In 50 years in the car business, Lee Iacocca never put his name on a car. Not the Mustang. Not the minivan. Not the car that saved Chrysler. Then, starting in 2009, he put it on this one. 45 of them, built by hand in a shop in Fountain Valley, California. Not by Ford, and not on any assembly line.
He was 84, retired, and living in Bel Air. He had put the original Mustang into the world 45 years earlier, and he decided he wanted one more. This chapter is how that happened: the 1964 car and the firing that sent him to Chrysler, the Mustang his wife found him for his 50th birthday, and the autumn of 2008, when Ford had pawned its own Blue Oval to stay out of bankruptcy and a retired chairman called a Ford dealer in North Hills about an idea.
The idea had a price before it had a car. In June 2009 he told USA Today about $60,000 to $65,000. By September it was $89,950, and about $105,000 with the supercharger. On the night of 5 August 2009, in a room full of people at Galpin Ford, the cover came off, the commercial played on the screens, and car number 6 was auctioned on the spot for $125,000.
As far as is currently known, 41 were silver, 3 black and 1 red. 4 were allocated to Australia. One was raffled for a diabetes centre in Boston. One was won in a casino in Michigan. And 17 years later, Galpin Ford still has at least 3 of them: the red one, a black one and a silver one. Numbers 3, 44 and 45.
