Although it looks like a Mustang, drives like a Mustang and sounds like a Mustang, Jerry Brown’s Ford is not a Mustang. It is a T5. When Ford decided to export its popular Mustang to Germany, it found that there was a truck of that name made by Krupp already there. Whether Ford did not want their sporty car identified with a lumbering truck or whether they were just too cheap to pay the supposed $10,000 to buy the rights, we may never know. Instead the export Mustang became the T5. Ford would send them to Shelby where all Mustang logos were changed, the speedometer was changed to kilometers and the suspension was strengthened. They were very popular with US serviceman stationed in Europe. Jerry’s 69 T5 was originally sent to Belgium and owned by an Air Force officer stationed in France. When he bought it in 1999, it had been sitting for ten years, but was generally in good condition. It had power steering and power front disc brakes with a 289 CID engine and four-speed trans. Unfortunately, it was missing the “T5" badges on the fenders, which proved to be costly to replace because Ford had long before stopped stocking them. Since then, Jerry has also done a lot of other work to put his T5 in excellent shape. He has overhauled and beefed up the engine, put in a five-speed manual transmission with a taller-geared rear end, repainted it in original Wimbledon White, and redid the interior himself. He also replaced the deck lid because of bullet holes of unknown origins. Jerry has no idea how they got there, but it could be a great source of speculation about spies and secret agents. Whatever the case, now Jerry drives his non-Mustang all over Northern California with fellow Roamin Angels and very few people know that it’s really a T5.

The ‘68 Ford non-Mustang T5 is very rare, with only 109 made that year. T5 has no special meaning, but was the original project code Ford used when developing the Mustang.

Except for the LaCar steering wheel, the interior is all stock, down to the AM/FM radio. The Mustang name does not appear even in the interior.

Since the rebuild, the 289 CID engine pumps out about 300 HP with a Edelbrock carb on a GT350 intake and electronic ignition. Jerry has added a dress-up kit to the engine.

Story & photos by Ron C. ©2008