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• The 1994 Ford Mustang was named Motor Trend Car of the Year.
• The new Mustang was a significant upgrade over the previous model.
• The Mustang GT was powered by a 5.0-liter V-8 that produced 215 horsepower.

Ever since its April 17, 1964, debut at the New York World’s Fair, the Ford Mustang has symbolized power, performance, and personality. Thirty years later, a smartly restyled and significantly upgraded new Mustang continues to fan the flames of automotive passion.

Over the past 10 or more years, the versions of this pony-car benchmark were defined by the people who bought them: The GT was for hardcore enthusiasts, and the base car was for those interested in sporty looks at a more affordable price. These roles were softened for the fresh-faced platform, however. The Mustang is available in coupe and convertible configurations, and in GT or “base” models. (Ford insists there’s no base model, just a Mustang and a Mustang GT. Press materials, however, refer to the six-cylinder car as the base model.) The GT’s rough-hewn aggression has become civil without diminishing its authority, and the six-cylinder is an order of magnitude better than the four-cylinder version it replaces. In total, the new Mustang line makes a powerful statement.

Model for model, the ’94 Ford Mustang is once again a car to be coveted. It gallops across the landscape with the vigor of a quarter horse. This sprinter is, in its own way, as important as the first pony-car was. Thus, the new Mustang has earned the ’94 Motor Trend Car of the Year title.

The selection process was a straightforward one: Our judging staff considered all the ’94 EPA domestic cars and minivans on sale by Jan. 1, looking for the most significant player in the market. Viewed from both an industry and buyer’s perspective, we weighed technological advancement, value, and performance to determine the one standout car for ’94. The Ford Mustang is that car.

Drawing the Lines

The first Mustang was an instant classic. Long, lean, and unlike any car that came before, it sent shock waves through the automotive industry, principally General Motors. It took GM three years to respond with the Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Firebird. The pony-car war had officially begun, and it continues to rage today.

Through the years, these three cars have battled each other on the streets, on racetracks, and in the sales derby. Models changed, power teams rose and declined according to OPEC and federal whim, and styling certainly waxed and waned with the fashions of the decades. Twenty-five or more years is a hell of a long time to dispute anything, and by ’92, the trio of combatants was pretty well spent. The Camaro and Firebird lines received their long overdue updates last year – to broad acclaim. But the question hung in the air: How would Ford respond?

When Dearborn’s designers sought to rekindle the flame with the new Mustang, images of modern performance ran the gamut from mild to wild. It was widely felt at Ford – and validated by numerous studies conducted with typical owners – that a return to the Mustang’s past would be a highly successful theme. No one thought duplicating the first Mustang’s exact form was a good idea – but duplicating the first car’s excitement was a great idea. To accomplish the latter, the core Mustang skunk-works team took over an old warehouse in Allen Park, a Detroit suburb adjacent to Dearborn, and transformed it into the SN95 technical center. “It changed the structure of the way we work,” said Will Boddie, the first Mustang program manager. “Someone could ask me a question at the coffee pot, and I could make a decision in 10 seconds that might have taken three weeks if it had to go through some formal chain of command.”

Long ago, Henry Ford said, “The question, ‘Who should be boss?’ is like asking, ‘Who ought to be the tenor in the quartet?’ Obviously, the man who can sing tenor.” When it came to key decisions regarding the SN95’s direction, Mustang enthusiasts were definitely “the boss.”

“When we talked with Mustang owners, they kept telling us we should capture the heritage of the original Mustang,” said Bud Magaldi, Mustang design manager. “And if there was one element that was brought up again and again, it was that the design should be American.” That sent the compass needle spinning. There are as many definitions of “American” as there are cars on the road, ranging from hard-edged aggression to smooth-talking sophistication. Which direction was the right one? Which direction was the only one? Was there only one?

Every voice was heard and considered for fear that any idea rejected out of hand might be the Holy Grail. Only one car could be produced, and with a design-to-production schedule of only about 36 months, the shot clock was already ticking. The Mustang’s progress was marked by three distinct waypoints: Bruce Jenner, Rambo, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“One early idea for the ’94 Mustang had a very nice, modern look, but its overall shapes were too smooth, too clean, too nice,” Magaldi recalls. That design was the Bruce Jenner model. It was a lean, modern vehicle with softly contoured edges and laid-back styling cues. It was named after Jenner because it had a trim and athletic appearance. At design appraisal clinics, the Jenner was appreciated for the same reasons people like the current Probe GT. That wasn’t necessarily good news. The Mustang appeals to a different demographic than the Probe; besides, Ford already had one Probe. The Jenner was sent to an early shower.

At the opposite end of the Jenner design evolution was the overtly warriorlike Rambo concept. This idea was Jenner DNA spliced into the irradiated cells of a Ferrari – using a weedwacker. “It was a Batmobile-type thing,” Magaldi reports, “a very aggressive car that was gutsy and dramatic,” like a Stealth fighter – or a wild mutation from a B-movie called “Mars Needs Pony-Cars.” On paper or in clay, the Rambo looks like a car designed by a maker of crosscut saws. You’d sooner find it in a cage than a showroom. Preview groups agreed and vetoed Rambo as not ready for prime time.

The third and ultimately successful design idea was the Schwarzenegger. Here was the right combination of proportion, contemporary power styling, and good, old American horse sense. It embodied all the principal elements Mustang buffs said they wanted, from the freestanding chrome horse in the grille to the scoops on the hood and flanks, and culminating with the three-bar taillights.

The design strike force went back to work on the Schwarzenegger to finalize its theme, then Mustang enthusiasts were corralled one final time. Magaldi relates what happened. “When we finished, we talked with them individually to get their candid comments. Then we asked them collectively, ‘What do you think?’ Well, they stood up and applauded. We were really happy with that.”

Looking Inside

On the inside, the Mustang has been updated with considerable style. The double-cowl dash panel incorporates standard driver and passenger airbags along with three-point seatbelts for all four occupants. A tilt steering wheel, pullout cupholder, and power-operated driver’s seat also are standard. The new front buckets are supportive but compliant so cross-country treks will be a Jot more comfortable than in previous Mustangs. The rear seat in coupes features a standard split fold-down seat back for interior trunk access or extra room for longer cargo.

The sound systems were given serious attention. Ford is the first car maker to offer as original equipment the newest wrinkle in mobile audio mayhem, the MiniDisc player. Essentially a small compact disc encased in the same hardshell plastic wrapper as a 3.5-inch computer disk, the MiniDisc is available either in prerecorded form or blank. The dealer-installed premium system is tagged Mach 460. It includes three amplifiers, four mid-range tweeters, and four woofers. It can be ordered with MiniDisc or regular CD and cassette capabilities. And, yes, it produces 460 watts of earassaulting power.

The Power of Ideas

With the sheetmetal squared away, attention turned to the chassis and power teams. Two important parameters formed an early nucleus of communal thought: Mustang fans know what they like and are vocal about it, plus the whole program was budgeted for only about $700 million. That’s a whole lot of cash to win on a TV game show, but Ford spent about $6 billion on the upcoming CDW27 world cars, to be sold in the U.S. as the Ford Contour and Mercury Mystique. The truth is that car making is a monstrously money-hungry game. When money or time is short (and both were in this case), you think hard about how to deploy your resources. Ford needed a Hail Mary tactic to bring the SN95 line into the ’90s. It found it in chassis strengthening.

Ford supercomputers and engineers worked overtime to devise methods of reducing shock, noise, and vibration by tying the structure together more firmly. Just about everything from the floorpan to the roof panel is new or substantially modified to resist the transmission of road surface perturbations into the passenger compartment. The stiffer architecture also mitigates the creeping invasion of squeaks and rattles, and promotes improved ride and handling.

This chassis strength is the core of the new Mustang’s vigor. The unibody is better able to resist bending and torsional influences, so softer suspension settings can be used for improved ride quality without the usual sacrifice of handling proficiency. These improvements are most noticeable in the convertible. It benefits from additional bracing to offset the deletion of the rigid top.

The Mustang powers up in entry-level form with a fresh helping of horsepower. Gone is the noisy 2.3-liter four-cylinder paint-shaker that formerly propelled base cars. In its place comes a Taurus-derived 3.8-liter V-6 generating a welcome 145 horsepower – a 38-percent increase over the four-banger. GTs are still moved by the trusty 5.0-liter V-8, uprated this year to 215 horsepower from last year’s 205. Ford vows to add a Cobra model to the line in the spring with a massaged five-liter offering an output of 245 horsepower. Both current SN95 models are available with a standard five-speed transmission or the AOD-E four-speed electronic automatic gearbox.

We’re grateful for the inclusion of power four-wheel disc brakes as standard gear in all Mustangs, and ABS is an option everyone should consider for base Mustangs; GTs come with it standard.

Where do the horsepower options go from here? Ford says powertrain angels are working to provide the Mustang a version of the Lincoln Mark VIII 32-valve 4.6-liter V-8. It promises to deliver up to 300 horsepower for ’96.

At the Wheel

Both Mustang models are as distinctive to drive as they are to look at. The GT drifts through high-energy corners with about the same tire-howling delight as the ’93, but now has more understeer designed in for a measure of restraint. (More than a third of current Mustang owners are 25 years old or less, an age when driving skills are still being honed.) The driving experience is characterized by power rack-and-pinion steering that directs the car with more precision, and body roll is better controlled. On the street, the softer suspension and more rigid structure absorb shake and shiver as never before.

Though still a high-performance car, the Mustang GT offers a newly split personality: It’s a bit slower overall, but braking and handling are far superior to those of previous Mustangs. In formal acceleration testing, the new GT Coupe with a five-speed produced a 0-60-mph time of 6.9 seconds; still pretty quick, but a notch off of the 6.2-second clocking of its previous-generation counterpart. Its quarter mile best was similarly longer, clocking in with 15.4 seconds at 88.5 mph. An automatic GT ragtop brought home a 0-60 sprint of 7.8 seconds and a quarter mile of 15.9 seconds at 87.6 mph, just a few clicks behind the coupe in each category. The extra acceleration promised by the pending 245-horsepower Cobra should round out the Mustang thoroughbred models to their former ground-pounding status.

The five-speed V-6 coupe ran away with an 8.9-second 0-60 time and delivers good low-rpm torque for excellent part-throttle acceleration. Rowing through the six-cylinder’s powerband with the manual is strongly reminiscent of the first Mustang and the driving excitement it presented. The convertible six-cylinder we tested with a four-speed automatic showed a best 0-60-mph time of 11.2 seconds, and 18-flat at 78.5 mph in the quarter mile. This model is destined to be the affordable link to open-air driving fun. Strutural rigidity in the open-air model is impressive, dollar-for-dollar on par with any convertible on the planet. Wind buffeting is almost non-existent with the top down, and noise is admirably controlled with the softtop up. As an additional barrier against the elements in any climate, Ford will offer an optional removable hardtop for about $1500.

The Mustang is a competent and extremely attractive way to cruise Gratiot Avenue or Sunset Boulevard. Its first-class styling, excellent dynamics, and adherence to performance as a fundamental truth make it the most significant new American car this year. As a stand-alone heir to the Mustang title and throne, the SN95 has pulled the sword from the stone. And in all its iterations, it’ll appeal to many more drivers than merely the legion of Mustang buffs who’ve anxiously awaited its arrival. As an elegant answer to the pony-car equation, the new Mustang earns our highest accolade: Motor Trend ’94 Car of the Year.