Do ya like the new Retro Styled Mustang?

I do.

Good looking car that captures much of the flavor of the early Mustangs.

Whether you like the old Mustangs or not, they did have an impact on hot rodding as well as the American driving public and they are what kicked off the Pony Car genre.

Take a look at a Dodge Challenger concept car shown here:
http://www.leftlanenews.com/2006/01/07/detroit-2006-dodge-challenger-concept-unveiled/

Looks like they did as well as the Mustang designers have done as far as capturing the look of the Challenger goes.

Should be a runner as well given that it has a new Hemi-but-not-quite-a-real-Hemi engine rated @ 425 HP.

The so-called Hemi's in today's cars and trucks are pretty good runners.
It's surprising just how well they do in pulling a Porky-Weight four door pickup around along with getting pretty good mileage.

Rumors are that GM is working on a retro-designed Camaro, but pics are not readily available.


Granted, not quite the cars for a trad oriented hot rod board such as this, but if you look back a bit, when the 60's hit, the muscle and pony cars were cruising Main St. America with the coupes and roadsters and holding their own to a great extent.
We didn't look down on these cars and in fact lusted after them to a great extent.
I foresee the same thing happening with these retro designed cars as far as mixing in with the coupes and roadsters of today.
If nothing else, they're fun to drive.

You gotta admit, these retro-rockets are far better looking than all the melted bar of soap aero sedans, that due to the exigencies of aerodynamics all look pretty much the same.

Imho, Detroit is doing pretty good considering some of the vehicles we have available today and trending off into the world of retro design is a benefit to all of us.

 

pics are available. here's just one

 

theres galleries for BOTH cars on here:
http://media.freep.com/autoshow/index2006.htm

personally, for retro, i dig the 07 toyota FJ...

 

C9,
I too like the retro styled Mustangs. They bring back memories. I think its good that they rounded it off a little to make it more aerodynamic. That also differentiates it from the original. Sweet little car.

I've seen pictures of the Challenger on another board and I like its styling also. That one looks to be a BIG car. Its nice, but its just not my style of car. It was the same way with me back in the '60's when the cars were original.

On that same other board, I saw a couple of different versions of the "restyled" Camero. I didn't like it at all. It was too boxy and the angles were too sharp. If GM does ever get to the point of bringing it out, it will be a flop. The GM styling department just doesn't have "it" lately. Well maybe the SSR RPU. GM is in trouble and from looking at the vehicles they are putting out lately, I can understand why.

 

To answer your question C9, I think the new Mustang is per dang cool for a new ride. I just ordered a Magnum though....

The new Challenger concept looks beautiful! I'd love ot own one.

The new camaro is way overdone in my opinion, like everything else that GM does. Ugly as sin.

 

My wife and I have a 05 Mustang. This surprised allot of people. I have never been a mustang fan at all. I will respect them for their place in automotive history I just never cared for them. When my wife began talking about getting one I started looking at them and really liked them. I still do not care for the old ones but like the new ones. I hope they change the body style soon so there is some differences instead of ten years of the same thing that they had with the past mustangs.

 

C9,

there was a thread starting a couple of days ago about the new Challenger, Camaro and even the new Mustang. It's very interesting to hear everyones opinions about each. When you get a chance check it out.

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=87395

Sean

 

I like the Camero-----------Looks sorta pissed off wouldn't you say.

 

I can't believe that Ford sold even ONE of those ****-ugly 05 Mustangs!

Their whole design is a flat slap in the face of everything the Mustang was supposed to BE! Back in 1964, the Mustang didn't become the runaway success it was by tying to look like a forty year old car...it stood the World on it's *** by being NEW, BOLD and DIFFERENT!

With each re-style, the Mustang continued to EVOLVE...moving FORWARD through the decades. True, it wasn't always pretty, but it was always a FORWARD THINKING car, a ponycar meant to buck past trends, not immitate them.

This whole 'retro styling' craze shows us just how lame Ford and GM are these days...while Chrysler tries to do things a little better! (NEVER thought I'd hear myself saying THAT!!).

Take the new Charger. It's bold, aggressive, and out=performs it's 60s namesake, yet a slew of yuppies whined that it was a four door, and that it didn't LOOK enough like an OLD Charger!

I'm just glad that Chrysler stuck to their guns and built a modern, FORWARD THINKING musclecar worthy of the Charger name, rather than caving to the few idiots who think they should have "gone retro".

(Had FORD designed the new Charger, we probably would've had some tripple-ugly abortion that looked like a bloated General Lee wearing composite headlamps or something!)

Sooner or later, MAYBE Ford (and others) will see how lame the whole 'retro thing' really is. I mean, the retro T-bird laid a rotten egg, and the 'Forty-Nine' that Ford crowed so hard about and plastered all over the place ran outta steam and never even made it to production! By the time Ford's br*** pulled it's head out of it's *** on that one, the concept was already stale and the buzz had died.

You want to drive an old car? BUY and old car!

When it comes to new cars, I think they should be just that...NEW! Make 'em fresh, bold and exciting...with an eye towards the FUTURE, not a lame attempt to ***** for the past. It shows weakness, laziness and a lack of confidence when automakers go for that whole 'retro thing'. I'm glad the minds behind the new Charger didn't fall into that trap at least!

 

The new Challenger looks more like an old Camaro than GM's "new" version does...

 

My company builds parts for the new Mustang, and they are selling so much, we can hardly keep up. Great to see the American cars selling good, putting money in our American workers pockets.
Just too bad, the Mustang is made in a Japanese plant , but hey, it has American workers.

 

My mom has an '05 GT, 5spd, Leather....damn nice car. That Tremec transmission feels perfect. You should see her face when she does a burnout, she loves that car. After she got hers, I drove it a few miles and knew I had to get another Mustang as a daily...which led me to buying a '95 GT 5.0 a few months ago, then I got tired of it, and sold it haha.

 

the new mustang looks too fat.

dodge got it right on the new challenger. looks good.

 

Fat Hack, the ONLY point in your whole diatribe that I agree with is on the Thunderbird - and that's because it was just UGLY, a fat blob with no character and zero oooomph from it's 3.9L V8.

The new Mustang is a hit for obvious reasons. They tried new and bold but the market eventually became saturated with cars that all looked the same. So they bucked the trend, designed the car with a look that people haven't seen in 30 years, and are selling the ever livin !#$% out of them.

The Challenger is a modern version of the '70 model. That's exactly what people want after watching Barrett Jackson et al.. a purple/green/orange/yellow/red Hemi Mopar! Brand new, with a warranty, with a look that screams muscle.

The Charger is a big dumb dud because it looks just like every other boxy four door sedan - it's the same damned thing as Chevrolet's cheezy Impala, which also painfully steals it's name from a lineage that deserves better. Mopar already had a nice looking, good performing four-door sedan - the 300C - and no one screamed when it came out even though Chrysler 300s had also never been four-doors. The Charger used to be the car that the up-and-coming young sales executive bought because it looked cl***y but still had that boy-racer vibe. Now it's just like grandpa's old Buick...

 

I agree Fat Hack and my post in the other thread says basically the same thing. Gotgas, you said that the Charger is dumb because it looks like every boxy 4 dr. sedan. I think that just re-inforces Fat Hacks point, or at least mine. Just because all the cars look a like is exactly what Fat Hack is saying about Detroit not taking chances. The retro thing is an easy cop out from a design standpoint. I think the reason the trend is popular is because they look like cars made when Detroit had balls design wise. Compared to other boxy 4 door sedans, these do look like something new. Doesn't excuse them for lack of innovation.
I think Cadillac and some of Chryslers (Crossfire, 300, and yes the Charger) cars are innovative designs. Everyone else has no clue. What if Detroit truly did give us styling options that differntiate themselves from each other, but were NEW designs, not retreads. My bet is people would like them just as much as the retros. Right now, there just aren't any other choices from a design standpoint.

 

There's nothing wrong with the new Mustang a 3 1/2" body section wouldn't start to cure. Actually it's not as bad as most cars made today in it's proportions. I think the Benz-Chryco products are probably the worst in this regard, if you discount all the Japo****. And what's up with the 4 door thing, do they think we're all Australians. The 1999 Charger concept was a breath of fresh air, to bad they didn't have the guts to run with it, and with 2 doors. The current Challenger concept is bloated far too much, it doesn't even come close to the grace and style of it's namesake. Detroit may have caught on to what their late 60's-early 70's offerings are bringing on todays market, but they're clueless about the styling that's causing it. Maybe Detroit needs to move it's design studios back to Detroit. It used to be the leader in automobile styling, but not since the establishment of design studios in southern California by nearly EVERY automobile manufacture in the world. I for one, am really tired of the Japanese Cutsie and California Cowpie schools of design. Why is there no one in a position of power with Edsel Ford's sense of style when we need him, to pull the stylists heads out of their collective ****s? It's pretty sad when paint and promo photo tricks are needed to hide basic design flaws (just look at the latest wave of promos from Mitsu, Toyota, etc.).
Sorry about the rant, you've just hit one of my hot ****ons.

 

I drive a 66 fastback.

For example, there are some men who look like these gorgeous women after a lot of surgery and have all the female equipment.

How many here would take one over the real thing?

How many time is Ford going to loosely copy the original and get people
to buy them?
Seems like they've done it half a dozen times already....

There's nothing like the real thing.

regards,
DJ

 

the imperial concept is hideous, the vette has some ugly paint, and wait....lamborghini revamped muira (just the thought of that car reminds me of the italian job and a tear comes to my eye...)

and yes the new scratstang is good lookin! even if they sell cheesy slats that cover up the little quarter windows.

 

Since the 64 1/2 model Ive never seen a Mustang Id want to own, the original was nothing but a Falcon platform with new sheetmetal.

Never cared for original Mopars, all were poorly built tin boxes that were the fastest of the Big 3 to find homes in the junkyards. That is why they are so scarce today and bringing ridiculous prices.
However the Challenger concept looks very nice, at least in a 2 dimensional picture. And Chrysler has come a LONG way in build quality which showed up in their sales gain in 05 while Ford and GM lost even more ground to the Jap****.

In 64 I bought a brand new GTO ragtop and later a bunch of Chevelles, Camaros, Corvettes and 63-4 Impalas ( I had a temporary obsession with them). Nothing overly impressive in quality in any of them but still way above Ford and Mopar IMO.

Once the smogger days hit I bounced around between GM and Ford for daily drivers for myself and the wife. Tore off as much of the smog **** as I could for performance and mileage. The older guys here will remember all the tricks including the "test pipes".

By the 90's I was into family 4 door mid size boxes and havent progressed any further since I cant stand most of the new stuff, especially SUV's. My 94 Taurus just turned 202K and the wifes 94 Volvo is around 185K. We may get a 300C but at my age Ive no interest in starting car payments again. You will NEVER see me in a Buick/Grand Marquis/Town Car, etc!

I like the 4dr performance cars, at least the concept but not the execution in most cases. The 90's Impala SS, the recent Mercury Marauder are a few examples of duds. They fill a niche for the family guy that must have 4 doors and Chrysler/Dodge are leading the way. However they aint cheap and certainly not affordable for a single 20 something wanting something with 2 doors.

I have to give Ford credit for staying with the Mustang V8 all these years. Fairly affordable and USA made has to stand for something. Enough made to ensure they will be around as long as the originals are now. Half the guys on here will be worm food by the time the 06 Cobra is 40 years old anyway so get your *****ing in now while you still can.

Now, the ****ing **** have outsold the rest of the world in performance coupes and the US is still playing with itself for the most part. Why cant WE build something exciting year after year after year without ****ing it up? Why cant we (The Big 3) build a small $20K car with a honking V8 to get the kids back again? Dont tell me that 2 or 4 more cylinders cost that much or all the kids are economy freaks. When will GM in particular have a Malibu or Impala RWD SS coupe or ragtop with a V8?

The one thing that does scare me is that if real and affordable muscle cars are out in large quan***ies again the insurance companies and the Feds will **** it up all over again.
I dont even want to think about my insurance when I had a 70 Chevelle LS6 and what it would be in todays dollars.

End of rant.

 

With the condition the big 3 are in the dont need to take chances...they need to get their **** together. Say what you want about Japanese cars but a Toyota is the best car on the road (just my .02 no need to flip out). The Camaro looks like ****!!! The Challenger will be a hit just like the Mustang. Ford created their own supply and demand by running the Mustang plant at half speed for the first year. This also helped them to correct any problems as the poped up along the way before they got out of hand.

 

I love the new Mustang (I'm biased) and the new Challenger and I hope they make the new Camaro too.

Retro? Nah. Better than the original.......

Come on now. All you 50 somethings and older who were here for the first muscle cars days can whine, piss and moan all you want about how these new cars **** this and **** that. HOWEVER......

Tell you what. While you were hauling your rug rats around in 1973 Vegas, 1978 Fairmonts or Country Squires of any vintage or smoking dope in custom vans equipped with mirrors on the ceiling and orange **** carpet on the floor.....

.....if ANYBODY back in 1978 walked up to you and told you that there would one day again be:

- a 450hp Cobra Clone (the Viper).

- Non-COPO/Non-Yenko/Non-ZL1 Camaros that any smuck off the street could walk into any Chevy dealer in the US and walk out with a car that goes over 150mph, runs low 13's - high 12's off the showroom floor AND gets 25mpg.....the the A/C and stereo on.

- Supercharged Mustangs with six speed transmissions and a REAL 390hp.

- SIX Speed anything from any manufacturer this side of a heavy truck.

- Turbo diesel pick-up trucks with 500+ ft/lbs of torque on every street corner. That Hemi powered pick-ups and 400HP GTOs would be common.

- That the Shelby, GTO, Cobra, and Challenger name plates would be back.

- That you can buy a Corvette that gets well over 20mpg, goes 180mph, stops from 180mph better than almost any racecar from the late 60's....all with the A/C on and a p***enger in the seat next to you jamming tunes.

- That Chrysler once again is building Hemis. (OK, I know its not technically a true Hemi but the its hyped as one). Not only building Hemi powered cars but ones that have 425hp that get over 20mpg and burn 100x cleaner than the original 426......

- and that most if not all of these newer muscle cars/trucks will get 20+mpg (if not 30), have much less emissions and last for well over 100,000 miles...if not 200K.

You would have asked them what they were smoking and where could you get some. ....or you'd just say "Yeah, right." and then walked away.

The list goes on. You guys can stay in your "there's no days like the old days" shell all you want but the truth is that there's a muscle car boom going on now.....and the over-all quality of the cars is much better. The guy who bought my '89 SHO Taurus just called and said its got over 300K on the engine/trans with no signs of failure. My ex-wife's new husband just put over 100K on his Hemi truck. When was the last time you seen an LS-6/7, 426Hemi, or a 427MR with more than 100K on it? Uhhh, not too many around, eh? These days 100K is just the beginning on typical drivelines.

Who knows how long it will last but its cool as hell to think that all this stuff is out there. Can the average person buy into the game? Thats a whole separate subject. Its the fact that ALL cars are expensive now, not just the ones we like....its also a fact that the dollar doesn't have as much buying power as it did back in the 60's either. Back then you could pump some gas, work a reasonable job and buy a new car if you wanted. Nothing doing these days......most kids can't even afford the insurance and gas for grocery getters.

-Bigchief.

 

I think you've missed the whole point of the thread. No one has questioned modern engineering, indeed, those of us not hung up on the early 50's thing, are much like many of the early rodding trend setters were, we embrace the latest technological ideas as soon as they prove themselves and trickle down to within our reach.
Automobile styling had 2 high points IMHO.
1. The late twenties through the thirties, as practiced by the auto industry as a whole worldwide, and the coachbuilders in particular.
2. The 60's as practised by the US auto industry, especially the mid 60's. Admittedly there are notable exceptions from other time periods, most particularly the 50's, but they only make the case that these 2 time periods were high water marks with a grace and style not seen since. To equate the styling of anything produced in the last 15 years is a travesty, again, with a few (damn few) exceptions. I see no reason why a car needs to look like someone took the afor mentioned cowpie, threw it against a wall, and moulded a car body from the remains after it hit the ground, or why the end of a car needs to resemble a caricature of someone's face, or why vast expanses of plastic are plastered on the ends of a body, in a misguided attempt to hide the fact, the heighth of said body from rocker to belt line is horribly misproportioned to the overall size and height of that same body.
With all the modern tools at their disposal, or unless it's because of, I can see no reason why todays designer is turning out the current crop of ugly.
Yes indeed, perhaps it's time to revert to sketchpad and pencil and clay and intuition, and revive purity of form to make automobiles beautiful again.

 

People buying retro cars buy them because they're new and look old. Old cars are just that, old, and 99% of people don't want the work that entails.

Good, that keeps them out of the hobby and keeps prices lower than they could be.

Ford, GM and Chrysler all have to respond to market pressures. Retro is where it is right now, albeit not where it was in 1964. Ford and Chrysler are responding to that and will do well, GM is ignoring that and is in BIG trouble.

 

I wouldn't say GM is ignoring it....they built the SSR and the HHR....I would, however, say that they are doing a piss poor job of it.

I love the new Mustangs. I wouldn't mind at all having an '06 GT. 5-speed, Legend Lime, Bullitt wheels, Foglight and spoiler delete. Drool...I don't see myself buying one though, I'd be saving for the Challenger. My daily driver is an '01 Bullitt Mustang...IMO, maybe the FIRST in the current trend of retro styling...different C-pillars, side cove inserts, rocker panels, and spoiler delete, to make it more like the '68. Forget that it's "retro," it just looks damn good and a hell of a lot better than a standard GT (not that those look bad). Hell, when they brought out the first of the SN-95 Mustangs, Ford's adverti*****ts had photo comparrisons to a '64 Mustang...retro is nothing new!

I don't think the retro craze is out of hand at all. But look at the majority of cars of late...shapeless blobs. The run of the mill econo-cars styling was only unique in their emblems. It used to be cars really looked GOOD, the styling was creative, every car had certain aspects that just made it dead on. Then they all just turned into oversized rectangles, and then into said blobs. The trend I see in design is not a restyle of old cars, but just picking up where the good designs left off. Take the Charger for example...it's a pretty good new design taking the good cues of the original.

The Corvette is a perfect example of my point. It has always had a good design...and every time they bring out a new one, it has the same styling cues, and you KNOW it's a corvette without even reading the badges. These new "retro" cars, I feel, are designed along those lines.

Hack, I think if you could get over your disgust of the "retro"ness of it all, you could really appreciate how good the cars look.

 

Ha Ha...I guess I'm too Eddie Van Halen in a David Lee Roth world!!

(Eddie HATED the 'Diver Down' album because it was riddled with cover songs, while Roth thought doing covers was half the formula for success...taking a song people already knew and running it by them again with a little more flash. Eddie felt that they'd done their time playing covers and didn't want to be a glorified bar band, he wanted to do originals and try new things...but the producers got their cover songs in more than once...taking the 'safe' way out instead of trusting the band to stand entirely on it's own.)

The same deal applies to all the flash-in-the-pan 'retro' trash the car companies are flailing to force down the public's throat. In five years, nothing will look gayer than an 05 Mustang...unless the 2112 Mustang looks like a Mustang II King Cobra, complete with that famous Farah poster in the magazine ads!!!

Dodge's new Charger would be the only new car I'd consider buying. This year it gets a 425hp V8 and it will go down in history as the fastest factory production Charger...and it's doing it based on it's performance, in a NEW body that doesn't pretend to be some sad attempt at packaging a 60s car into a consumer-friendly retro styled farce.

The 'new' Mustang had the potential to be something Great...I test drove one of those **** ugly abortions out of curiousity while waiting for the service department at the Ford dealer to do a quick repair on a van last winter. The one I drove was a 4.0 litre V6 car with a stick, and I was pleasantly surprised! If you could forget how ****ing ugly the car was, inside and out...it would have been a positive leap forward for the bloodline.

The used car dealership I worked at had plenty of 1999-2003 Mustangs, V8 and V6 models, and I had really come to like them, I drove one silver V6 car as my personal errand vehicle and parts chaser for a month and a half and loved it!

So...don't feel that my hatred for the 'new' Mustang comes from some inner vandetta against the nameplate...quite the opposite...it's because I'v ALWAYS loved Mustangs, from as far back as I can remember, that I am so disgusted at what they've done to it...how they've taken it from being a proud Pony that always pranced FORWARD, into being a cheap and pathetic gimmick aimed at shallow losers who have no true love for the car...just an aching to latch onto 'something that looks old'. Let 'em buy a 'new' Beetle...you can see how the retro tide that brought THAT abortion back fizzled on the beach! (The novelty wears off quick when suddenly EVERYONE has one...a fact lost on the dimwits who think they're getting a 60s musclecar with a CD player, cup-holders and a warranty until it's too late!).

The 05 Mustang is the automotive styling equivalent of a bad comb-over.

 

Well ****, why don't you tell us how you really feel

Van Halen ****s dog balls no matter who's singing in the band!

 

Ha Ha Ha, DOG BALLS??? You're starting to worry me, Eric!!!

 

Nah, the PT Cruiser was the bad comb-over. Mustang's just a thief in the night..at least it has performance possibilities.

The Charger's my favorite, though..

 

The Charger should have been called the D-500... And let's give it up for Chrysler for bringing back big flat black stickers that will fade to a mottled light grey in a few short car washes... Whoo hoo!

That Camaro concept looks like the details off a '69 Camaro tacked to the Challenger concept. Do the 3-D programs the designers use come loaded with a "modern pony car" template??

I kinda dug the t-bird in that it strayed from the high-trunk lid, low-nose look of EVERY NEW CAR BUILT SINCE THE TR7!!!

Oh, and I've got the promo model for the Ford Fusion in my bathroom... 'cept it says BRAUN on it and I shave with it.

 

I still want one with steelies, Ford caps and whitewalls - plus a manual trans and all the Mustang-type hop up goodies I can stick on it.

It's about number 110 on the list, though, so it'll probably never happen.