(upbeat music)
- You're about to see a different kind
of Barn Find Hunter episode.
There are few places on earth
that have so much automotive history
as when you come to Detroit.
And I don't live here, but I love it here.
And I use any excuse to stay here as long as I can.
So what we're gonna do is take you
for a little magical mystery tour
of automotive Detroit, Dearborn, just give you a flavor
what's still here from the old days.
We're literally walking on hallowed ground.
So here is a building, I imagine it was put up in the '30s,
and it's Ford Motor Company Engineering Laboratory.
You can see up there there's this little artwork
is agriculture.
Well, that's because Henry Ford was basically a farm boy
and everything he did, he took farmers into consideration.
Henry Ford had a deep respect for scientists,
engineers and inventors.
But look at the names that he had inscribed on top now.
Charles Darwin for sure, Ampere, Da Vinci,
Leonardo Da Vinci, Franklin, Fulton, Whitney,
Bell, Marconi, the Wright brothers, Burbank, Thomas Edison,
Burroughs, Kirby, Diesel, Faraday, Otto, Newton,
Dunlap, Pasteur, Galileo.
I mean, those are the people that he was hoping
to inspire his engineers to produce things in this building
of that magnitude, pretty great.
(upbeat music)
We're in Royal Oak, Michigan and we got a lead
on a very special Mustang last night, which seemingly is one
of the oldest Mustangs on earth.
How are you doing, Art?
- Hello, Tom, how are you doing?
Art Cairo.
- Thanks for agreeing to meet us.
- Ah, my pleasure, my pleasure.
- Could you bring it out so the lighting will be better?
- Absolutely, be happy to. - [Tom] Art's gonna tell us
about one of the rarest Mustangs in history.
- [Art] Let's move Henry over here,
so he can oversee what we're doing.
- So Hank, tell me about owning this car.
What was it like?
(engine revs)
(light music)
All right, so I'm just gonna play detective.
- [Art] Okay, very good.
- [Tom] So what makes this car special?
- [Art] Well, what makes it special
is this car was a prototype build that they started in 1963.
Henry received it from the styling labs,
Gale Halderman was the chief design engineer.
They did not put any badging on the fenders as you can see.
- [Tom] Oh, look at that, yeah.
- No badging whatsoever, even though it was a K-Code.
The wheels are styled steel,
although going through my history on the car,
the original wheels, Henry didn't like.
He had them taken off, put styled steel wheels on it
and saved the four wheels in the crib.
They sat in storage until Henry gave the car
to his chauffeur.
He told the exec garage to get the wheels
and put them back in the car.
And lo and behold, the wheels were gone.
They got stolen.
That guy lost his job,
they left the styled steel wheels on it.
What's unique about the car is because it was a prototype,
all the latches were chrome and no spot welds.
All this is lead.
- Check this out.
On a normal Mustang, you'd see this piece
of metal overlapping this one
and they'd be spot, spot, spot, spot.
This is totally smooth like a custom car.
- Exactly.
- [Tom] And it was a custom car.
- It was a custom car.
- [Tom] So this was a hand-built prototype.
- Yes, even the vinyl roof is padded.
- A padded vinyl roof, leather seats.
Were leather seats--
- Were never ever available in a Mustang, ever.
This is the original seating.
The only thing I did to it was I gave it a coat
of Back to Black leather conditioner and left them alone.
I didn't have to restuff them.
- [Tom] You've had this out for how long?
- [Art] 1975.
- [Tom] What inspired you to buy this?
- Well, I'll show you the want ad.
I was doing model As at the time.
I love Ford Model As and I had a '31.
I'm looking for fenders and this catches my eye.
It says, the guy lived in Dearborn.
What I found out later, he was the friend
of Henry Ford's chauffeur
because Henry Ford had given the car to his chauffeur.
His chauffeur drove it until 1970
and then sold it to this guy, which...
So when I looked at the car, I thought,
well, this is a cool car.
- What kind of shape was it in?
- It was a rust bucket.
It was a Michigan Mustang. - Really?
Yeah, the floor pins, the quarters.
- Really!
So from what I understand, this has spent its whole life
within 20 miles of here.
- [Art] Oh, it's lived within three miles of here.
- [Tom] So when did you realize you had something special?
Did you know it from the day you bought it?
- Okay, so let me pull out the owner's manual
that was in the car.
And I thought this car belonged to Edsel.
The owner's manual said, Edsel B. Ford II.
- [Tom] But he would've just been a kid then, right?
- He was 16 at the time, but this is what it said.
It said, Edsel B. Ford II, Lakeshore Drive, Gross Pointe,
a 2 plus 2 Fastback.
And that is a K-Code if you can see.
That was a K720. - [Tom] Fastback?
And a Fastback.
- Where is the serial number on this?
- Right there, number 5F09K.
- [Tom] So that's not this car?
- That's not this car, but I got this information
and there was a gentlemen by the name of Jim Smart,
who was doing articles on in search of Mustangs.
And at the time, I wrote him a letter.
I worked at Ford of course.
He responded back when I was
in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin doing machine runoff.
And it was late at night and I called him.
"You told me your car belonged to Edsel."
And I said, yeah.
And he says, "No, it was Henry's car, his daddy's car."
I said, what?
So that's when I first found out
that this particular car belonged to Henry.
- Isn't that something.
- So that was probably 1979.
I had done a minor restoration on it.
I put some quarter patch panels on it and I retrofitted some
and I painted it, it looked pretty good.
Then I took the car to a car show called Carnival of Cars
in Utica, Michigan.
And out of 100 possible points, they were giving me 55
because the judges said, "Well, it's got leather interior."
Yeah, well, they never had leather.
And you've got disc brakes, they never had disc brakes.
So they knocked me down, knocked me down, knocked me down.
And a guy from California approached me, he was a broker.
And he said to me, "I'll give you 17."
I thought, 1700, no, no.
Maybe 3500, right, 'cause that's what GTs were going for.
As it turns out, it was 17,000.
And I said, whoa, no, no, not for sale.
And then I knew something was even more special.
So I kept doing my due diligence on the vehicle
and found out more and more and more.
Now, 1981, Henry was supposed to meet us in front
of the Ren Cen 'cause Ford owned the Ren Cen back then.
And we got there early in the morning with this car
and they brought in the new '81 Ford GT Mustang
and they had them side by side.
And we're waiting and waiting and waiting
and Henry never came down, but Edsel came down.
And that's really the first time I met Edsel.
- [Tom] No kidding.
- And I said, where's Mr. Ford?
He said, "Oh, he decided to go to Florida."
Heh, you can do that when your name's on the building.
So we met with Edsel, had lunch with him.
And then he talked all about this car
how his dad brought it home and how cool it was
and he couldn't wait.
And then his dad gave him the white one for Christmas.
So since then, Edsel signed the glove box for me.
- One thing I wanna bring to mind here is
that if you're not familiar with Mustang history,
this was an out of the box totally new design of a car.
There was no such thing as a personal sports car
at the time.
Ford made Galaxies, they made a Fairlane,
which was a squarish version, they made the Falcon,
but this was a brand new thing.
Do you remember the dealerships
had paper all over their windows?
- Yep.
And it was like, you couldn't go into a Ford dealership.
I mean, I'm a PR guy, a lifelong PR guy
and there was so much hype about this.
What, a Mustang?
They were being shipped to dealerships in closed trucks
so people couldn't see them.
And then they had the grand unveiling on what day?
- April 14th.
- You could write a textbook how to roll out a new car
or any new product the way this was
because it was never done before
and it could never happen again.
- [Art] Absolutely. - [Tom] Can you pop the hood?
- [Art] Absolutely.
(light music)
So here's a K-Code.
Dual points, so there's no vacuum advance.
It has a special water pump.
This is aluminum.
Now, this car was retrofitted with an alternator
as opposed to the old generator
'cause that's what you would've gotten
at that time the car was built.
- Just got power steering and power brakes,
and it's power disc brakes.
- [Art] You can't see them, but they're there.
And then they also put the Ford pump on it,
not the Eaton pump.
- [Tom] So I see your solenoid, like a Bakelite brown.
- [Art] That is the one that was on this car
and I saved it.
- [Tom] These were always black.
- [Art] They put insulation on the hood.
- [Tom] Oh, look at that.
- [Art] Which made it unique.
- So is this the only one you've ever seen?
- The only one I've ever seen.
- So this was a special car for a special guy.
- [Art] Right.
- So you tore it apart yourself?
- Pretty much, I took the body
to a company called Rust Busters in Redford.
Unfortunately, they're no longer in business.
The father had died and the son moved to Arizona.
- So you replaced only what was absolutely necessary.
- Only what was absolutely necessary.
Unfortunately, the fenders, the door skins
and the quarters were replaced.
And that's all new old stock.
I had to search the world for it and paid big money for it,
but that's what I wanted on this car.
This wasn't gonna be another...
'Cause I did six other Mustangs.
So I could buy Taiwan fenders or something, so what,
but not on this car.
- [Tom] Well, can you show us some
of the paperwork you've got?
- Absolutely.
All right, we go left to right here.
This is the original ad that I got March 19 of 1975
and it says, Mustang '65, special made for Ford family.
Triple black, 289 high performance engine.
Extras throughout, 525 bucks.
(Art laughs) - Did you talk them down?
- I did, I talked them down to 500.
(Tom laughs) (Art laughs)
Hey, right!
(Art laughs) - [Tom] Put it there, man.
- [Art] And this is a letter from Jim Smart
authenticating the car that it belonged to Edsel.
That was after our lunch with Edsel that day.
- [Tom] Isn't that something.
- The rear seat had this tag on it.
It says WC Ford, which would've been William Clay Ford.
William Clay was in charge of the design studio at the time.
So they probably put that tag on it saying,
this is for our boss, this is what he wants.
- [Tom] Designated for leather covering.
- [Art] Yes, exactly.
- [Tom] What is this?
- This is on the heads, okay.
That's the experimental heads.
When we went to rebuild the heads, we had a bump in the road
trying to find the right valves for it.
But I put Hardin seats in it just because--
- So what's the dollar sign there for?
- I don't know.
And here's another one.
This was approved 12-13-63.
- So were you able to move that over to your new fender?
- Oh, this is all kept parts.
These are parts that I did not replace.
We just sandblasted them as you could see and I kept them.
- '64 1/2 Mustang, it's gotten a lot of publicity
over the years is when it came out.
But you can see this one, 12-13-63,
so just before Christmas.
4 1/2 months before the Mustang was actually introduced,
these parts were being made for this car.
Gale Halderman Museum.
- He was the manager of the design center studio
who had this car in his styling lab.
And he's the one who built it.
So he talks about it here,
how it was hand-built at Allen Park.
- One-off pre-production prototype,
built in the Allen Park pilot plant.
- That's where I worked for 20 years.
- No kidding. - Yeah.
- As stated, this particular raven black coupe was built
for Henry Ford II's personal use.
Mr. Ford was partial to black exterior vehicles
with leather interior.
It was specified and built that way.
Man, that's pretty special.
- Yeah, so that's cool.
So these I had made up.
This was the tear down of the car.
Okay, so see, it says Henry Ford's car.
That's on the cluster, on the backside of the cluster.
- [Tom] Right now?
- Right now, handwritten, kinda cool.
Yeah, see, you can see that tunnel cover,
transmission cover, scatter shield.
- [Tom] So that was built onto the car,
not the transmission.
- That's correct, they bolted it right here, you could see.
- I've never seen that. - Yeah.
Usually it's the bell housing.
- That's exactly right, so yeah, they put it right in there.
- [Tom] I mean for a Ford history buff,
this is a special day, I gotta tell you.
- [Art] Oh cool.
And there's the 9-inch rear end.
- [Tom] It had a 9-inch?
- Had a 9-inch, yeah.
This plate is on the floor of the driver's side
and it's that thick and it's die cast chrome
- [Tom] On top of the carpet. on top of the carpet.
No floor mat.
- [Tom] Really? - Yep.
And it's screwed down.
- Oh, they got a piece of rubber on top.
- Then the rubber was glued on top of it.
It's exactly how it was when I got it.
So I found rubber to match and cut it.
And we just glued the rubber on top of it
after we screwed it down.
- Yeah, that was Henry probably figured out
he doesn't like floor mats
because they roll up under your heel--
- Exactly and back then they did.
- Right, wow!
- They didn't have the clip.
All right, so let me take you through the interior.
The sun visors are leather.
That's where Gale Halderman signed that sun visor for me.
Headliner, leather.
Dash crash pad, leather.
If you look at the radio,
these are special knobs on the radio.
They're actual teak wood - [Tom] No kidding.
and these are die cast radio buttons.
They're not the plastic ones.
- [Tom] Wow!
- The radio also has what they call studio sonic sound.
So that's it without it.
- [Radio] These positions offer flexible hours
and rewarding experience.
AccuStaff is seeking candidates for immediate--
- Kinda cool, I feel like I'm
at a Jimi Hendrix concert or something.
(Tom laughs)
- Over here to the left is the fog light button.
- Oh yeah, and that's factory.
- Well, it's prototype because the others were flip
and they didn't light up.
- So Ford was still inventing the Mustang
when this car was being built.
- [Art] Yes, yep. - That's what I assumed.
- And that's why a lot of parts
that are on this never made it to production
'cause they may have said,
we're not gonna do a steering wheel like this
or we're not gonna...
- So this is unique, the teak on the console,
the teak on the dash.
This is...
Is this unique, teak on the wheel?
- Well, the later ones were plastic.
This is a one-off.
This thing weighs probably 12 to 15 pounds
'cause it's all die cast on the back, this is die cast.
There's no plastic.
Even that's die cast.
- [Tom] Can you show us the trunk?
- Oh absolutely, yeah.
Leather wrapped fuel neck.
- What?
- Yep, it had carpeting in it the same as the interior
and it was this thick, and I saved the carpeting.
- That tall, the pile?
- That tall, the pile.
- Geez!
- And you could vacuum it forever
and not get everything out of it.
- So all this stuff here is all.
There's usually spot welds all throughout here
where one panel met another.
And there was no need to finish that
because when the trunk's closed, you couldn't see it.
But this car was finished like a show car.
It has perfectly smooth finishes.
- Okay, this was the wheel molding that was on the vehicle.
- And that's die cast, wow!
- That's die cast and chrome, it's heavy.
Well, these are the production ones that they put on later
and they're aluminum.
And because I could not get anything like that,
that's what I put on the vehicle.
- So this weighs four times as much as this, at least.
I mean, this doesn't even have any weight.
- But that was another unique part.
- [Tom] Is that the only...
- It's the only one that I have.
- [Tom] I mean the only one you've ever seen?
- Yes.
- So you've had this coming up on a half a century, man!
- Isn't that something?
And it seems like just yesterday I got it,
but you know how that goes.
- I'm real lucky to have met somebody yesterday
that knew you. He said, "Would you be interested in this?"
I said, oh yeah.
So Art, thank you so much.
- Tom, thank you so much.
I appreciate you taking the time to come out
and I look forward to seeing you again in the future.
- So I have a feeling
that even if you're a really diligent Barn Find Hunter,
probably not gonna find a Mustang
quite this special anytime soon, why?
This is one of the oldest Mustangs in the world,
probably one of the first 10 built,
hand-built for Henry Ford II.
But if you do find something that special, call me up,
we'll be there with cameras.
Happy hunting.