I can't help but enjoy a trip through a photo archives to see what turns up. But what happens when it's your own personal historical archives and the darned thing has been sitting there for a couple of decades? Recently, I decided to sit down and go through my personal Mustang historical archives just to see what was hiding in there. Truthfully, I hadn't really looked at it in years. I found this photo of what looks like a '65 Mustang hardtop on a studio turntable - crisp, new, intriguing - baffling...
If you examine the car closely, it isn't your mom's old six-cylinder hardtop grocery getter. Inside, a 1964-65 Falcon dashboard and instrument panel, some sort of paperwork attached to the back of the driver's side bucket seat, and a Falcon Sprint three-spoke steering wheel. Beneath the rear valance is a Falcon muffler and tailpipe. Mid ship is a generic gas cap. Wheel covers are also generic - void of any markings. There's no ornamentation anywhere on the car. It occurs to us this isn't a Mustang at all, but instead a "Sporty Falcon" engineering/styling prototype from the Sporty Ford Car Project because the car had not yet been named. Notice the '63 Michigan license plate. We can't help but wonder what the sticker on the rear window means. It is impossible to read.
The Mustang's development and introduction have been well publicized, yet when we see images like this one, there remains a lot we do not know.