We received a very nice note from one of our customers who is just about to wrap up his term of storage here at AAAA Auto Storage & Park. The car he owns is a beautiful 2011 Ford Mustang 5.0 California Special. Here it is right before his deployment with a Marine ‘Huey’ in the background.

His car inspired me to do some research into the California Special Mustang variant and I’d like to share some of the history in this blog post.

The California Special was originally devised by Ford Motor Company to stay competitive in the pony car wars of the late 60s. Between the Camaro, Javelin, and internally, the Torino and Cougar, Ford clearly saw that they had to differentiate the Mustang in targeted, important markets in order to win.

Ford discovered that 20% of all Mustangs were being sold within California. After several failed experiments (to include a rainbow colored paint scheme…yuck!) the Southern California District Sales Manager Lee Grey created the idea of the California Special. He wanted to make this special edition look unique and ‘custom made’ in order to differentiate between the mustangs sold elsewhere. About 5000 of these mustangs were built in 1968 and are considered to be very rare and desirable.

In 2007 Ford bought back the CS as a $1900 option and in 2011 for $2000….each vintage looks fantastic.

As a San Diego, CA based company it makes us proud to know we have a special Mustang to call our own!

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Mustang – The California Special

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