Ford's Mustang, launched on April 17, 1964, became the Official Car of the Baby Boom. It was a fortuitous accident of timing and a brilliant result of product planning. This sleek, stylish automobile launched the "Pony Car" genre with a staggering 417,000 sales in its first year. Through 40 years of tough competition from Chrysler and General Motors, the Mustang has survived and outlasted them all. Dozens of interviews bring insight to the 40-year-old story, the on-going legend, and the Mustang's future., 2003 marks the 100th Anniversary of Ford Motor Company, and 2004 will be the 40th Anniversary of the Mustang., Filled with exciting, brand-new photography ofsignificant Mustang production models from the first 1964-1/2s to the new 2005 concept GT and Convertible., Startling action photography., Includes interviews with designers, engineers, product planners and racers who made the Mustang the legend it is today. If you decide you can have only one Mustang book in your library, this is the one to have.
Photographer and writer, Randy Leffingwell, has more than 35 books in print, primarily on Americana subjects. These cover interests and areas as diverse as the American barn and Harley-Davidson motorcycles, California's wine country and John Deere farm tractors. His awareness of and attraction to moving things goes back as far as he can remember, to the first Dinky Toys and Match Box cars his father and mother gave him. His practical introduction to real sports cars came several years later when his uncle took him to watch a weekend of racing events at Meadowdale International Raceway in suburban Chicago.
Throughout all this time, however, he imagined himself becoming an architect and his life-long admiration of buildings and design began with frequent trips to downtown Chicago. While in undergraduate studies at Kansas University in the architectural engineering sequence, he discovered photography, journalism, and reawakened an earlier passion for writing. He scarcely looked back as he shifted his major studies from architecture, through English, Art History, psychology, and finally to the William Allen White school of Journalism for a BS in photojournalism.
Following graduation from KU, Randy began a successful career as a photojournalist first at the Kansas City TIMES, then joining the staff of the Chicago SUN-TIMES where he remained for nine years. He then worked as associate editor at AutoWeek magazine in Detroit, before being hired by the Los Angeles TIMES as a writer/photographer. He worked for the TIMES for 11 years, covering everything from news stories to personality profiles to food features throughout Italy, film festivals in France and Utah, and live theater in London. It was, he says, a great job and a great place to work.
His latest project is a large history of Harley-Davidson for them. During this project, he photographed 193 motorcycles from the Harley-Davidson Archives Collection and he completed the corresponding text for the book in early April 2007. Release of this 432 page book tentatively is scheduled for early 2008.