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Mixing cinematic metaphors in an homage to Field of Dreams and Bullitt, Ford is bringing Steve McQueen back to life in an advertising campaign the company hopes will revive the aging Mustang brand.

For those too young to remember 1968, Mustang was at the height of its machismo in Bullitt, a classic movie that featured one of the most famous car chases ever filmed--a battle between two muscle cars down the hilly streets of San Francisco.

Coincidentally, the automotive nemesis of the Bullitt Mustang will also be hitting the streets of San Francisco again next year, in the form of a new Dodge Charger.
In medieval times, a charger was a horse trained and equipped to carry guys into battle. Although not particularly fleet, they were big and powerful—useful attributes for lugging guys wearing iron hats, steel suits, chain-mail shirts, and leather underwear.

Fast forward about 1000 years. It's the summer of 1965, and the descendants of the medieval chargers have become the Budweiser Clydesdales. Meanwhile, several guys are sitting around an office in Highland Park, Michigan, brainstorming names for a hotted-up version of the Dodge Coronet. The age of the pony car is already at full gallop, thanks to the mid-'64 arrival of the Ford Mustang, so something horsy seems apropos: Charger. Romantic war-horse imagery backed by serious brute force in the form of Mopar's storied Hemi V-8.
Although the word mustang is associated with wild horses, the name Mustang was actually suggested by Ford's executive stylist John Najjar because he was an aficionado of the P-51 Mustang fighter plane of World War II, according to Mustang racing history. But nobody seems to know how the fighter plane got the name.

Before he died in 1980, Steve McQueen tried unsuccessfully to buy the original Bullitt Mustang from a collector. I preferred the bad boy Hemi Charger then, and now too, but who the hell am I?
Posted by abnu on Friday, October 15, 2004 @ 9:15 PM [ + ]

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