-supplied models, including a Thunderbird (driven by the main villain), several Lincoln Continentals and a Fairlane , which was blown up during a stunt sequence.
Finally, in 1971, Bond got behind the wheel of a Mustang. By now, the sports car has evolved into a muscle car. Sean Connery’s version of the character evades police cars during a series of chases in Las Vegas.
But the Mustang was branching out. Perhaps the model’s greatest impact was in 1968’s Bullitt, starring Steve McQueen as the title character, a San Francisco police detective. The film involves a long car chase in which Bullitt tries to track down two murderers.
On television, Ford sponsored FBI, a crime drama that aired on ABC from 1965 to 1974. The automaker supplied cars for the show. In recent headlines, star Ephraim Zimbalist Jr. drives Ford-built cars around Washington, DC. For the first four seasons, these cars were Mustang convertibles.
Ford’s last Bond entry was 2008’s Quantum of Solace. But the automaker and its Mustang have had an impact on popular entertainment for the past six decades.
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