No convertible was available on the floor, but the salesman did have something of interest in back. There was a Ford Mustang covered with a tarp and not supposed to be for sale until two more days until Henry Ford II unveiled the car at the New York World's Fair.
But, Cleadis Brown had $3,447 sale price cash (as a loan to his daughter) plus a 1958 Chevy Impala worth $400 in a trade-in as incentives, so the salesman opted to jump the gun with Gail so long as she did not take the car for a test drive. He could have cost the Johnson Ford dealership dearly.
"If Ford had found out he had sold the car early, they might have taken the dealership away," said Tom Wise.
No American could have missed the publicity over the Mustang in the spring of 1964. The car was fodder for news magazine cover stories. As the then Gail Brown drove the car from her teaching job in west-suburban Berkeley to her Northwest Side home, bystanders gawked at her and the car.
--DaCoot
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