Mach 2 Mustang: The Lost Mid-engine Pony
Despite the big splash the Mach 2 concept made at the 1967 Chicago Auto Show, it was never meant to be.
We all remember the horror we felt when Ford was too close to building what would become the SN95-era Mustang as a front-wheel driver. Thankfully, that idea was tossed onto a Mazda platform, and re-named Probe.
But imagine a universe where Ford dropped a much better take on the Mustang into the showroom, one that would one day bring the hammer down on the mid-engine Corvette. AutoClassics has the tale of what could have been, but never was: the Mustang Mach 2 Concept.
The Mustang Mach 2 was the brainchild of Ford’s chief designer Eugene Bordinat, who took the Mustang’s original design cues, and reworked them into a lovely mid-engine concept. The results were then made real with a development car (in white) and a street-legal machine (in red), both built upon the bones of a pair of Mustang convertibles, whose reinforced chassis helped support the Mach 2 where it needed it the most.
The sleek red Mustang Mach 2 rolled upon its Firestones into the 1967 Chicago Auto Show, blowing the minds of journalists and Mustang fans alike. A few journalists even got a chance to drive the mid-engine pony, which was powered by a 289 V8, at the Blue Oval’s proving grounds in Dearborn, Michigan.
Alas, nothing more came of the Mach 2 beyond an updated take by design legend Larry Shinoda, the Mach 2C. The two original Mach 2s were destroyed to keep them out of anyone else’s hands, and no production models arrived due to budget costs and the complexity of building a mid-engine Mustang in the first place.
But wouldn’t it be cool if Ford went after the upcoming C8-era Corvette with a mid-engine Mustang of its own? Maybe there’s a universe where that’s happening now.
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