Ford’s pony car rides on with new styling, features for 2010

Special to the Star-Telegram

Forty-five years old and still going, the pony car is as compelling as ever, and there seems to be no midlife crisis.

The newest generation of arguably the most-fun Ford car ever, the venerable Mustang, has arrived for 2010, and it’s still a vehicle that draws attention and praise wherever it goes – just as it did when it was introduced in 1964.

Chevy’s Corvette is the only other car I can think of that can match the Mustang in terms of longevity and popularity, although there are those who would add the Chevrolet Camaro to that list.

Granted, the Camaro has its followers, and the new model rolled out this year is getting more notice than the redesigned Mustang. But that’s because the Camaro was gone for five years, and believed to have been lost forever until its recent revival.

And besides, we all know that the original Camaro was created as a Mustang copycat anyway; it wasn’t an original idea.

Other than a blip in the mid-70s when an awful car called the Mustang II tried briefly to pass itself off as the real thing, the Mustang has soldiered on as the vehicle of choice for those who sought to keep the Pony Car era alive.

It’s had other ups and downs, although none quite as sad as that 1974 model, but the newest Mustang may very well be the best one yet in terms of overall design and engineering.

The design itself is remarkable in that it carries on where the previous generation, introduced for 2005, left off – re-creating much of the nostalgic look of the mid- to late-1960s model, albeit on a new, modern chassis with today’s essential safety features.

Ford’s strong focus on quality also sets this latest model apart from its predecessors. Yes, it’s much more complicated than the original Mustang, thanks to loads of high technology. That does make it hard for home mechanics to service it, as with just about any other new vehicle today, but most of us would take the benefits of that technology in return for yesteryear’s simplicity.

That Ford would update the Mustang so soon after the ’05 remake is surprising, especially in the middle of the auto-industry crisis that has already seen two of the Big Three U.S. automakers go through bankruptcy reorganization.

Ford has avoided that process, though, and seems to be growing stronger by the week. Having the newest Mustang on the market, bringing customers into showrooms even if the Pony Car isn’t exactly what they need, probably is helping push the automaker forward.

And it’s clear that the iconic pony car serves as a strong reminder of the days when Detroit’s automobiles took a back seat to no one.

The car was unveiled nearly a year ago at a drastically diminished Los Angeles auto show, where Ford’s cross-town rival General Motors Corp., had abruptly pulled its own planned world debuts from the event a few days before it was to begin.

Once the aspirational vehicle for an entire generation of budding baby boomers, the Mustang has been tweaked to help it connect with a whole new, younger audience. As with the new Camaro and the 2005 Mustang, this newest model continues the theme of intertwining the old with the new.

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