According to the T5’s registry website, 3,631 of the cars were built from 1967 to 1973.
If a dump truck can be a Mustang, can a Mustang be a T5? That conundrum can be answered in the positive, the result of a German manufacturer of trucks having copyrighted the Mustang name long before Ford's pony car was released in the 1960s.
So when Ford decided to market its hot-selling sports car in Germany, the auto maker left the Mustang badging off and called it the T5, the project name that the auto maker had used for Mustang while it was under development. (The car hit the American market in 1964.)
According to the T5's registry website, 3,631 of the cars were built from 1967 to 1973. Cars were produced in 1965 and 1966 as well, but records for those years have been lost. From all the years of production, only a few hundred cars have been accounted for.
According to an article in oldcarsweekly.com, some of the Ford T5s shipped to Germany were sold at United States Army post exchanges and were shipped back to the U.S. when the soldier's tour of duty ended. Thus some of the cars are in the U.S.
All T5s were virtually identical to the standard Mustang, but they were modified to eliminate any reference to the Mustang name. The T5 featured at oldcarsweekly.com belongs to Chris Wold. The registry says the car is one of only two 1966 GT convertibles known to have survived; the other is in Europe.
While titled as a 1966 T5, the car more closely resembles a 1965 Mustang. According to Wold, his car differs from a standard production model in several ways: The parking lamps are a different colour; the steering wheel hub does not have the Mustang name; the speedometer is calibrated in kilometres; extra bracing fortifies the body; and the suspension is heavy-duty.
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