“You know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?”
In Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 movie Pulp Fiction, John Travolta is schooling Samuel L Jackson in the difference between Europe and America when the talk turns to burgers. Travolta’s Vincent explains that the metric-loving French wouldn’t know what a quarter pounder was, so McDonalds calls it the ‘Royale with Cheese.’
But it wasn’t the imperial-metric divide that caused problems for Ford when it wanted to sell its original Mustang in Germany in the mid 1960s. It was that age-old problem of another company owning the rights to the name. Ford couldn’t legally call its pony car ‘Mustang’ there because the name was trademarked by Krupp, who was using it on big trucks.
According to Mustang Maniac Krupp offered Ford the chance to use the name for $10,000, but the Blue Oval suits refused. Instead, they decided to sell the Mustang in Germany as the T5 right through until 1979 when Krupp’s copyright on the name expired and Ford was finally able to apply the Mustang label. Why T5? Because that was the internal Ford code for the Mustang.
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The 1965-66 T5 cars were built in Dearborn and were given some mechanical upgrades to make them suitable for Europe, including Euro-spec lights and turn signals, and apparently the shock tower brace more usually found on the Shelby GT350 to improve handling. But getting rid of all the usual Mustang references was an equally involving job. U.S.-spec models had the word ‘Mustang’ emblazoned on the steering wheel center, the gas cap, the front fender, and some had it on the hubcaps too.
Ford had to replace them all with blank equivalents or T5 badges, which must have cost a few Deutchmarks to tool up for. Surely it would have made more sense to cough up the $10k in the first place, if that quoted figure was actually true? All of which makes this restored 1965 4.7-liter V8 convertible, currently for sale for £49,750 ($60,000) in the UK, an interesting side-note in Mustang history, and would be sure to confuse a few people if you decided to repatriate to America.
