2005 Ford Mustang Interior

SANTA MONICA, CA -- Morning light glistened off the Pacific Ocean as I climbed down onto the Santa Monica boardwalk for a morning walk along the beach. As an artists’ community such as Santa Monica, I had plenty of company, but three people stood out from the eclectic crowd.

They were holdovers. And from the Sixties as well. One wore a tie-dyed T-shirt, with silver hair collected into a braid down his back. The tin sound of a Beatles song escaped his small transistor radio, and he rode a wide-handled cruiser with a wicker basket in the front. The other two were clearly a couple, dressed alike with broad-brimmed straw hats (hers accented with a ribbon) and Nehru-style shirts over faded blue jeans. They were each capturing their own view, with easels set up on the Santa Monica Pier. He was painting the scene to the north. She preferred the light to the south.

Holdovers at the beach, I thought. How typical. I wondered if the new 2005 Ford Mustang was also a holdover from the sixties.

Not likely. And, as it turns out, not at all. In fact, there is a marked difference between the previous generation Mustang, and the Mustangs of the sixties, those most commonly thought to provide the inspiration for the 2005 model. Yes, the 2005 Ford Mustang is retro: inside and out. But it’s also refreshingly modern, especially when it comes to the interior. There is a dramatic and way-cool difference in a cockpit that becomes your home-away-from-home (or as Ford will suggest in a new ad campaign--your Field of Dreams) when you get into the 2005 model. The experience reminded me of last year, when Ford Motor Company introduced the all-new F-150 pickup truck. Among the truck’s attributes, its interior execution stood out as particularly impressive. All across the lineup, from the base XL model to the fully refined Lariat, the cockpit seemed car-like in its layout, precision, and in some cases, luxuriousness. One question that was asked then was – why can’t Ford’s car interiors look this good?