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"To tell the story of the 1994 Ford Mustang, we need to go back to 1979. The launch of the Fox-body Mustang was viewed by many as a return to form for Ford&amp;#039;s iconic pony car, but it was born into an era of OPEC, high gas prices, and fuel rationing. For Americans, the gas issue wasn&amp;#039;t just about supply and demand, but a &amp;quot;Crisis of Confidence&amp;quot; made famous by President Carter&amp;#039;s 1979 speech.  As automakers shifted to front-wheel-drive platforms to address this, Mustang sales tumbled. So, in a 1985 act of lunacy, Ford executives decided that what real-wheel-drive American muscle-car fans really wanted was a front-wheel-drive Japanese car, so long as it had a shiny pony badge slapped on its grille. The call was made to phase out the rear-drive Fox platform in favor of a front-wheel-drive platform jointly developed with Mazda. Using the kind of marketing brilliance that brought us &amp;quot;New Coke,&amp;quot; Ford planned to sell the outgoing rear-drive car beside the new Mustang as the &amp;quot;Mustang Classic&amp;quot;\u2014a scarlet letter refrencing a time when consumers could guzzle gas as they pleased. Like Coca-Cola, Ford was so confident in this strategy that it put its entire Mustang development budget behind it. PHOTOS: Ford Mustang II Design Evolution  By early 1987, FWD prototypes started testing around Dearborn, and word of the planned RWD abandonment started to get out. Contrary to executives&amp;#039; plans, enthusiasts were livid, and Autoweek magazine published an April cover story titled &amp;quot;The New Mustang&amp;quot; which laid out the blasphemy in full.  Fans pelted Ford with hundreds of thousands of letters against the proposed change to a car that had become an American icon. The target audience made itself clear: it wouldn&amp;#039;t stand for a front-drive Mustang.  In response, Ford executives enacted a rare change in strategy, although they couldn&amp;#039;t abandon the FWD platform entirely. Instead of continuing with the new Mustang as planned, the outcry gave birth to the Probe, a new vehicle set to debut in 1989 on the new FWD platform. Executives planned for the Mustang and Probe to compete head-to-head in showrooms, and their confidence that the FWD platform would eventually win out was undiminished. PHOTOS: Ford Mustangs and the Paths Not Taken  They were wrong. The carryover Fox-body Mustang handily outsold the new Probe at dealer lots and prompted Ford to order plans for a new RWD Mustang design in 1989.  Not willing to completely discount the FWD platform just yet, the exploration on the fourth-generation Mustang, project code SN-95, commenced atop both FWD and RWD platforms.  Since the development of this new Mustang was unexpected, designers had to get creative with a small budget. The FWD platform produced some interesting early designs utilizing the Escort&amp;#039;s CT-20 platform. A variety of shapes were considered, including fastbacks, shooting brakes, two-seaters, and even one with an innovative lift-off rear panel to provide more comfort for rear passengers. PHOTOS: The Fox-body Ford Mustang, From Sketch to Production  Executives wanted to compliment front-drive car&amp;#039;s attractive, conservative design with equally impressive power. They looked into packaging it with the the upcoming 4.6-liter V8, however no transaxle available could handle the output. Despite its best efforts, Ford realized the market wouldn&amp;#039;t support a Mustang based on an entry-level compact, and the CT-20-based FWD model development ground to a halt by the end of 1990, leaving only the RWD concept to move forward towards production.  At this point, a new platform would be too expensive, and the 1989 Thunderbird platform, with its fully-independent rear suspension, was too costly to hit the Mustang price target. Returning to the tried-and-true, Ford overhauled the Fox chassis and dubbed it the Fox-4.  After all of the costly wavering on direction for Mustang, it was imperative that this iteration be a success, lest the car&amp;#039;s future again be placed in jeopardy. Program manager John Coletti decided that the new Mustang would be decidedly aggressive rather than try to appeal to every demographic. Design director Patrick Schiavone brought back heritage elements like the side C-scallop, an open grille with galloping pony emblem, tri-bar taillights, and dual-cockpit cabin. As explorations progressed, three unique themes were commissioned, ranging from mild to wild. Their code names? Bruce Jenner, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Rambo, respectively.     &amp;quot;Jenner&amp;quot; was deemed far too conservative to be a Mustang, though it did inspire the ovoid design language that would eventually debut on the Taurus in 1996.     &amp;quot;Rambo&amp;quot; was, naturally, the most aggressive of the three themes, looking more like a fourth-gen Pontiac Trans Am than a Mustang. It didn&amp;#039;t make the cut, either.     &amp;quot;Schwarzenegger&amp;quot; married the two themes with modern styling over a traditional coupe profile, good interior room and visibility, and a new take on the tri-bar taillights. They were stacked horizontally instead of arranged side-by-side vertically. &amp;quot;Schwarzenegger&amp;quot; would go on, with a few minor changes, to become the production 1994 Mustang. (Incidentally, the vertical taillamps would return for the &amp;#039;96 model year.)  The 1994 Ford Mustang debuted to critical acclaim, and its success in showrooms figures ensured the Mustang&amp;#039;s once-questionable future remained intact. Special models like the SVT Cobra and Cobra R returned and, after the &amp;quot;New Edge&amp;quot; refresh in 1999, the SN-95 Mustang spawned even better performance variants, including the first Bullitt, a Mach 1 revival, and the spectacular 2000 Cobra R.  The lesson we can take away from all of this? Enthusiasts matter. Their outcry saved the rear-wheel-drive Mustang from &amp;quot;New Coke&amp;quot;-ification. As a result, we continue to look forward to the next-generation cars, instead of lamenting a dead nameplate lost to a calamitous decision in the 1980s. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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