Forget the Jensen FF, this was the first four-wheel drive sports car

While it wasn’t made for attacking rugged off-road conditions, Ford’s 4x4 Mustang prototype from 1965 is still an incredible machine.

Outsourced by the American giant after seeing record sales from their two-door coupe’s release in 1964, the baby Ford Mustang 4x4 prototype was created by Ferguson Research. You know, the same guys who made the Ferguson P99 F1 car and the Jensen FF? 

While a four-wheel drive Mustang might sound pretty neat, seeing it could probably transfer more power to the road, it was actually made to appeal to potential customers in colder areas who often had to deal with the temperamentalities of snow.

It might sound a bit mad, changing a laid back, California-esque sports coupe into a snow plow 'lite', but you have to remember that the Mustang was pitched as a reachable status car for every American. It offered a straight-six, a V8, automatic and manual transmissions - it even came with a wide range of trim levels. It was supposed to accessible and affordable to everyone, even if they lived in Alaska.

In order to see if it’d be feasible, Ford sent three automatic, 289 cubic inch (4.7-litre) Windsor V8 Mustangs over to the Ferguson base in England.

Having been fitted with a viscous-coupling centre differential, locked in a 37/63 front-to-rear split, Ferguson’s 4x4 Mustang prototype was given the advantages of an off-road 'setup' while also offering enough rear-drive bias to shadow the same amount of sporty feel found on the standard car.

Interestingly, while most four-wheel drive systems add a whole heap of weight to the car - around 140kg in the Jensen FF’s case - the Ferguson Mustang only gained 88kg during the conversion. Not bad for 1960s tech. Particularly when you consider was loaded with ABS, too.

While the mid-spec test cars weren’t the sportiest models in the Mustang line-up, they probably offered Ford the widest probability curve to use as a template test.

However - and there always is one with cool prototypes - Ford pulled the plug on the Ferguson Mustang project and instead preferred to extrapolate the Mustang’s sporting pretentions by developing bigger, more powerful engines. Which is a shame. Kind of. Not really.

What do you think of Ferguson's four-wheel drive Mustang? Should it have gone on sale? Tell us what you think in the comments below.