Pony car

Mustang logo on the grille of a 1967 Ford Mustang

Under pony cars means a genus of American automobiles. For US standards at the time, these vehicles were rather small coupes and convertibles with large 6- or 8-cylinder engines. The name goes back to the Ford Mustang introduced in 1964 as the second car of its kind . The first car of this type was the Plymouth Barracuda, which Chrysler introduced two weeks before the Ford. The name “Pony Car” is derived from the radiator grille logo of the Ford Mustang, which shows a galloping horse ( Mustang ). The main design feature was described as “long hood, short deck”, ie a long bonnet and a short rear. The vehicles were relatively cheap to buy and were aimed primarily at young customers. Analogous to the parallel existing trend of muscle cars , there were vehicles with extremely high engine outputs, sometimes more than 400 hp. Most pony cars were discontinued as early as the mid-1970s with the end of the muscle car era. There was only one Ford Mustang until recently. The Chevrolet Camaro and its sister model Pontiac Firebird were discontinued in 2002, but there has been a Camaro again since 2010 and a Dodge Challenger since 2008 .

In the late 1960s and 1970s there was an attempt in Europe to copy the concept of the pony cars. Analogous to the entire car market, these models were significantly smaller and less motorized. The typical representatives of these inexpensive vehicles known as sports coupes were the Ford Capri and the Opel Manta . The tradition of small coupés for the mass market goes back longer in Europe. There were vehicles like the Renault Caravelle and the Simca 1000 Coupé as early as the early 1960s .