Look on that grille! That’s not a horse, it’s a big cat, threateningly swiping its big paws around. Ford actually had quite a history of putting cat badges on its cars, usually in threes. I wrote about this years ago, and it has to do, of all things, with the coat of arms of Richard the Lionhearted. That’s not all Ford was willing to borrow from Europe, though. One of my favorite parts about this styling model is how it has the expected general Mustang look that we know, but odd oval headlights that change the whole face of the car.
Ford took these from their German subsidiary’s Taunus, the same place that the very first car Ford called a Mustang, their mid-engined Mustang I concept car, borrowed its V4 engine. Would the world have been a better place if the Mustang started life as an egg-eyed car named for a big cat? Maybe! Man, I loved that car. https://kustomrama.com/wiki/File:1962-ford-mustang-cougar.jpg What’s really crazy to me is that this badge was still appearing on the car in 1963, months before the actual production began/it went on sale. https://performance.ford.com/enthusiasts/newsroom/2018/08/sonny—cher-mustangs.html https://blog.tirebuyer.com/horror-cars-munsters-munster-koach-drag-u-la/ Expect that, if they had gone that way, the oval ones would have been for export, and US market ones would have gotten round headlamps stuffed into oval-shaped chrome surrounds
