The Ford Banquett presentations were mostly about well-known old commercials and changes the Mustang underwent over the years, not so much new stuff and no word about oncoming Mustangs.

Only a guarantee that the Mustang will be there as a car and icon forever. Words that had been used earlier that day from Mulcahy.

GT500 Supersnake displayed outside at the Marriotts

..until I found out who was with me at my table.

I expected in fact something different for an official Ford Banquett for Mustang insiders aside from putting a few very well-known old Mustang commercials on the screen and having a few Ford names speak about their memories, but I should probably realize that official Banquets are just like that..or that Ford has other problems than to spend more time into this. I enjoyed so far an SAAC-25 Banquett with Carroll Shelby, at which at least some unforeseeable incidents and more personal "coming outs"... interrupted the well planned program, which caused more attention. 

Anyway this 45th. Ford Banquett was a typical presentation sequence such as the Mustang history part from Jim Owens (VP Marketing and Communications), a few guys talking about their memories, but at least with an excellent Elvis imitator at the end. You'd say awesome probably.

But Banquetts are a good platform to get in touch with other Mustangers and so I learned form my neighbours that 2 of them worked in the Design studio from the early 1960ies to 1967 at least and having done some, if not all of the Mustang clay models presented in August 1962. What an incident and interesting talk to learn about how they did it detail by detail, which added to my knowledge of the background stories - too early to speak about everything right now, but I'll add it later maybe.

Next to me was also the President of the Mustang Club of Charlotte County Chuck White and on the other site a few insiders from the Ford Racing Team. 
Finally I even won a 2010 Mustang launch scale model in its original box, which I gave to Holly of course, since she could not be with us this evening as a small compensation for her lost opportunities to meet Ford people.

I also missed here various interesting people as I heard later, one thing that was all to common for many Mustagners, there were just too many of your friends or e-mail contacts around.

Author: Wolfgang Kohrn