The First Pony Car Wasn't the Mustang, and Almost Nobody Remembers It
Everyone credits the Ford Mustang with creating the pony car, but it wasn't actually first. Plymouth beat Ford to the showroom by 16 days, launching the Barracuda on April 1st, 1964, two weeks before the Mustang arrived. Its most striking feature was an enormous curved rear window, the largest single piece of glass ever fitted to a production car at the time. But being first wasn't enough. The Barracuda was built on Plymouth's plain economy car and looked a little too much like it, while the Mustang looked fresh and exciting. Ford crushed it in sales, roughly five to one in that very first year. The Barracuda won the race to market, but it lost the war.
About Pony car
Pony car is an American car classification for affordable, compact, highly styled coupés or convertibles with a "sporty" or performance-oriented image. Common characteristics include rear-wheel drive, a long hood, a short deck, bucket seats, room for four, a wide range of options to individualize each car and use of mass-produced parts shared with other models. The popularity of pony cars is largely due to the launch of the Ford Mustang in 1964, which created the niche and term.
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