17 April 1964: Ford unveils the Mustang
Ford introduced the Mustang at the New York World's Fair on April 17, 1964. Cheap, sporty and built largely on existing Falcon parts, it hit a nerve with baby boomers buying their first cars. Ford sold more than 400,000 in its first year, far beyond forecasts, and an entire class of pony cars was born. Few product launches have so clearly matched the moment.
The lesson: Great products are often clever recombinations of existing parts, aimed squarely at a customer nobody else is serving.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Ford at the start of 1990 → $1,500 today, vs $19,429 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 1990, the first year in our price data after the event. That is 1.5 times the money, but $17,929 less than a plain index fund made over the same years.
What Ford teaches: Surviving without a bailout is admirable but not the same as compounding; a well-run turnaround can still leave a stock below where it started decades earlier.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | $8.00 | $1,500 | $19,429 |
| 1995 | $10.00 | $1,200 | $14,783 |
| 2000 | $26.00 | $462 | $4,626 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought Ford? Every starting year and the full story →
More Ford history
- 5 January 1914: Henry Ford announces the $5 workday
- 27 September 1908: The first Model T rolls out
- 1 October 1908: Ford rolls out the Model T
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
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