Road Test
and Engineering

Ford President Lee Iacocca's directive on the Mustang II nails the concept of this new pony car right to the bench. A little car with lots of class and no fiddling around with unnecessary pieces. Every part, piece, and function has been carefully thought out and for each there is a reason, from the standard front disc brakes to the European-style three-color		link-type stabilizer bar is used to reduce body roll when cornering. This combination imparts exceptional rigidity to the subframe, permitting the suspension components to move freely in compliance to road imperfections but the liberal use of fairly stiff rubber bushings at all mounting points keeps the passenger compartment virtually isolated from road harshness.
taillights. Even the traditional Mustang horse emblem has been redesigned for Mustang II. Mustang's secret is that standard is good enough. In fact, better than most. With the exception of radial tires, which should have been standard, and a radio, which we all like, you don't really need anything else. The base car has excellent seats with very good support, rack-and-pinion steering which doesn't need power, and a four-speed manual trans, all for just $2895. Or you can option yourself all the way up to $4700, to the first-class Ghia set-up, a preview of what all personal luxury cars will be like some day.			Rubber isolation also serves to reduce the natural feedback that rack-and-pinion steering provides along with its precise control, and the optional power steering eliminates any remaining that may creep through. The fairly standard rear suspension of parallel semi-eliptical tuned leaf springs with staggered rear shocks has also been sound-deadened by use of rubber iso-clamps and large spring shackle bush- ings. These iso-clamps completely surround the spring at the mounting point, thus preventing any metal-to-metal contact between the springs and spring mounts. With the optional radial tires and rear stabilizer bar, Mustang II handling is
When the original Mustang was conceived, Ford's product planners started with a set of existing pieces belonging to the Falcon. Mustang II, on the other hand, was created from a clean sheet of paper and what Pinto hardware was found suitable was revised and refined. From the beginning the emphasis was on a smooth and especially quiet ride, despite the fact that Mustang 11's 96.2-inch wheelbase is over a foot shorter than that of the '73 Mustang. Suspended between the front side rails of the underbody is a rubber-isolated sub- frame that serves a two-fold purpose of providing a rigid mounting base for the front suspension as well as isolating engine and road vibrations from the body proper. The tuned front coil springs sit on the lower control arm and are anchored at the top to the suspension cross-member, a design similar to that used on larger Ford cars which reduces transfer of road shocks directly to the body structure. The lower control arm is further held in place by a compression drag strut that allows the wheel to move slightly rearward as it moves up in response to a heavy road shock. Shocks are concentrically mounted within the front coil springs and a		on par with almost any European car you want to name. It's a smooth ride, free-of annoying harshness, but still it transmits enough feel to let you know precisely what's going on under your wheels. The Mustang II talks to you without shouting. The standard 2.3-liter OHC four-cylinder engine is a revision of the original 2-liter Pinto engine, but done so drastically that almost no pieces are interchangeable. It's also the first mass-production engine built in America using metric measurements, has a five main bearing crankshaft and utilizes a cross-flow cylinder head. The 2.8-liter V-6 is a slightly enlarged version of the Capri 2.6 of last year, but unfortunate- ly the improvement in the V-6 is less significant than that of its four-cylinder sister. Smoothness and silence are excellent, but power is lacking. Power from either engine is adequate, however, and gas mileage varies from 19 to 24 mpg when driven carefully. With the current fuel shortage, the mantle of uncanny timeliness has been placed on the shoulders of Mr. lacocca, again, and the priorities for more horespower have been indefinitely postponed.

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