Ford and The Mustang
"I clearly remember sitting around the dining room table and my kids saying, ‘Dad, your cars stink. They're terrible. There's no pizzazz.' That started the whole thing."
Donald Frey, 2004, describing his children's influence on the birth of the Ford MustangFrey started working for Ford in 1950, managing Ford’s metallurgy department. He later was named Vice-President and Chief Engineer (1964). In addition to the many industrial innovations Frey oversaw at Ford, he supervised the prototype styling of the Ford Mustang and its later development.
Frey pursued the Mustang after Henry Ford II had rejected it four times, in no small part because of the Ford Edsel's spectacular failure. Without formal approval, Frey met clandestinely with Lee Iacocca and other engineers and designers- notably lead stylists Philip T. Clark and John Najjar to continue developing the car.
Speaking to USA Today in 2004, Frey said "The whole project was bootlegged, there was no official approval of this thing. We had to do it on a shoestring." Consequently, when Henry Ford II did approve the project, he put Frey in charge and told him he would be fired if the Mustang was not successful. Ultimately, the Mustang was a huge success, despite being engineered at one tenth the cost of the 1965 Ford Galaxie.
Mike Mueller quoted Frey in his 2009 book Mustang: An American Classic as attributing the inspiration for the Mustang to GM's strategy of incrementally improving the Corvair. "I guess in desperation they put bucket seats in the thing, called it the Monza, and it started to sell".
Frey was also behind the four-door Ford Thunderbird (fifth generation), the stereo dashboard tape deck, and the station wagon tailgate that swung out like a door (window up or down) as well as down like a tailgate — marketed as the "Magic Doorgate" beginning with the 1966 Country Squire. He was later involved in the development of the Ford Bronco, and played a key role in Ford Motorsports.
In 1967, he received an honorary Doctorate in Engineering from the University of Michigan. He was very concerned that the United States was losing the "global race" for automobile improvements in technology because there is little interest in investments for innovation and thus an increasing "gap" between the U.S. with Japan and Germany.
Read more about this topic: Donald N. Frey
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