• by Karl Greenberg , August 2, 2013

Ford Motor has been teaching history lessons and curating its own archives to fuel its year-long simonizing of the Mustang nameplate, which turns 50 in eight months. To boost awareness, the company has been digging through archival content, art, and ads, partly for a 50th anniversary merchandise program via its Beanstalk licensing agency. It has also been showing bespoke versions and touting the car at shows. 

Now the Dearborn, Mich., automaker is launching a video series, "Mustang Countdown," to grab the attention of Mustang zealots worldwide. The series starts with a video called "Where It All Started: The Mustang 1 Concept," in which Matt Anderson, curator of the Henry Ford Museum, talks about the 1962 debut of the first pony-car concept. The automaker says that other episodes, like the other programs, get into Ford’s Mustang archives, with a look at Mustang toys and custom Mustangs, including what Ford says will be rare footage and interviews.

Another video, "RC Movie Magic: Filming a Chase," is a making-of about an online video by a recent film school graduate that became a social-media hit. His movie, “The Cliché RC Action Chase,” used radio-controlled scale cars and helicopters and an ersatz scale-model city to create a realistic chase scene that got about 2.9 million views to date on YouTube. 

The automaker says that upcoming videos will be about such topics as the popularity of the car among video game makers, the car's racing history and Mustang restorations. 

By Ford's own count, the automaker has sold about 9.2 million Mustangs since its 1964 debut, and since that time, the car has also has been in over 3,000 films and TV shows. Recently, however, interest in the car seems to have waned, based on sales numbers. A lot of that has to do with the array of exciting and aesthetically appealing cars vying for attention and cachet in a segment that even 10 years ago was denigrated as spewing lozenges on wheels. 

Ford spokesperson Alan Hall says Ford will be running the once-per-week videos at least through 2013. "It's about celebrating the culture of Mustang, and is not necessarily tied to marketing initiatives." The videos, he says, will be on Ford Mustang's YouTube channel, and Ford's social media channels. "We really want to broaden the appeal and reach an audience that isn't necessarily seeking Mustang content." 

The other -- and probably the most important -- reason is that there hasn't been a major Mustang redesign since the fifth-generation version debuted in 2005. The buzz that the 2015 model is just down the road -- around the 50th anniversary -- may be keeping buyers in the corral either until the new one comes out or the late model goes on fire sale. 

While Ford posted strong July sales, Mustang was the only nameplate whose year-to-date sales were down (about 13%).

Jessica Caldwell, senior analyst at Edmunds.com, says there's still a lot of traffic in people who want a cool car at a good price, which is where the Mustang's sweet spot is. "So it can appeal to younger consumers." And she says there's something of an exaggerated lifecycle with halo cars -- Corvette, Camaro, Challenger and Mustang -- because "there's a big pile-on when the car is new, and you see over time it dies off because it is a limited audience."