Wednesday 2 June 2010

ALL YOU WANT TO DO IS RIDE AROUND...DONALD FREY: THE GUARDIAN OBITUARY

My obit of Donald Frey, the man behind the Ford Mustang, is up at Guardian.co.uk and will be in tomorrow's paper. ((Postscript on 3 June: the story is in today's paper, and looks great, but the main photo is, unfortunately, not a Mustang, but the Dodge Charger which Bullit's Mustang chases in the movie!).

Many thanks to muscle-car freak George Pelecanos for the valedictory quote. When I was books editor of Petrolhead, I remember reviewing a book about car safety which called the '68 Mustang, which has to be one of my favourite cars--though I like the earlier ones better-- the greatest phallic symbol car ever made, or words to that effect. My response was 'as if'!

Frey's is a great story, and I wouldn't be surprised if that 1964-1972 era may have constituted a high point of sorts in American cars. Certainly, in terms of gassing them guzzlers up, it was.

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