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2001 Ford Mustang Review

 Marc K. Stengel Marc K. Stengel
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2001 Ford Mustang Bullitt by Paul A. Eisenstein (6/4/2001)
You review the '02 Mustang Bullitt
 

Since the Mustang's debut at the 1964 World's Fair in New York, more than 6.9 million of these precocious pony cars have hit the road. They're everywhere; and they're such an integral part of the automotive landscape that driving a Mustang elicits very little special attention anymore.

So it was a singular pleasure to be strafing through traffic last week and note, out of the corners of my eyes, that perhaps I was making a bit of a spectacle of myself behind the wheel of Ford's special-edition Mustang GT, surnamed Bullitt.

I was only 12 years old when Steve McQueen, a.k.a. Frank Bullitt, taught the world that four-wheel aviation was simply a matter of choosing, one, the right car and, two, the right place to abuse it. His chase scene in the '68 Peter Yates movie Bullitt still ranks as the most hair-raising, adrenaline-pumping, adolescent-frenzifying single sequence of motor mayhem that's ever been preserved for posterity. Up and down San Francisco's diabolical hill streets, McQueen launched his '68 Mustang Fastback GT 390 weightlessly into mid-air through intersection after punishing intersection.

I can still remember watching that film beset by involuntary groans that synchronized with every chassis-mangling crunch of a hard landing. Although I didn't understand why at the time, I also remember this odd, shall I say stirring of the loins that accompanied every rippling fusillade of V-8 acceleration, every tire-shredding power slide through inner-city corners. By the time McQueen ditched his shambling heap of a muscle car at the end of that chase, I was almost grateful because by then, I was completely, blissfully drained.

Vicarious flight

I suppose Ford is betting that there are at least 6000 guys around the country who have similar suspicions that they may have lost their vehicular virginity while flying vicariously like a Bullitt through San Francisco traffic three decades ago. That's how few Mustang Bullitt GTs are available for 2001, in comparison with the 160,000 or so run-of-the-mill Mustangs that Ford is on track to sell by year-end. What's particularly fascinating about this $26,830 coupe is the calculated way Ford can coax adolescent yearnings out of hiding with a tour de force of subliminal manipulation.

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