In 1973, Ford, as a follow-up to the retiring first-generation Mustang, unveiled the Mustang II with great pomp. However, among the public, accustomed to the constant growth of performance and size of new generations of cars, the next pony caused a slight confusion. You bet, Mustang ll not only became smaller, it lost horsepower! However, Ford’s top managers had no doubts in commercial success of the novelty. Looking ahead, let’s just say that it did.
By the time Mustang II sales began in the U.S., the first symptoms of the “malaise era” were becoming increasingly apparent. Insurance was getting more expensive, safety and economy standards were getting stricter. The cherry on the cake was rising gasoline prices.In the end, the crisis that broke out in the early 70s actually finished off the class of affordable roadsters — muscle cars. However, even the first Mustang, except for some modifications, never played on the field of muscle cars!
The new Mustang, from the moment of its birth, was to play in the league of affordable cars, pleasing the owner only when he goes to the gas station. There was no question of any “faster, higher, stronger”! It is probably not surprising that buyers, wrinkling their teeth as if from a toothache, ran away from Ford showrooms for a Pontiac Firebird or Plymouth Barracuda. However, just a month later, in September 1973, Mustang IIs were selling like hotcakes, while General Motors was seriously thinking about stopping production of Camaro and Firebird, Chrysler stopped production of Barracuda and Dodge Challenger. The “era of malaise” had arrived.
Probably, the new president of Ford Motor Corporation, Lee Iacocca, looked into the crystal ball and knew the future.
However, there is a more trivial version. In 1970, Lee Iacocca became the head of Ford Motor Corporation, succeeding Mr. Semon “Banky” Knudsen, the former boss of one of the departments of General Motors. In the Blue Oval, Mr. Knudsen tried to repeat the trick that brought Pontiac to success, that is — to pump a relatively compact model with “growth hormone”. And if in the first time the trick was successful — Pontiac GTO became an icon of the emerging class of maslkars, but with Mustang such trick did not pass, and the interest of buyers to the fat Mustang was steadily falling. Apparently, Mustang devotees still wanted an affordable, compact, and lightweight car, which is what the first generation, Iacocca’s brainchild, was when it debuted. But Mr. Knudsen didn’t hear them, and his place was taken by Lee Iacocca, who simply had no choice but to try to step into the same river twice. As a result, Mustang ll moved to the platform of subcompact baby Pinto — a real slap in the face to “petrolheads”!
However, Mustang ll fully corresponded to the trends of the crisis time, offering an economical 2.3-liter four-cylinder engine Lima (89 hp), or 2.8-liter 106 hp Cologne V6. At the top of the range sits the 4.9-liter Windsor V8. It should be noted that performance was never a strong point of Mustang II, because even the top engine 302 V8 produced only… 139 hp! The new horse turned out to be obscenely slow against the background of Mustangs of ten years ago: time of acceleration to “hundred” was 10.5 seconds, and the maximum speed was 106 miles per hour, which was not impressive by any standards!
Screaming Chicken vs. King Cobra
The Ford Mustang II King Cobra was the last hurrah for the 2nd generation Mustang, and 1978 was the last year of production. To celebrate the momentous event, decided to release a charged modification. For this purpose they took the standard version of Mustang II with 302 V8 engine, added a splitter under the front bumper, a spoiler on the trunk lid, wheel arch extenders, an air intake on the hood with 5.0 stickers on each side, King Cobra inscriptions and, actually, the image of a cobra.By the way, the drawing on the hood is a reference to the “screaming chicken” (so Ford called the phoenix) Firebird.
But the changed appearance was virtually the only thing the King Cobra could boast. The 302 V8 engine remained the same, which meant that the driver of the 140-horsepower Mustang could not compete with the 6.6-liter 203-horsepower Pontiac Trans Am. The only consolation, the “charged” modification could be ordered with the Rally handling package, which included stiff springs, sport shock absorbers and rear stabilizer bar. But in any case, due to the peculiarities of weight distribution with overloaded “face”, the car steered unimportantly. Especially it was noticeable against the background of competitors, among which, by the way, were not old familiar twins-brothers from GM, but, for example, Datsun 240ZX.
Many people considered Mustang II as a failure of Ford, but the car was loved by buyers. For 4 years dealers of the “Blue Oval” managed to sell almost 1.1 million cars!
Mustang helped Ford to survive the “malaise era” — the most difficult time in the history of motorization of the United States, since the Great Depression. Nevertheless, car enthusiasts “with gasoline in their blood” breathed a sigh of relief when the new Fox Body Mustang was released in 1978 with improved styling and engines that continued to get more and more powerful throughout the 1980s.