Rest Easy Hal Sperlich

[MAGS1]

One of the original Mustang team members has passed away…

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[Bikeman315]

Thanks for posting Mark. I saw this and forgot to post.

 

[MAGS1]

He, Gale and RJ Miller are featured in the documentary A Faster Horse. It’s fantastic if you haven’t seen it. Was done in conjunction with the rollout of the S550/50th anniversary of Mustang. It’s available on Prime Video

 

[Hack]

The way the article is written, it sounds like all he did was suggest Ford use the Comet underpinnings for the Mustang. I'm sure he did a heck of a lot more than that. Too bad the article doesn't talk about those details.

To me, the underpinnings are the worst part of the original Mustang. The front suspension is so cheaply made. The rear of the body seems fine, though.

However, I think the real success of the original Mustang was because it was inexpensive and good looking. So, I'm talking myself into thinking that maybe it's fortunate that Hal suggested Ford use something crappy and dirt cheap under the car. Maybe that one suggestion that seems very minor was actually genius and resulted in several iconic cars being developed that would not have existed otherwise.

I do like that the S550 is more of a GT car and less of an economy car compared to the original version. I'm sure Ford would sell a lot more if they went back to the original philosophy of a cheap and good-looking vehicle, but they wouldn't be as fun to drive.

 

[MAGS1]

The way the article is written, it sounds like all he did was suggest Ford use the Comet underpinnings for the Mustang. I'm sure he did a heck of a lot more than that. Too bad the article doesn't talk about those details.

To me, the underpinnings are the worst part of the original Mustang. The front suspension is so cheaply made. The rear of the body seems fine, though.

However, I think the real success of the original Mustang was because it was inexpensive and good looking. So, I'm talking myself into thinking that maybe it's fortunate that Hal suggested Ford use something crappy and dirt cheap under the car. Maybe that one suggestion that seems very minor was actually genius and resulted in several iconic cars being developed that would not have existed otherwise.

I do like that the S550 is more of a GT car and less of an economy car compared to the original version. I'm sure Ford would sell a lot more if they went back to the original philosophy of a cheap and good-looking vehicle, but they wouldn't be as fun to drive.

You bring up a good point about the affordability back in the day. It’s a hot topic today given the price of cars in general but particularly S650. I know a good chunk of it is the cost to build is just higher, but I can’t help but think a good chunk of it is just a shift in customer wants/needs. S550 started out with really good sales numbers but they did decline over time, with the exception of 2023 (up from 2022 sales). First year of S650 was about equal to 2022 S550 sales, so Ford is probably looking at sales trends and thinking how they need to price the car to recoup their initial investment cost for S650 and also make a profit. Volume just isn’t there so price has to go up. Maybe taking less profit (or even breaking even the first few years) to keep the price lower might drive volume, but it really just seems customers are moving away from these types of cars (Camaro, Charger and Challenger as we knew them are dead). Just something I’ve been thinking about.

And totally agree, I think the article is discounting the contributions of guys like Hal and Gale. Yeah, Iacocca was the “mastermind” if you will, but he certainly didn’t do it alone. Using a cheap platform as the baseline to keep the price down was genius in my mind and why they sold a million of those cars over the first few years.

We’ll see what the future holds but if sales continue to hover around 45-50k units per year, Mustang pricing will remain elevated or it will just go away altogether. At some point Ford may decide the juice isn’t worth the squeeze unfortunately

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