• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, August 24, 2009

To help promote the 2010 Mustang, Ford is tapping into the model's cult status with a customization site that goes well beyond sampling the classic car in different colors. The Mustang Customizer on the car's microsite lets auto enthusiasts choose from among 239 accessories across 18 categories including wheels, decals, spoilers and grilles to create their own dream machine.

With a bunch of car customization sites already cluttering the Web, Ford set out to raise the bar with its own project. In addition to giving Mustang mavens the digital tools to create their own versions in loving detail, the microsite, developed with Wunderman/Team Detroit by Firstborn, lets them collaborate on car-building.

A community option lets four people work together on the same Mustang in real time, along with chat features and a site gallery that allows mock-ups to be voted on by other users, with the winners displayed each week. Car creations can also be saved as desktop screensavers.

A week after launch, almost 52,000 virtual Mustangs have been built with more than 16,000 of those saved to gallery. On top of that, more than 30 car-focused forums and blogs had picked up on the site and began sharing their own creations.

On Monday, Ford began more aggressively pushing the Mustang microsite with a home page takeover of Yahoo featuring a banner that links to the customization site and creative showing a 2010 Mustang that changes in appearance when scrolled over.

Ford has already tapped Queen Latifah to promote the 2010 Mustang, featuring the singer and actress in a series of Web videos launched earlier this month at the2010mustang.com. The videos pair Latifah with NASCAR hotshot Colin Braun, who teaches her to drive the car on a test track.