some members of Magic City Mustangs at the 2002 Gulf Coast National Mustang Show in Pensacola, Florida, March 22-24, 2002

As Other Pony Cars Eat Dust, the Mustang Roars On
By DANNY HAKIM

For Brad Barnett, it all goes back to his childhood. "When I was 3 years old, my dad bought a light blue 1973 Mustang coupe from my mother's sister," Mr. Barnett recalled recently. "I told him I wanted the car to be mine and he promised it to me that day."

Today, Mr. Barnett, now 23 and a manager at a technology company in Birmingham, Ala., runs two Web sites for devotees of the Ford Mustang, the larger of which (themustangsource.com) averages about 80,000 hits a month. He is also a member of the Magic City Mustangs, a Birmingham club where guys talk 'Stangs and sports and swap parts.

"We're not trying to save the world," Mr. Barnett said. "It's just guys who like Mustangs, talking Mustangs."

Today, though, the pony cars Mr. Barnett and his fellow auto enthusiasts covet are a dying breed. The latest casualty came when General Motors said that this would be the last year for its Camaro and Firebird models, because of flagging sales.

Pony cars, named for the original Mustang of 1964, are small, sporty cars that could, in theory, carry four people. They looked athletic, but many came with economical six-cylinder or small V-8 engines that weren't very fast.

Some pony cars also qualified as muscle cars, with huge, powerful V-8's and fat tires that burned rubber when the driver jammed the gas pedal.

Back in the 1960's and 70's, the muscle car defined masculine bravado on the road the way electrified Stratocasters did on the radio. Burt Reynolds immortalized the Firebird Trans Am in "Smokey and the Bandit." The Duke boys ruled Hazzard County from a Dodge Charger nicknamed General Lee.

There were others, too, now long gone: the Plymouth Road Runner, the Chevelle SS, the Olds 4-4-2.

Now the Mustang stands practically alone. In recognition of its staying power, in 2004, the Ford Motor Company will move production of the car from the aging assembly plant in Dearborn, Mich., to a newer facility.

J Mays, Ford's chief designer, is planning a retro look for the car by mid-decade, so that its body more resembles the sinuous brute Steve McQueen drove in "Bullitt."

This has worked before for Mr. Mays, Detroit's king of retro. He revived the Ford Thunderbird, which had evolved from a noble creature to a profoundly ugly duckling, by giving it a stylish makeover. He did the same when he worked on the Volkswagen Beetle.

Mustang owners, though, are famously fanatical, and keeping them happy is crucial to keeping Mustang alive.

"They know every nut and bolt and every serial number," said Mr. Mays, adding that Ford consulted fan clubs to make sure it was not pushing designs beyond their comfort zone. "They want you to act as a curator, not as a designer."

There are 430 Mustang fan clubs with more than 70,000 members around the world.

There are specialty magazines like Muscle Mustangs & Fast Fords, a thick Primedia publication mostly comprising ads for custom parts like spherical bushings and replacement microchips that can rev up a car's performance beyond its factory specifications and even violate the warranty. (The April issue's cover features a bikini-clad brunette, perched on a hood of a yellow Mustang, flashing a come-hither smile.)

As Mr. Barnett's experience shows, not all Mustang buyers are 50-something guys in a midlife crisis. The average buyer is 39, and 38 percent of them are women.

Mr. Barnett said his love of the car was rekindled after seeing the 2000 movie, "Gone in 60 Seconds," in which a thief played by Nicholas Cage pined for an expensive version of the Mustang known as the Shelby.

"That brought back the Mustang fever," Mr. Barnett said.

After graduating from the University of Alabama in December, he said, "I decided I needed a car, a Mustang GT convertible. True blue."

One of his Web sites, which he started last year, is a collection of pictures of his own cars and others. The other site (MagicCityMustangs.com) is a home page for the Magic City Mustangs.

He also surfs more sophisticated sites, like StangNet.com, which is run by an Alabama e-commerce company and has more than half a million message board postings. Many are written in a jargon incomprehensible to those who just know where the oil goes.

"I have a 69 block 351W w/edelbrock performer r.p.m. intake," one drag racer said in a posting on the site. "I need a distributor that will work with the msd 6AL ignition I have." Huh?

Part of the appeal of the car, Mr. Barnett said, is that Mustangs can be customized so that hardly any two are alike. He has outfitted his own with special turn signals and a shifter that cuts down the time it takes to change gears. His custom lighter says "EJECT." ("I'm a James Bond fan," he said.)

"You buy a Mustang, you buy a car, a hobby, membership in a club," he said. "It is like a fraternity. If I wanted transportation, I would have bought a Civic."

Muscle cars were originally aimed at young men like Mr. Barnett, who were looking for cheap horsepower.

The Mustang and the Pontiac G.T.O., both souped up models built on the foundation of boring family cars, got the craze started in the mid-1960's.

But by the late 1980's, G.T.O. was long gone and an aging design had taken its toll on Mustang, to the point that Ford executives considered putting it out of its misery.

The company assigned engineers to see if the car could be salvaged. John Coletti, a Mustang enthusiast who is now chief engineer of Ford's special vehicles team, led the effort. He took his charge quite seriously.

"When you're given this kind of American treasure," he said, "you don't dare want to screw that thing up."

He and eight other engineers set up shop in an abandoned department store. They brought back some of the original Mustang's styling, such as the image of the horse on the grill.

"That seems a small thing to a lot of people, but to the enthusiasts, it was a monster," he said.

Still, it is not easy to survive in an era when most young guys seem to prefer S.U.V.'s and pickups, or, in some cases, hot-rod versions of Honda Civics. (American muscle cars were largely absent in a recent movie about street racing, "The Fast and the Furious.")

Even the passing of the Camaro, the Mustang's nemesis, is bittersweet. If the Mustang is the New York Yankees of muscle cars, then diehards feel that in the Camaro they have lost the Boston Red Sox.

"It's terrible all the way around," Mr. Coletti said of General Motor's decision. "It's like they've created a huge, gaping hole."

General Motor does plan to revive the Pontiac G.T.O. by next year, though the car will be built in Australia with a price beginning at least at $30,000, making it a bit rich to be a true muscle car.

The Mustang starts at just under $18,000, though the name encompasses several versions of varying horsepower.

This year, sales are down 20 percent, through March. But Mustang has largely been revived. Ford sold 169,000 Mustangs last year, more than double its sales a decade earlier.

On a recent visit to the Mustang plant in Dearborn, Michael Joseph, who handles internal communications at the facility, said there were 4,000 workers when he started as a line worker nearly three decades ago. "Now we have 1,800 people," he said. "But the market has changed."

He added that his son wanted, but would not get, a Ford Expedition. As a teenager, Mr. Joseph, 48, saved up to buy a Camaro and dreamed of driving to Hollywood.

"I thought I was hot stuff, too," he said, watching workers inspecting a banana yellow Mustang as it rolled slowly down the line.

Nowadays, Mr. Joseph drives a Taurus.

"I'm a family man," he said. "I've got a son in college. Soon as he gets done, watch out baby."