“There’s a lot of key elements we took from our heritage,” says Curic. “There’s certainly a bloodline running through it.”
Interior Design
The interior design team also listened carefully to what customers were asking for before putting pen to paper for the creation of the sixth generation product.
“There were four invitables that we definitely wanted in the interior,” says chief designer Doyle Letson. “We wanted it to be a symmetrical instrument panel with the double brow theme that is on all Mustangs, we wanted four round gauges, and we wanted premium materials. We ended up with two themes that we zero-ed in on fairly quickly, one of them I would consider to be more evolutionary and the other I would consider to be more revolutionary. We were able to blend both themes to get one strong theme in the end.”
The interior design theme also pulls characteristic Mustang design cues forward into a more modern arena, with the design keywords revolving around the symmetrical layout and proportion. Two large gauges reside in the instrument cluster ahead of the driver, while toggle switches at the base of the center stack communicate the sports car intent and aeronautical influences.
“It was great working with the engineering team because they gave us a lot of what we asked for,” says Letson. “We had a lot of meetings where we said we’ve got to have this: we’ve got to have that real aluminum, we can’t have it broken up and we want one piece. It’s got to look just like this, and they worked with us to give us what we needed from an appearance standpoint.”
“We worked on the steering wheel and its size to make it a comfortable driving environment,” he adds. “We got the cupholders shifted over; we got storage at the base of the center stack we’ve got larger storage in the doors – all of these features the customer asked for.”
But while the design team worked closely with engineering to get the results desired, Letson concedes that there was a sticking point.
“If you look at some of the earlier sketches you’ll see that we had four gauges [on the IP]. We were really pushing for this. We actually had registers [for the vents] on the side [of the center stack],” says Letson. “It became a huge issue.”
Ultimately the decision was made to incorporate a solution from this design theme onto vehicles fitted with the performance pack. Two gauges — for the boost and oil pressure — sit between the two circular air vents on the simple IP, achieving the airflow necessary as well as accentuating the aviation theme.
The steering wheel is a lot smaller than in today’s car, a decision that was made following customer input. “There are hundreds of decisions to be made when you’re doing a steering wheel,” says Letson, “If you look at today’s car the brightwork [on the spokes] wraps around the outside of the wheel, so your hand touches that when you’re driving. They really asked us to make it soft so they could interface with the leather and not the metal.”
“We retained a lot of iconic elements but it’s got to be a new 2015 experience that makes it a great new car. It’s without a doubt one of the most rewarding projects that I’ve ever worked on, but it’s also the toughest.”
