Article by Kevin Foley – Editor

He was an unassuming country gentleman. A person who side stepped the limelight to let others bask in its glow. Soft spoken allowing others to speak before his opinion was heard. Somehow you knew he was the type of man who would tip his hat to the ladies. You were more impressed with who Gale Halderman was as opposed to what he had accomplished.

Gale lost a brief battle with cancer on April 29th. He was 87. I consider myself among the fortunate to have had the opportunity not once but multiple times visiting him at his museum and many events were our paths crossed.
I’ve often mentioned the Mustang documentary A Faster Horse in my articles for a multitude of reasons. If you’ve seen this film, you’ve met Gale. His interview is woven throughout the story of the development of the sixth generation Mustang. Towards the end you see him glowing as he signs a little boy’s ball cap. He loved being around people who appreciated the Mustang. He never got tired of our stories. I asked if he ever imaged the popularity of a car he sketched late one night at his kitchen table. He said he’s been blown away at its world wide appeal and its never ending longevity.

His forty year career at Ford speaks volumes of his dedication to his employer. As much as Gale revered both Lee Iaccoca and the marketing genius Hal Sperlich, they couldn’t persuade him to follow them to Chrysler after their employment ended with Ford.

Gale retired in 1994 leading the Lincoln Mercury design team. One of his last accomplishments was the 1990 Lincoln Town Car which Motor Trend named car of the year.

The first time I met Gale was at his barn museum in his home town of Tipp City, Ohio. His daughter Karen is the curator of the barn turned museum housing artifacts from Gale’s career as well as Mustang and Ford memorabilia. Also included are Gale’s Model T, Model A, a Thunderbird and a couple of original Mustangs.

What I didn’t expect that day was a three hour conversation with the man himself. He told me about how the Mustang design literally took shape and some interesting as well as amusing antidotes about Hal Sperlich, Lee Iaccoca and Henry Ford II, (to name a few).

I was able to ask him about the different elements of design he incorporated into the original Mustang….Such as the grill “gills” which were reintroduced on the sixth generation Mustangs. The purpose of the “gills?” To drawn attention away from the seam between the headlamp surround or “door” and the headlamp bucket. The manufacturing team couldn’t give Gale a panel that was without a seam so he improvised by creating the sharklike gills.

I showed him a photo of a ‘66 Mustang Fastback prototype with three separate tail lights on each side of the car. Why didn’t they make it into production? Gale said Ford had a cost saving rule which limited the use of two bulbs for taillights. By combining the three taillights into a cluster, he managed to stay within the rule.

Interesting to note that on the ‘67 – ‘68 models, the front seam was eliminated and three separate taillights on each side were incorporated into the design of the car. Gale’s influence ultimately prevailed.

I met up with Gale at different events on my many trips back to Detroit and even got to visit with him at the 55th Mustang birthday celebration in Charlotte last year. It was at the ribbon cutting event for the Mustang Owner’s Museum where he walked up to me and said he had a shirt just like the one I was wearing….(A Mustang Club of San Diego polo shirt I gave him on my first visit to the his museum). My comment back was, “Gale I thought that would be the one you’d wear to an event like this.” He reply with a smile, “I should have.”

Later that day Gale addressed a group of Mustang fans about his career and of course the Mustang. In his usual humble style, Gale told a couple of Lee Iacocca stories. One such story was about the creation of the opera window.
Gale reminisced, “He [Iacocca] would usually come over to the design studio with a couple of people but this day he was by himself. He said, Gale I just left the board of directors and I told them I was going to increase Mercury sales next year by 100,000 vehicles, so he turned to me and said, so you better do something about it.”

“We put some ideas together, two tones, wheels, moldings, stuff like that. But we also had an idea of putting a window in the big [C] pillar in the back. We called it an opera window. We had different shapes and sizes. We put a couple of overlays on a car. He said, I like that, that’s new, nobody else has done that. Its new…put that in the system.”

Gale said, “I had one more to show him: An oval. Iacocca liked this even better. He said put that on a Lincoln. We put the opera window on a Lincoln and Iaccoca said go with it.”
“Six weeks went by and the VP of Engineering called to tell me we can’t get this thing to look right. We’re not going to do it.”

“I went back and forth with him and on the third time, the engineer called and said that he knows I want to do this, Mr. Iaccoca wants to do this, but we’re not going to do this.”

Gale said, “John, Lee is going to be in our building at 2 o’clock. Why don’t you come over and tell him. You probably should clean out your desk in the mean time.”

Ultimately, the opera window showed up on countless Fords, Lincolns and Mercurys. The competition too used them on everything every thing from an AMC Matador to a Chrysler Cordoba.

Gale’s comments on the design of the Mustang:
“I was the manager of the design of the new Galaxy program at the time and we were working until 10 or 11 o’clock at night. My boss, Joe Orso, came by and said we just got an assignment from Lee Iacocca to do this specialty car and tomorrow at 8 we are going to decide what we are going to do.”

“I told Joe I’m working until 11 o’clock now. He said, I don’t care when you do it but tomorrow at 8 o’clock…. I went home and did about five sketches. I was the only one who put side scope on the car. I also made the hood long and the deck short.”

“Orso looked at my design and said’ “I like that.” He used that design on the driver’s side in clay. He used his design on the other side. They just had the two sides.”

“The master modeler came over at three in the morning and said, Gale, we’re not going to made it. We don’t have a rear end. We don’t have a front end. We designed the rear end at three in the morning.”

“…..We did the front end the next day. We got a couple of guys together and we didn’t even make a sketch and told the clay modelers what to do. That’s it. That’s the story of the Mustang.”

Regarding who is the father of the Mustang, Gale said, “Everybody thinks that Iacocca was the father of the Mustang. He is really not and neither am I. But Hal Sperlich is the father and the creator of the Mustang.”
“We found out that we couldn’t afford a new car. We had to build it on a current chassis platform. The only car we could do it on was the Falcon. It’s the only thing we could afford.”

“And we couldn’t change the interior. If you noticed, the first several years the Mustang had a Falcon interior.”
Gale thought highly of Hal Sperlich. He told me Hal was the idea guy behind Lee Iacocca. Iacocca mentioned to Gale that every week Sperlich would hand over a pile of 3×5 cards with marketing ideas to Iacocca. Iacocca’s job was to go through everyone of them because as Iacocca told Gale, somewhere in there was a gem. The Mustang could have been one of them. Gale mentioned the mini van was another.

Back to a faster horse… I hadn’t met Gale prior to seeing the film, but his warm, sincere character shown through. When it came to him shedding a tear as the National Anthem played at the 50th anniversary celebration, you knew that wasn’t acting. That’s who he was.

My favorite part of A Faster Horse was something Gale said and something I always believed. “…..Would I like to wash this car?”

“Do you know what I used as a gauge on cars I worked on? I would say to myself would I like to wash this car? Would I feel happy out there washing and cleaning it? As a designer, that was a goal I personally had. How many people like to go out and wash their car? Only if it’s a favorite car that they like to drive or something. If it’s a car they don’t really like that much, they don’t wash it at all, right?”

I once asked Gale what he thought of current new car design. He said most look too much alike. What he was impressed with was the creative use of lighting. Remembering back in the day, you had standardized headlamps all manufacturers were forced to use. Creative lighting came in the way of hidden headlamps, “cat eye” or vertical headlamp design and maybe sequential taillamps. Interesting that Ford used all of these.

With cars incorporating the same styling cues, the Mustang has survived the test of time by embracing the best technology has to offer and retaining the heritage influenced styling that makes it a Mustang.

Thank you Gale for your vision, influence and contributions towards creating an automotive icon. Thank you too for allowing many of us Mustang fans the opportunity to call you our friend.

I am forever grateful.

Recently Ford Motor Company gave tribute to Gale in the trade publication Automotive News:
“Today we honor Gale Halderman. A member of the Ford family for over 40 years, known to many for penning the shape of one of the world’s most recognizable cars, an American legend– the Mustang. The iconic Mustang he helped create, sold more than 10 million units, inspired six model generations of design and has been continuously built for more than 50 years.”

“A dream became a sketch. A sketch became an icon.
And icons never die.”