Every generation thinks the era that they grew up in produced the coolest cars, music, and fashions. Those of us who came of age in the eighties, of course, simply know the decade of decadence was beyond reproach. Don’t agree with us? We’ll roll up the sleeves on our epaulet-shouldered nylon jackets and “show you what time it is.”
Seriously though, after years of ridicule, the styles of the eighties are finally getting respect, and that includes cars. Obviously, Reagan-era rides like a Lancia Delta Integrale or a Ferrari F40 were held in high esteem from day one, but now more pedestrian vehicles from those years are getting a well-deserved reassessment as standout designs.
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One car in particular is the 1979-94 third-generation “Fox” Mustang that defined the automotive rise from the ashes out of the dreaded Malaise years. Naturally, Ford wants to capitalize on this nostalgia, but the recent efforts they’ve shown in that task were a bit lacking. An Autopian reader requested that I try to do a better job of giving younger Boomers and GenXers a true retro version of their favorite Mustang. Who am I to say no?
The Many Malaise Moods Of Mustang
The term “Malaise” was coined years back by Autopian friend and sometime contributor Murilee Martin, but the use of the word often gets applied to cars that don’t fit the true description of the phrase. To me, the best way to properly give the definition to “Malaise” is to follow the path of America’s favorite Pony Car, the Ford Mustang, since it follows the arc of the era almost perfectly.
Like most domestic cars, at the beginning of the seventies, the Mustang was a large and possibly oversized product of a time when people thought twenty-cents-a-gallon gas would last forever. Import cars were just outliers for cheapskates or freaks, and safety or emissions control requirements would hopefully get repealed or stabilized. That didn’t happen.
Performance suffered drastically when the ”large” 1971 Mustang lost the “Boss” 351 (except for a rare, detuned version) and big block 429 engines for 1972; now there wasn’t the oomph needed to make up for the gains in size and weight. The Malaise era was upon us.
Thankfully for Ford, the Pinto-based 1974 Mustang II arrived just in time for the first energy crisis. The Mustang II was drastically smaller than the previous car and offered “luxury” and “sport” options that were mainly vestigial things painted or glued on; if there’s a better example of the true meaning of “Malaise”, I don’t know what it is. Lee Iacocca knew what the market needed even if Mustang faithful didn’t want it (it’s still the fourth best-selling Mustang of all time).
By the late seventies, Detroit was finally moving beyond its initial knee-jerk reactions and giving us better solutions to the onslaught of smog regulations, gas crunches, and foreign cars better suited to this new status quo. For 1979, Ford gave us an all-new Mustang that looked a lot more Deutschland than Dearborn.
There’s a good reason for that. Long before he became known for the aero T-Bird and Taurus, designer Jack Telnack had reshaped the offerings of Ford’s European offerings when he was put in charge of that division in 1974. You can see the look in this new-for-1978 Granada (why didn’t we get this Granada instead of the Iacocca Maverick Mercedes one we were stuck with?).
He then brought that same crisp aesthetic across the pond and applied it to the Mustang II’s much-needed successor, which was based on Ford’s new lightweight “Fox” platform with Euro-style McPherson struts up front and coils (instead of archaic leaf springs) on the rear axle. Oh, sure, the Fairmont-style dashboard was still crap, the most powerful V8 only made 140 horsepower, and the nasty turbocharged four-cylinder made even less. Still, this Mustang was a sign that the “Malaise” era might not last forever.
Indeed, it didn’t last. The 1982 Mustang GT added a four-barrel carb to the 302 and increased power up to 157 horsepower. Yeah, that still doesn’t sound like much, but it was just the beginning.
By 1987, the GT had 225 fuel-injected horses under the horse’s hood, even if it was covered in a bit too much eighties tinsel than some might have liked.
The swansong of the Fox was the vaunted SVT Cobra that pumped 235 horsepower through a 5-speed manual to achieve a sub-six-second zero to sixty (remember, the car weighed only 3300 pounds). Upgraded wheels, brakes, and suspension were matched with a stripped-down exterior that probably looked a lot like what Jack Telnack had secretly envisioned for the original 1979 model. The Mustang had come full circle, and the “Malaise” era was now well and truly over.
The love for the Fox body continues to grow over the years; it’s a Mustang that can easily be upgraded and modified to something surprisingly formidable. It’s an icon of affordable performance for buyers of many age groups in the time when early Mustangs started to become out of reach. Despite that, it’s the old 1960s car that Ford has chosen to copy over and over again since 2005. Isn’t it time to move the nostalgia curve up a few years?
FX Or Effed Up?
What’s the next stop on the timeline for a new retro Mustang, then? Part of me wants to see a modern version of the Mustang that came after the one that the current S650 is mimicking. Sadly, the rather unfair “too big” stigma attached to this 1971-73 “big” Mustang makes this a less-than-ideal muse (I’m probably still going to do one, though). The next car on the timeline is, of course, the Pintostang. As much as I don’t want to be a basic hater, I really can’t condone doing a retro version of the poor Mustang II; I did one as a joke a few years back and you can see why I say this.
That leaves the 1979 “Fox” as the best candidate for the retro treatment. I wouldn’t be the first. A few weeks ago, Ford showed us a version of the current Mustang edition called the “FX” that was supposed to be a tribute to GenXer’s favorite decade.
In truth, it’s more early nineties in feel than Culture Club-era vibe, and while some of our readers seemed to like it, many more felt that it was a low-effort attempt at nostalgia. Mind you, any time a brand makes a car in an Actual Color today I have to applaud it, but this limited edition is definitely more of a factory high-quality “Pimp My Ride” project than a retro tribute. The bigger issue seems to be that while the vibrant green paint hue, very un-Mustang-like white wheels, and odd, white-painted grille details make this a great car to complement your Hypercolor shirt, this “FX” edition doesn’t even remotely say “Fox body” to anyone.
Naturally, you can’t realistically make a 2025 car that’s modeled off a 1967 car appear to be a crisp, angular design from the eighties. The question a reader named Shooting Brake asked was, what if they did make a new Mustang that was an unabashed tribute to the now-appreciated third-generation Ford pony car?
The Boss Is Back
Our Thomas Hundal was the one who wrote about that Mustang FX edition, and his observations on doing throwback cars were insightful:
Going retro can be a digital tightrope walk if the goal on the other side is automotive mass appeal. Smear it on with a trowel, and the internet will call it heavy-handed. Waft its general scent across the room, and the internet will say it doesn’t go far enough.
The internet is indeed passing judgment on the FX, and many Foxstang fans feel this thing falls into the second category. My guess is that, for the sake of comparison, our readers would like to see the “smear it on” end of the spectrum, so I’ll grab my tub of Industrial Retro and drywall tools. You want near-cartoonish retro? I’ll Push It To The Limit like Pacino in a white suit.
A ways back, our man Adrian Clarke followed the traditional, correct way to sketch up a concept of a modern Fox body which you really should check out by clicking here. Naturally, I’m only interested in doing things the “wrong” way, so that’s what you’re gonna get. I’ll start with a new S650 in the most dull silver grey I can find, sitting at an everyday Oklahoma Ford dealer. No, I don’t want color or glitz to do any heavy lifting (or really any lifting at all) to make our retro Fox. If it doesn’t work in this everyday American environment, to me it doesn’t work at all. Also, I get the feeling from the room that you don’t want subtle nods to the past or an abstract modern interpretation that looks sort of like a Fox if you squint. For better or worse, they want a 2008 Challenger-style rehash, so that’s what I have to give you.
I’ve kept the same wheelbase and essentially the same length, and overlayed the Fox body shape on it. The rub strip that continues 360 degrees around the 1979 Fox is gone, but I’ve kept that character line as well as the one that sits just below the beltline. I’ve always liked the nose on the first Fox with the sunken lights and black grille; I’ll copy that here, but of course there will be projector lights under clear covers instead of exposed sealed beam bulbs. Driving lights, as on the last Fox GTs and Cobras, will sit in the front spoiler, with hidden slots around them to let in air to cool the front brakes.
Truthfully, I followed most of the original car verbatim, and it seems to work. Hey, we need 20″ versions of those SVT Cobra “fanblade” wheels that a number of commenters seemed to like as well, right? You can see the bizarre crap that I did in the animation below. I’d likely need more of a “power bulge” on the hood to clear the motor, but that would still look good:
Let me guess what you’re going to say next. “I’d like to see a really subtle power bulge, and while you’re at it, please do it up as a performance version by a tuner like Saleen.” I can read your Fox’n minds. Here you go:
The most significant change from the S650 is that while the roof is essentially the same height on this Retro Fox, it doesn’t slope down nearly as dramatically to the back of the car as on the 2025 version. Keeping faithful to the original Fox’s styling has an added benefit; take a look here at the back seat of the current S650 with the “butt pits” and steeply raked glass over where the hopefully headless rear occupants sit.
Now look at the back seat of a Fox body. It’s almost like a normal car. Do you see “butt pits” needed for passenger’s scalps to clear the headliner? No, you don’t, because it doesn’t have any; the Fox has cathedral-like space in back compared to the latest Mustang.
Hell, as kids you probably remember sitting three across in the back of the Foxstang your homie Mike’s mom drove (she was the one with feathered hair who smoked Camel Lights, so you kinda had a crush on her). Cargo space with the rear seats down on the Fox was also quite good for a sporting machine.
Smoked-out LED tributes to SVT-style taillights (they were actually repurposed SVO units on the SVT) sit below the hatchback opening that always made the Fox such a practical proposition. That rear diffuser from the S650 doesn’t look too out of place on the old school design. A subtle rear spoiler would indeed be able to drain so that it won’t create a bird bath. Note that the fenders flare out slightly under that below-beltline character line, sort of like the bulges on the Mercury Capri version of the old Fox.
Here’s an animation between the trunk-lidded S650 and the RetroFox hatchback. It’s obviously a boxier and ostensibly more practical shape, no wonder Ford went this direction in the late seventies to make the ‘Stang more relevant as a “real car.”
Inside, I’ll use the dashboards from the Mustang II and the early Fox on this redux as inspiration (and not the late eighties version of the Fox).
I’d like to rehash an idea that I’ve already shown on the strange gag-post Mustang II revival I did some time ago (since that has a very similar dash to the 1979-86 Fox). You see, a big slab-like dashboard is ideal for screens, and unlike the current Mustang (and most cars), we’re enclosing these screens within the padded dashboard and not propped up like a home computer monitor.
Our retro ‘Stang can use this wide expanse to recreate a whole bunch of different looks for your instruments. For example:
Original: Looks like a 1965 dashboard
Classic: Copy of a 1968 dashboard
Heritage: Just like a 1974 Mustang II with woodgrain and an animated mechanical digital clock above the glove box. I love the idea of what looks like the dash from a bog-slow car in a thing that can do sub-five-second zero-to-sixty times.
Cobra II: As above, but silver engine-turned trim
Foxbox 1,2 and 3: Simulated 1979 instruments with your choice of woodgrain, black, or silver trim. You can even get an 85MPH speedometer that changes to a 160MPH gauge when you exceed 85.
Foxbox 4: Simulated 1987 instruments
Future 1 and 2: Modern digital style gauges. Also, the logo horse runs across the area above the glovebox on startup.
That’s almost like getting into a new car every day of the week if you wanted to. Programming would make it easy to make even more, and I can see someone like Steve Saleen making a new graphic layout for hot new Foxes he’d likely build up.
It’s all great fun, and the mechanicals from the S650 mean that you’re getting performance and handling that even the vaunted late-model Cobra Foxes couldn’t dream of.
Stop, Collaborate, And Listen
Let’s face it: many of us Autopians weren’t even alive when the Mustang that inspired the current S650 came out. However, you do remember looking out the snot-smeared windows from the back of your family’s station wagon or minivan at the lot of the local Ford dealership while Phil Collins played through the stereo. You were years away from having a license to drive the silver SVO or sinister black GT Fox Body ‘Stangs you saw sitting under the streamers, but you knew in the back of your mind that the day would come.
Fast forward forty years, and prices for surviving examples are on the rise; as with the first Mustang models, it’s sad to see cars originally famous for their affordability turn into costly keepsakes. Worse than that, if you drove one, you’d probably be disappointed that it wouldn’t be as quick off the line as your company Altima.
Maybe a modern reboot of the classic Mustang of our generation with the S650’s incredibly capable underpinnings would be just the ticket to get the sort of young-again feels that have made classics so popular with our Boomer parents for years. Make mine a triple white 5.0 convertible, please. Word to your mother.
I think it looks pretty cool. It’s interesting to see how much more sleek it looks compared to the current model. The fan wheels are perfect. The back-end reminded me of the 80s Lotus Esprit and even Aston Lagonda for some reason. Thanks!
I suppose I’m one of the weirdos that liked the FX Package, but bringing back the retro wheels on your render sized up for modern cars would be even cooler.
I like your design better, though (actually, I’ve liked most of your Mustang designs). The rear end reminds me of a BMW 8 Series from around the same time period, and having a liftback would be much more user-friendly. If the suits and the purists still want the sequential turn signals, the bottom red taillight section could be modified to do just that.
Win/win!
You’re not a weirdo! The FX package was not bad in its own right and a welcome change from the usual stuff we see today and a lot of fun. It just isn’t a Fox body, and it’s not 80s.
The issue is that you’ve borked the proportions in the little details. The rear decklid is too short and the rear windshield’s cant is too steep. The Fox body had more visual weight in the back, and to fix that you’d need to make a slight visual illusion by having the bottom window line rise up from front to rear. Ideally you’d start that with the window’s A-pillar corner being below the shoulder line for the hood. Then you’d need to get rid of the apparent slant by adding a black rocker panel to the side moulding where the top of it follows the same path as the new bottom of the window line. Then you could rake the rear windshield and pull it forward to give it that ass-heavy Fox body look.
Hooray!!! Thanks for doing this, it’s a ton of fun!!! The retro is slathered on nice and thick, just how I like it, haha. And thanks for the link to Adrian’s, I must have missed that one!
I’d take this over the real s650 for sure, if for nothing more than the extra rear seat room alone, haha!
It’s giving strong 6000 SUX vibes to me. Not a bad thing, but not a thing I would want to own.
Now I’m wondering what this would look like stretched out and encased in fiberglass as a new Zimmer Golden Spirit
Sorry, but that red ’72 just looks badass.
As I said in the post, Ford needs to move the retro calendar up and do a modern version of that one now. Or I’ll have to do one.
Aren’t we nearly there in the real world at this point though? The S650 seems to be creeping up in size, and its Camaro-like terrible rear visibility seems just a slight rake away from being ’72-tastic. If Ford just adds some naca ducts and round LED headlights, it can offer (lawyer-approval pending) Gone in Sixty Seconds models in no time.
If I’m not mistaken, the ’71-73 Stangs are within an inch or two of the modern Stangs in every exterior dimension.
Make it happen!
And don’t forget the matte black hood.
Nah. Vinyl notchback for full pain. The Mustang Grande must live again.
It was good enough for Tiffany Case.
“Part of me wants to see a modern version of the Mustang that came after the one that the current S650 is mimicking.”
Supposedly mimicking – if that’s the intent, the result is piss-poor – because the 67-70 Mustangs were fairly elegant designs, and the 2025 is a damned mess.
The 71-73s were cleaner-lined and better yet despite being considered “too large” as their space efficiency was rather poor – as were all American cars back then.
When you look at the actual stats – The 1971-1973 Mustang is fractions of an inch within the same length & width as the 2025. The new car is taller with a shorter wheelbase and wider track with greater interior and cargo space.
So I’m here for a design based off the 71-73 design on the current platform – just give us a more ergonomic dashboard please.
see above- will do. I was trying to counter that rather lame FX concept but as I was putting the post together I kept looking at that ’71 and realizing how easily that pure shape could be modernized (and look so much cleaner than the current car).
Jeez, I can’t get away from Ford and Mustang content, can I?
As others said looks more European than American, or maybe like early Lexus or Infiniti, compared to like the Hyundai Vision N74 I’m not sure you’ve hit it.
Maybe starting from like the 2010 Mustang instead of the current one? That one was blockier, the current one is too catfish faced I think.
Looked at an N74-style update with the huge fenders like the 1980 IMSA Mustang, but honestly everyone would say that it looked overdone and that it didn’t look like a Fox.
No. Just no. The current Mustang is fine; don’t mess with it. Your version is so much worse in every way.
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No. That thing does not look German at all. At least not to a German. That looks as US American AF.
Today? Yes. In fall of 1978, when the current the Mustang II Ghia with a landau roof? It sure looked “euro” to us then.
I think I am a few years older than you are (I was born in 1966), I was sentient in 1978. That is not a Euro look to me. Like, at all. In 1978, we had the Euro-market Capri. (And it’s CA-pri, not ca-PRI.)
In the 80s, “Euro” was often a synonym for “tasteful” or “functional” in U.S. marketing, after reeling from a decade of over the top, baroque design. The Braun company never did better here.
Bishop compared it side by side with a Mercedes 450SLC from the same era in another piece of his and the resemblance is what sold me on referring to the Fox Body as Euro-styled.
I was going to ask to see what it looked like with ’87-style turbine wheels, but I notice the rear 3/4 animation’s “before” pic kinda covers what a modern version of those would look like. So fan blades for the win here for sure.
I’m really liking the instrument screen. I rented a ’25 model for a week in Texas last month. I enjoyed playing with the options of “retro gauges”. It wore ’68 or Fox styles back and forth. I’m a diehard “real gauges” guy, but it worked! And the animated pony would be awesome!
There’s so much unexplored potential there, and it’s annoying that most manufacturers use the technology to make gauges that look more like Galaga than instruments.
I haven’t wanted a NEW car for a while now. (too much computer nanny nonsense!) And I figured the new Mustang’s giant screen would kill any remaining lust I have for it. But, I was wrong! I’m still keeping my 01, it’s paid for!
As an early Gen Xer, let me just state the Fox wasn’t the favorite Mustang of everyone in my generation. The kids of modest means were quite happily driving ’60s Mustangs or early 70’s Mach 1’s. The kids higher up the food chain had new Cameros (and at the time the only dealership in town sold Ford).
The few Fox bodies around were mostly early four bangers handed down from their parents, and weren’t looked upon favorably. I can think of one 5.0 Mustang, and it was outnumbered by the IROC Cameros alone.
That said, this is a beautiful rendering, and a great improvement over the original.
You did a great job with this one. I can see them building it.
Fun fact: Jack Telnack admitted in an interview that the only idea he had on the Fox body Mustang when it first came out were the wheels.
Fitting, as Telnack was the guy responsible for the original 1965s’!
I thought he said that he did the hubcaps on the 1965 (he only started at Ford in 1958 so he would have been rather new)?
I read it decades ago so I could be wrong on what generation of Mustang.
It was a Car and Driver interview.
The lower beltline and better visibility is a major improvement on its own.
Combined with the increased rear headroom and hatchback access, this is a much more practical design than current and better value proposition as a result.
Making the new Charger a hatchback was one of the better decisions Dodge has made despite all the other shortcomings with that vehicle so far. If muscle/pony cars are going to survive in the age of crossovers, they’ll need to be practical enough for buyers to justify their purchase.
Great news! The manufacturer has listened to customer feedback that people are really gravitating to “lower beltline visual cues”, so they will be adding a gloss black plastic strip below the windows to give the appearance of better visibility.
This part will house the RFID and smart fingerprint sensor, fade in the sun after 5 years, and cost $1200 to replace
Such a terrible idea and yet too likely to happen.
There’s actually a new material called glass that you can see through!
My mom had a 1979 Fox body Mustang almost identical to your reference photo except it was lighter silver color and didn’t have a sunroof. We liked it pretty well but the 6-cylinder engine was gutless, it would rev with a whooshing roar but nothing much would happen. The handling was terrible, it wallowed in corners. And the brakes were the worst of any vehicle I’ve driven, very sensitive pedal and the skinny tires were prone to skid on hard braking.
For my first “real” car I bought a 90 Mustang GT and it felt like an entirely different car than the 1979.
I like your updated Fox body much better than the FX tribute.
Thanks! Yes, the base Fox was a bit lacking in roadability, but the ability to upgrade easily was part of the beauty of the car.
That front end just nails it, so if the suits make you give on the other stuff (“people want the vertical tri-bar lights damnit.”), it’s still a win!
What’s interesting to me is how, due to it being a flatter surface + decal, the NASCAR Mustang front ends look closer to this than the current production version.
As a huge Fox Body fan I really like this idea. That said, there is still a pretty big divide in whether people prefer the early four-eyed nose up til ’86, or the aero nose from ’87. I prefer the four eye, but lots of people still more strongly associate the aero nose with Fox Bodies so your reference may be lost on some people.
I too prefer the 4 headlight setup and the generally sharper lines of the earlier version.
And as an SN95/New Edge owner, I dig me some giant boxy, fake hood sbody. Even if it’s impossible to dry completely after washing her.
I thought the composite lights made the front end look kind of heavy (sort of like the brick units on late Volvo 240s). As long as they have aero covers on them it would look great (which were illegal in the US for sealed beam lights, and still might be).
I might go for body colored grille inserts instead of what I’ve shown as upgrades.
The best daily Fox-body Mustang was actually called Capri. At the end of the run you had the “four-eyed nose” with a more assertive stance and the rounded rear hatchback.
I also enjoyed that the Capri came in some distinctive but classy colors – I particularly remember a maroon and a handsome slate blue.
My sister had a black/silver one. Although in was a 4 cyl/auto, and a lemon! We called it the Crapi! Dad even re-arranged the emblem letters on it.
I guess that’s the cool thing about Mustangs, they can be many things to many people. I like the Capri but my favorite Fox body was a ~1991 Ultra Blue with grey ground effects on the bottom.
One of my favorite parts of the refresh was the two tone GTs.
Robert Urich drove a light-dark gray one in Spenser: for Hire after his ’66 got blown up b/c 80s tv and all.
Can we have it with AWD and traction control? My ’88LX was prone to losing traction and having the back come around at the hint of rain. Once I was coming into an intersection and turning right, but ended up spinning around and facing traffic… I thought I had blown a tire because it happened so quickly. (I never attended cars and coffee; I had long since sold it before that was a thing)
Yeah, the live axle with two sets of shocks could only do so much (assuming the LX had that too or maybe only GT or any 5.0 car?)
All later V8 cars got the quad shock setup (which was designed to reduce axle hop during dry acceleration, not help with traction in the rain).
If you have traction control and tires with great wet weather performance (such as Vredesteins) you don’t need AWD 95% of the time in the wet or snow.
Yes, Blizzaks changed my life.
Blizzaks are awesome, and probably saved my life. A few months ago I dropped my daughter off at her dorm. As soon as I left campus for the 20 mile drive home in my S550, it started snowing. Heavily. By the time I got a few miles from my interstate exit, I couldn’t even discern where the lane markers were. Did I slip or slide whilst passing* terrified AWD crossovers with their flashers on doing 25MPH? Hells to the no. I’m a believer.
*I definitely wasn’t flying (I’m crazy but not stupid…usually), but I was more than comfortable going faster than the pokes.
That looks fantastic, and it actually has a little bit of practicality. Even better would be a return of the liftback Mustang.
And here’s a suggestion – I would *cheerfully* pay hundreds for a “gauge package” option that puts real, clear, easy to read analog gauges back where they belong. I’ll suffer with a small “infotainment” screen if I have to.
I’m on board with that 100 percent. Sadly, most manufacturers aren’t. Maybe Steve Saleen could make your dream come true.
Fair’s fair – I am onboard with not giving them my money anymore.
The exterior of your future fox just looks like an Audi.
The Mustang II/early fox interior, on the other hand… you’re on to something there.
I’ve owned 3 IIs, 3 foxes, and 2 S197s, and my favorite Mustang interiors, in this order are the Mustang II Ghia, S197 GT and GT/CS, and early fox body (especially 85-86 cars with the halo seats). I’d rather the dash be real than virtual, but I genuinely like where you’re going with it.
Yeah, late Fox instrument cluster looked more “modern” when it came out but then it looked dated rather quickly.
The early Fox Mustang has managed to age far better than it probably has a right to. Yes, it is a Fairmont with a nicer nose, taillights, and optional hatchback profile. Yes, the interior is also lifted wholesale from the Fairmont parts bin. But the fundamental shape is so much cleaner and uncluttered than what came before and after. And where the base car might be too clean and uncluttered so that it tends toward blandness, picking some more parts from the options list adds on some, well, clutter… in generally all the right places. It’s like a model kit with optional parts to build whatever you want, and it works.
I’m not much for screens, but if I were building a Fox body restomod, I’d likely take that big, flat piece of instrument panel real estate and build up a custom panel with modern analog or digital gauges, depending on needs for the overall look of the build. The 90’s dash never made that much of an impression on me. It lacks the simplicity of the earlier panel style, which just works with the rest of the car.