1971 Mach 1, Rare Blue with White. Dealer demo car?

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jas280z

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Location
Buffalo
My Car
1971 Mach 1 H code FMX Grabber Blue with 5W Deluxe White Interior
The car was ordered very early in the 1971 run. I think it must have been a dealer demo car, or something similar. It was ordered as a Fleet car with a rental speedo. It was built 9/15/1970, but wasn't sold until 1/30/1971.

Does anyone have any other theories on the Fleet designation and rental cog? That combined with the fact that the dealer had it for almost 4 months makes me think that it may have been a car for dealer use. I have some of the original bill of sale paperwork, I should take that out and see what more info it has.

As far as the order and build date, this appears to be a fairly early 1971 model. Does anyone know when they started production or ordering for the '71 model year? I would imagine that there are not many earlier '71 Machs still around.

I am going to call Marti to see why the window sticker has no prices listed, I imagine it has something to do with the Fleet order. I hope the Eminger report has prices, I am curious what this car cost originally with all the options. I do not have the original window sticker.

 
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Love that color combination with the black (but I am biased). More pictures please.
Thanks! My dad has a '70 Mach with a Wimbledon White exterior and Blue interior, so I think it is neat to have the "negative."

A lot more pictures can be found here: http://imgur.com/a/GYfRb

 
What's the DSO number? That might give some clue.
Memphis DSO, car sold to dealer In Muscle Shoals, AL
Correct. There actually still is a Ford Dealership at that location. Under a different name though. Also, Muscle Shoals is where Mustang Sally was recorded. I'm honestly not a fan of the song, I've heard it at too many car shows, but that is still cool.

I called Marti about the lack of prices on the sticker, and the typo in the dealer address (should be Woodward, not Wooward). They said the typo was how Ford had it in their database, so "correct," I am cool with that. The lack of prices was due to it being such an early car, prices were not set yet, it was up to the dealer to fill in. I think that is pretty cool.

 
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Interesting car. Can you please describe what a fleet/rental speedometer is? I have never heard of them.

Thanks for sharing your info!

Ray

 
The car was ordered very early in the 1971 run. I think it must have been a dealer demo car, or something similar. It was ordered as a Fleet car with a rental speedo. It was built 9/15/1970, but wasn't sold until 1/30/1971.

Does anyone have any other theories on the Fleet designation and rental cog? That combined with the fact that the dealer had it for almost 4 months makes me think that it may have been a car for dealer use. I have some of the original bill of sale paperwork, I should take that out and see what more info it has.

As far as the order and build date, this appears to be a fairly early 1971 model. Does anyone know when they started production or ordering for the '71 model year? I would imagine that there are not many earlier '71 Machs still around.

I am going to call Marti to see why the window sticker has no prices listed, I imagine it has something to do with the Fleet order. I hope the Eminger report has prices, I am curious what this car cost originally with all the options. I do not have the original window sticker.
My 71 429 Mach 1 was built on 9/25/70 and was ordered on the FMC Lease program. The window sticker did have prices at that time mine was built. Yours is the first I have seen with a blank window sticker as far as prices go. Also, I would think if your car was ordered by dealer as a demo car it would likely (in my opinion) would have had a ton of options.neither way your car is beautiful and your lucky to be its caretaker!

 
Interesting car. Can you please describe what a fleet/rental speedometer is? I have never heard of them.

Thanks for sharing your info!

Ray
Unfortunately, I do not know. The folks at Marti were not sure either.



According to my Marti report my car was built 8/12/70. One day behind schedule. I thought that had to be pretty early.
WOW! If what I have read about the VIN sequencing is correct, your car was the 1787th car to roll off the line at Dearborn (not Mustang, but car in general) in 1971. My car was a month and almost 10,000 cars later. I did not realize that they started building so early into 1970. That means that they made about 2400 cars a week between mine and yours. I would expect that yours was made in the first week of production, probably the third or fourth day that cars were rolling off the line!

 
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Interesting car. Can you please describe what a fleet/rental speedometer is? I have never heard of them.

Thanks for sharing your info!

Ray
Unfortunately, I do not know. The folks at Marti were not sure either.



According to my Marti report my car was built 8/12/70. One day behind schedule. I thought that had to be pretty early.
WOW! If what I have read about the VIN sequencing is correct, your car was the 1787th car to roll off the line at Dearborn (not Mustang, but car in general) in 1971. My car was a month and almost 10,000 cars later. I did not realize that they started building so early into 1970. That means that they made about 2400 cars a week between mine and yours. I would expect that yours was made in the first week of production, probably the third or fourth day that cars were rolling off the line!

I was surprised as well. But thinking about it, I worked in an automotive tempered glass facility for a lot of years and the OEMs always shut down for two weeks in July for tooling changes then ramped back up in August. We always got a week off ourselves.

 
Like cobra2572 says they do the model changes over the July 4 holiday, all car companies in U.S. do. There are several builds before that to prove out the new models. Some do not make it to market. I have seen as many as 200 pre-production vehicles made for testing, photo shoots and various engineering tasks. I would think first production would be in late July. It is odd that the prices did not show up on the sticker. They know exactly what their cost are way before production.

When they do first trials on parts they do what is called a screw build and use scribed panels. You have to scribe the body panels with the coordinates for the position in the build. Ford has a big fixture in the quality area they they put the parts into and Screw them together with sheet metal screws. The scribed lines in 100 mm grids show if the panels do not align in X,Y,Z coordinates. Suppliers have to be present for those builds in case there is an issue. Most issues I have seen were with the Ford assembly fixtures not being incorrect.

Great car good info,

David

 
My 1972 convertible was built July 29th 1972 - 8 days behind schedule.

Possibly one of the last 72's. I do wonder when the last day of production was???

my conv prod dates.JPG

Ray

 
Looks like there are still a lot of early cars in existence. That is nice to see!

I just ordered the Eminger Invoice, along with another window sticker. I place to have the prices from the Eminger invoice hand written on the second window sticker, as the folks at Marti said the dealer would have done.

I still can't find too much on the Rental Speedometer Gear. I need to see what else I can dig up on the car's history. I am fairly certain that it was not a rental car, but I could be wrong.

 
Looks like there are still a lot of early cars in existence. That is nice to see!

I just ordered the Eminger Invoice, along with another window sticker. I place to have the prices from the Eminger invoice hand written on the second window sticker, as the folks at Marti said the dealer would have done.

I still can't find too much on the Rental Speedometer Gear. I need to see what else I can dig up on the car's history. I am fairly certain that it was not a rental car, but I could be wrong.
Maybe... it was so they could show the car with 5 mi on it after renting it out for 6 months...

That is interesting though, have never seen that before...

 
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