In the annals of American business, nothing is more dangerous than fooling around with a company’s hard-earned brand. And over the past fifty years, there are ample examples of boardroom decisions leading to disastrous results along those lines.
From Coca-Cola’s “New Coke” to Cadillac’s subcompact Cimarron, the history of marketing failures is a painful lesson for even the most successful enterprises, and none more than Ford Motor Company with its epic case of the Edsel in 1958.
So when we heard that Ford was rolling out an SUV-style electric vehicle using the Mustang badge, it was hard not to wonder why the car company would be willing to risk the Mustang’s hard-won prestige on something entirely different from the Pony class they had invented when the first Mustang was rolled out at the 1964 World’s Fair.
As with all things related to Ford, we drove down to Preston to talk with Michael Mitchell at Preston Auto. Michael, a professional actor on the Eastern Shore when not selling automobiles, couldn’t wait to start promoting the new line of Mustangs. A student of the classic Mustangs, he made a compelling argument that the new Mustang Mach-E was the perfect successor to the iconic heritage of the gas-fueled models. And it didn’t hurt that he started with the fact that even the entry-level Mach was capable of 0-60 in 5.9 seconds.
In our chat with Michael, we talk about the differences and similarities of the new Mustang and this bold move by Ford to be the first of the legacy car manufacturers to led the consumers into a new era of transportation.
This video is approximately three minutes in length. For more information about the new Mustang, please visit Preston Ford’s website here.
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