Conor Twomey has a Pauline experience as he joins the Mustang apostles in Tennesse to mark the Pony car's 40th anniversary celebrations
What's so special about the Mustang? Why all the fuss? I was fumbling in the dark when it came to the Ford Mustang - a lost soul, a heathen among the converted flock.
This iconic car turns 40 this week, and I'm watching the first of the 3,500 cars to attend the celebrations at the Nashville Super Speedway in Tennessee rumble in. But being from Ireland, I've nothing in my mental files to make sense of what's going on around me.
They're not especially rare or expensive or exotic - quite the opposite in fact - and having driven a rental one recently, I thought it was pretty dire on the road. Yet here, among the converted, the place is a hive of activity and pulsing with excitement.
With opening proceedings out of the way, I mosey off (that's what you do in Tennessee) to examine some of these "Pony Cars". It takes only a few moments before its remarkable grace and elegance makes a deep impression on me, and I'm beginning to see why the Mustang is so revered: as pretty as it is in 2004, I can only imagine how this car must have shone compared to the mainstream dullards on sale in America in 1964. Small wonder there were big queues outside dealerships the day it went on sale.
Steve McPherson was parking his 1965 Fastback when we met. He had brought it all the way from Dayton, Ohio, and far from gleaming in the brilliant sunlight, his recently resurrected Mustang was a dilapidated pile of rust after 16 years in a barn.
His car became the centre of attention as people gravitated to it from all angles to offer advice and recall their own experiences. Immediately I notice Steve being drawn to the Mustang's bright, flickering flame and although his wife is understandably mad at him, it won't be long before she gets drawn in too.
According to the head of design on the original Mustang, Joe Orso, it's the women who usually decide what car a family buys, so the Mustang was designed to be as alluring to women as it was men. The ploy worked, if the number of female Mustang owners/experts at the show is anything to go by.
Mustangs have a siren-like quality: seeing one makes you want one, and having one makes you abandon all reason and perspective. Mustangs get more pampering and adulation than a pop diva, but it was just as bad when the car was new. Back then, customers spent an average of $1,000 on options for their new Mustangs, increasing the $2,460 sticker price by over 40 per cent.
Take Les Baer and his wife Karen Faust, who trailered their magnificent 1970 Boss 429 and '66 Shelby GT all the way from Illinois - some 500 miles. These beautifully prepared examples are just two of over 30 Mustangs they own, including several they drag race at weekends.
Contrast those $100,000 cars with Pat and Forrest Jackson's 1966 Coupé, which cost them the princely sum of $5. Actually, they won it in a Mustang Club raffle in 1996 and gradually brought it to concours standard over a four-year period. Forrest got caught up in the whole Mustang thing after buying his father's car back in 1997. Since then, a 1965 Coupé, a '91 5.0 and a '99 Anniversary Edition have all joined the "family".
If I sound like I vaguely know what I'm talking about, then thanks is owed to Gary and Bobbie Richart who spend a solid hour filling me in on all things Mustang, helping me to understand how its affordability and classlessness helped engrain it so deeply in American culture. They drove their prize-winning 1968 GT convertible 10 hours from Harrison, Arkansas, and like most people at the event it's not their only Pony. Gary bought his first in 1975 for $300 and still has it to this day, while their daughter has two more at home.
Of course, as with all car clubs, there's an unspoken pecking order within the Mustang sorority, something that displeases Roy Royster. His unfinished 1978 Mustang languishes in a distant corner of the car park with other cars of similar vintage.
Their post-oil crisis Mustangs are a sad parody of the original car, with awkward styling and miserable performance, but they nonetheless adore them and aren't impressed with being cast out to the fringes.
But then all religions have a hierarchy and the Ford Mustang. People's homes are shrines to it, events like this are its church, the likes of Carroll Shelby and Lee Iococca are its saints and bishops.
Before Nashville I knew nothing about the car, but now I have truly seen the light. The Ford is my shepherd, and there is nothing (else) I shall want.
Seven lesser known facts about the Mustang:
1. It was secretly developed by some enthusiastic engineers who wanted to make Ford's pedestrian range a little sexier.
2. It took five attempts to get it approved. Henry Ford finally told product planner Don Frey: "I'm tired of hearing about your fucking Mustang. I'm going to approve it, and it's your ass if it doesn't sell."
3. Designer Joe Orso admits the car's styling was deliberately Italian - bumpers like Ferrari's and grille mascot similar in execution to Maserati.
4. It was originally to be called Cougar. They were also going to call it Torino, but news of Henry Ford II's affair with an Italian woman leaked so the Italian name was dropped.
5. The Shelby Mustang GT500 had a 7-litre V8, 355 bhp and could hit 60 in 5.9 seconds in 1968!
6. The current Mustang's chassis is 25 years old and is to be replaced in the autumn by a model based on a Jaguar platform.
7. There's going to be a new Shelby model, the first time in 35 years.