What Is a Notchback Mustang?
For a generation of hot rodders, winning was as simple as ticking the right box. From its inception in 1964 until 1993, the Ford Mustang was offered continuously in two roof styles: formal coupe and fastback. While the fastback designation changed to hatchback with the second generation in 1974, the overall shape of the tumblehome was preserved in silhouette, freezing the iconic Mustang fastback shape as the definitive version. The Mustang was a chiseled wedge in reverse that looked as if it could leave the air undisturbed after making its splashy entrance. We're talking decades before the notchback Mustang, but hear us out. The formal coupe, however, was the bread-and-butter car. Its square shoulders and simple boxy shape exuded practicality; a relatively large trunk, improved rear visibility, lower price, and stiffer construction proved more important to customers who may otherwise have secretly coveted the fastback. (Do any of those attributes ring a bell with the Mustang notchback?) As the sales numbers added up over the years, the formal coupe was the hands-down winner, much to the chagrin of Mustang lovers today. See all 23 photos See all 23 photos  When the third-generation Mustang debuted in 1979, there would be two versions as well: a two-door sedan (the windows were now framed) and hatchback. Ford didn't want to change the formula that had made the Mustang so successful, and that meant there should be a Mustang for every person and every purpose. The job fell to Ford VP of design, Jack Telnack, who had three teams working on parallel designs, two in Detroit and one in Italy. We're getting to that. See all 23 photos See all 23 photos  The third-generation Mustang would be built on the Fox platform, Ford's ambitious attempt to build cars on a world scale. A wide range of vehicles, from the sporty Mustang to utilitarian station wagons and luxury cars, would ride on the Fox platform, so a lot of flexibility was baked in up front. The unibody construction used MacPherson struts up front and a triangulated four-link with a solid axle in the rear; the body would derive its strength and stiffness from the body shell versus a separate frame, a cost- and weight-saving move that was becoming the new norm across the industry. See all 23 photos See all 23 photos  While we take the shape of the Fox-body Mustang for granted today, the options available to Telnack and crew were vast with the Fox platform's clean sheet in front of them. Looking at the many iterations coming out of all three Mustang design studios (check out the gallery to see them allgood, bad, and indifferent), it's impressive to see the wide design vocabulary being used, and at one point the Mustang team even considered a woodie station wagon as one of the body styles. Hang on, we're getting to the notchback. See all 23 photos See all 23 photos  Today, we see the stillborn woodie wagon Fox-body Mustang design and think, "Of course they didn't build that," but what is perhaps more remarkable is that Ford stuck to its guns and built both the notchback sedan and the hatchback side by side for so many years. Today, that would be implausible from a volume standpoint, but in 1979 the sales of Mustangs were significant enough to warrant it. Imagine today, for instance, if Dodge built a formal-roof coupe, a convertible, and a fastback Challenger?! See all 23 photos See all 23 photos  When the Fox Mustang hit the street in 1979, the V-8-powered hatchback Cobra (later morphing into the GT moniker) was the rock star of the Fox familyjust the way Ford planned it. Yet prior to that, within Ford's engineering bowels, the slide rules had been furiously sliding, and after discussion with the accountants, it seemed the small-block V-8 could be offered at a scandalously low price in the mundane notchback sedan. (Ahh, there it is!) A revolution was quietly brewing. Clearly, the big money was to be made on the brash new Mustang Cobra, but if the hot rodders behind closed doors in Dearborn took the right tone and didn't raise undue suspicion, they could sneak the small-block V-8 into the no-frills, low-mass notchback sedan, justifiably to offer a lower-cost special service police interceptor. See all 23 photos See all 23 photos  By 1980, a second fuel crisis had thrown a wet blanket on things, and after just one year, the 302ci was replaced with a smaller 255ci (4.2L) version of the Windsor small-block. Nevertheless, you could still get a V-8 in a stripped-down two-door Mustang notchback sedan. These so-called notchback "trunks" (another name used to denote the notchback) still weren't a thing with hot rodders on the street; these were dreary days, and with the Fox Mustang's nadir in 1982, the 255ci V-8 made as little as 111 horsepowerthat's not a typo! It's not all bad news, though; the important thing to remember is that our engineer buddies at Ford snuck the V-8 in there, even if it was just a placeholder for something better. See all 23 photos See all 23 photos  That something better came in 1982 with the return of the 302an engine that was increasingly referred to as the 5.0L due to new badges placed on the fenders. (It was actually a 4.9L!) The high-profit GTs continued flying off showroom floors unabated, but an increasing number of police departments (and civilians!) began checking the 5.0L LX sedan box (the "notchback" or "trunk") on the order form. In 1984, power bumped up to 175 hp, and by 1985 it was at 210 hpall to the greater glory of the GT hatchback, but the same engine was quietly being lowered between the fenders of ordinary notchback sedans. In just three years, power rose by 99 hp, and the little chump notchback had turned into a champ. See all 23 photos See all 23 photos  You can imagine the glee behind closed doors at Ford, particularly at powertrain. Early on, they had somehow convinced brass to drop the 5.0L into the base modelthe same way they did the high-end GT. With more power coming every year and all of it available in the low-cost Mustang LX notchback sedan (and hatchback), the bucks-down guy on the street could now roll withand soon beatvirtually anything new on the street from GM. Perhaps no one was happier than powertrain engineer Wally Bieber, who had been given the task to head up the engineering team to update the 5.0L Windsor to sequential electronic fuel injection and kick up the horsepower a notch. See all 23 photos See all 23 photos  The fuel-injected SEFI 5.0L Windsor debuted in 1986 with an even 200 hp, but bigger plans were in store for 1987 in conjunction with a mild aero-nose face-lift: Wally Bieber's SEFI 5.0L Windsor would get an unheard-of bump to 225 hp. Naturally, the 1987 Mustang GT made all the covers of the car magazines, but the silent masses who grabbed up dealership materials would thumb through the 1987 Mustang sales brochure and find a chart all the way back on page 17 that listed the 225-hp 5.0L EFI HO V-8 engine as optional equipment on the LX hatchback and notchback sedan (code 240A). Somehow, all the mainstream car mags missed this (which was likely intentional because Ford spent big to advertise the GT). To an ordinary kid paying rent, this revelation was like a bomb going off. See all 23 photos See all 23 photos  Overnight, plain-Jane LX 5.0s began showing up at grudge nights and late-night street races with their heavier LX 5.0 hatchback and GT siblings, the five-speed manual units being by far the fastest. Of the stick-shift Fox Mustangs, the notchback was the lightest of the three, and it quickly "notched" up the most wins. New IROC Camaros, Pontiac Trans Ams, and even high-dollar Corvettes fell to the cheap little 5.0L notchback like turkeys on the wrong end of a 12-gauge. Even on the rare occasions they lost, it wasn't by much, and to cars costing nearly twice as much. Notchback pilots could still walk away, head held high. Incredibly, Ford kept its foot to the floor, and the 5.0L notchback sedan's reign of terror lasted for eight long years through the 1993 model year. The car was so popular, it even spawned a magazine called Muscle Mustangs & Fast Fords. The only thing out of Detroit that could beat it was the Buick Regal Grand National and its low-cost twin, the Regal Turbo-Tbut that's a story for another day!