The 1967 Mustang was born out of rising competition from the other muscle car manufacturers of the decade. Chevrolet was just about finalising their Camaro, which ended up becoming one of the all-time classic muscle cars. Chrysler had launched their pony car, the Plymouth Barracuda, and the Mustang also faced competition from the Mercury Cougar and the Pontiac Firebird.

This was the start of the true Muscle Car era. Ford looked at the offerings coming from their manufacturing competitors and decided to go with the trend of making the car bigger and faster as they saw that this was appealing to their customers. These new design ideas prompted the first major redesign of the original 1965 & ’66 Mustangs. 

As well as the classic muscle car imagery, the Mustang needed to become larger to fit some big block muscle under the hood: the new 390ci V8, of which 28,800 1967 Mustangs were fitted with this big block that was capable of 0-60mph in 7.5 seconds. The top speed of the ‘67 Mustang fastback was 115mph. 

Although the wheelbase remained the same at 108”, Ford decided on a 2” increase in length and a 2.7” in width from the ‘66 to ‘67 model years, as well as some visual feature changes to make the new Mustang look tougher. 

Famous racing driver and car builder Carroll Shelby carried on building the Shelby GT350 Mustang fastbacks in 1967, using the K-code Hi-Po iron-block 289ci engine. 1967 was also the first year for the GT500, which was supplied with a Ford Cobra 428ci V8 engine, capable of galloping to an impressive 0-60mph of 5.7 seconds.

On these Shelby Mustang 1967 models, fibreglass was used for the bonnet back panel to reduce weight and other areas to keep that weight down and performance up. They were also redesigned to give off a look of real performance and distance themselves from the base model Mustangs. Soon after this, due to financial problems, Ford took over the development and production of the Shelby cars. 

Other model variants of the 1967 Ford Mustang included the Mustang GT, which featured power front disc brakes, grill mounted fog lights, dual exhaust with quad outlets and other upgrades.