ACJupiter

Mustang vs. Camaro Wasn’t Much of a Battle
By STEPHEN WILLIAMS

1967 Ford Mustang.
Mustang versus Camaro: it’s a story as old as, well, 1967, when the Chevrolet Camaro was introduced as an answer to Ford’s muscle car.

Countless comparos have pitted the Ford and Chevy pony cars against each other, in countless iterations and machinations. But if you swear by the measure of the bottom line — sales over more than four decades — the ‘Stang’s the top dog.


Norman Mayersohn/The New York Times
1967 Chevrolet Camaro.
Still, a cheer of sorts must have emerged from the Chevy camp recently. For the month of June, Chevrolet’s just-out-of-the-box 2010 muscle car was delivered to 9,300 customers, many of whom have been waiting for months — and, in some cases, years — to collect their reinvented Camaros. Ford reported that it sold 7,600 of the mildly redone Mustangs in that month. As Don Sherman wrote in his assessment of the new Camaro in Automobile magazine: “The Camaro’s six-year absence really did make hearts yearn for a Ford Mustang foil.”

In was not always so. In fact, it was rarely so. According to figures from various sources, including from Ford, the Mustang outsold the Camaro in the United States in 28 out of the 36 years since the Chevy appeared as a first-generation coupe and convertible in 1967. (We’re not counting the six years that the Camaro was not built.)

In ’67, the Mustang already had a three-year head start; it was the progenitor of the pony car upon its debut in 1964, and more than 1.3 million examples had been sold before Chevy showed up. For the 1967 model year, the Mustang came out on top with more than 337,000 sold, compared with about 221,000 Camaros.

The Chevy’s best showings against the Mustang were in the early ’80s when the Camaro was handsomely redesigned but lost much of its power, although in 1971, by the narrowest of margins, the Camaro outsold the Ford for the first time, 128,106 to 127,062. But by the first years of this century, the Camaro was very much the also ran, with Mustangs beating the Chevy by as much as five to one. The previous generation Camaro was put to rest in 2003."

yellowjacketfever

i do have to agree with you on some of the topics. if it wasn't for the mustang ford would have been way down in car sales a long time ago. i read in a car magazine the other day, that in the 3 yr that gm made the gto, there was only a little over 49000 cars made. i have a 04 and in that yr ford made somewhere close to 250,000, that is why you see a mustang at just about every corner you go by. not a bad thing at all. i am just saying that ford made way more mustangs in each yr than they made camaros, except for i believe 1 yr. that you already put up. i also read that ford was going to build a mustang station wagon that they said would be for the moms. each car manufacturer makes cars that do not or just will not sell good at all.