The Ford Motor Company has a longstanding history with the public that once was as dependent on each other as bees and flowers. There are a million different cars out there to choose from today, even for people who have no business operating (let alone owning) an automobile. But back before there were foreign car companies soliciting their wares in dealerships next to Chevys and Dodges, there was mostly only Ford and their Model T, born to pull us free from the shackles of the horse-drawn carriage.
With a century of automotive excellence under their belts, Ford has a list of amazing automobiles to their credit that only the blue oval could pull off. That’s quite a claim, too, since there are some downright amazing machines roaming public roads across the nation. Having their hand in many sanctioned racing events over the decades has given them the experience and technical aptitude to deliver superb products to their customers.
But every now and then, something rather strange happens: a company that has so much outstanding success and seems to know their market so well can be found at fault for some of the biggest rolling garbage cans that have ever slid through the conveyors of a modern assembly line. Ford has enough models under their belt to validate having a fair number of special-edition and limited-run vehicles to their credit, but sometimes “special edition” means "we can’t add any more value to it but we need you to buy it anyway."
Which special-edition cars were awesome and which ones don’t deserve the hard-drive space to be remembered by a jpeg is ultimately up to you, but here’s a quick guide to get you started. These “special-edition" Fords either make “no sense,” or they’re a “no-brainer” to add to your car collection.
20 2013 Boss 302 Mustang (No-Brainer)
A brief, five-second history to get any stragglers up to speed on the Mustang: circa 1970, Ford produced a few high-output variants of the Mustang, a Boss 302 and a Boss 429. It was in response to the dangerous Camaro that was just released by Chevy and threatened Fords stranglehold on the “pony-car” market. To respond to the threat, Ford dumped a few big motors inside a few Mustangs and gave them a tough-sounding name. More recently, the Boss came back in 2012 and 2013 for a brief moment to commemorate the original Boss 302 in a cool tribute that is deserving of a production run, if even a short run.
19 California Edition Mustang (No Sense)
The California Edition Ford Mustang isn’t that great of a seller, but then again, it isn’t that great of a car either. Although it packs over 400 horsepower into the engine compartment of the little pony car, it feels like a meek attempt to shovel a few more units out the door under clever branding with a few extra components from the Cobra parts bin and a few extra ponies under the hood. It was the same V6 that featured in the 420-horsepower 2013 GT, so why does there need to be a special edition for California? Unless it can blow the lug studs right off the hub, there’s no reason to create a special-edition Mustang of which there already are a million.
18 2019 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 (No-Brainer)
I’m going to blow wind into your gullible little sails right now with the intent on taking it away at the end of the this. Yep, the 2019 Ford Mustang is in the works and has been spotted at high-profile events (closed-door, of course) preparing for its debut, which is coming ever closer now. It’s likely that we won’t see the new pony car until the 2019 North American Auto Show in Detroit, but Ford keeps releasing teasers to keep us hooked and it’s really hard not to get your hopes up with claimed performance around the 200-mph threshold and over 700 horses being reported. We’ll see if they can actually deliver on what looks to be a new Camaro-destroyer.
17 20th Anniversary Mustang (No Sense)
Someone in PR dropped a big ball decades ago. Either that, or nobody thought the Ford Mustang would be so iconic because Ford didn’t start issuing anniversary-edition cars until the Mustang’s 20th year (10 is usually a good milestone to celebrate, but in 1974 nobody thought it wise to throw some PR at their flagship’s delightful success, apparently).
Maybe that was a wise decision after all, and thinking about it, the 1974 Mustang is even uglier than the 1984 variant.
The 20th-edition GT350s were all white, only produced in a limited, 35-day production run totaling 5,261 units, and came with either V8s or 2.3-liter four-cylinders. (I hear anther ball dropping with that four-cylinder option.)
16 Bullitt Blowback (No-Brainer)
The year was 1968 and Steve McQueen had just driven the snot out of a green pony in the film Bullitt (which no one younger than 35 has ever seen or even heard of, despite the fact that it's awesome). It was one of a handful of times Mustangs would rage across the big screen and inspire people to go out and get their very own pony! When Ford did the throwback tribute in 2001 with Warner Brothers, they didn’t go all-out with the motor, but instead tuned it to be a mild performer on the strip. It was just barely quick enough to beat out the GTs (it had sure better be) thanks to low-end powerband engineering at the factory, but the newest Bullitt Mustang looks to be the real deal.
15 Mustang Mach I (No Sense)
The Mach I isn’t the root of all ugliness, but the Mach I and ugly have become synonymous with each other in general terms due to the innate nature of the fourth-generation Mustang’s styling.
That styling was as ugly as 1971 could have possibly made it, too.
The same thing happened with the Mustang that happened to the Chevy Nova and just about every other muscle car that didn’t die off in the 1970s or 80s: they became emission-constricted reflections of the memory they used to be. The Mustang (a formerly proud and cantankerous road warrior) had been reduced to this unattractive grouping of spare parts that can be halfway remedied by a decent coat of paint, but you’re not really fooling everyone (just yourself).
14 Shelby F-150 Raptor (No-Brainer)
Ford may have had its share of brushes with negative PR in the past—through fault of their own that of others (looking at you, Firestone)—but their close business buddies over at Shelby run a much tighter ship. Being in the business they’re in, they are far less-likely to pump out some garbage for consumer reviewers to tear up in the forums. As bad as the F-150 did get for a while (spark plugs, among other things) once Shelby got their hands on it, all of those worries became a thing of the past. Featuring many unique features not found on any other Ford truck, the Shelby F-150 is loaded out with cool things like 50” LED light bars actuated by electric motors, but more importantly, 525 horses pulsing from the 3.5-liter twin-turbo.
13 King Cobra Mustang (No Sense)
They called it the King Cobra, and with the existence of the regular Cobra already in their lineup, missing the marketing opportunity for a PR branding scheme worth its weight in gold would have been nothing short of an amateur move.
Thus, the King Cobra was born from the Mustang II, which was an otherwise garbage platform.
Some will cite its popularity backed by sales figures, but all the Mustang II was ever meant to be is a bookmark to preserve the Mustang name during the fuel crisis-riddled 1970s era. The Mustang II, severely lacking performance, was branded as a Cobra and, interestingly enough, was the first 5.0-liter Ford ever. (Ford was the first domestic automaker to adopt the metric system for displacement branding, and the King Cobra was the first to be designated as a “5.0L” Mustang.)
12 Ford F-350 Megaraptor (No-Brainer)
Remember what the Raptor did to regular pickup trucks? Remember how powerless your pickup felt after you watched a few Raptor videos online, completely captivated by what the truck was capable of, and then longed for one hopelessly. Well, if you’ve happened to have purchased a Raptor between then and now, I hope you still have your receipt; this F-350 “Megaraptor” does to the regular”Ford Raptor what the regular Raptor did to something like a 1995 F-150 with a 3.8-liter V6. The Defco F-350 is an “unofficial” model, but worth noting nonetheless. Sitting on 46” tires is plenty official enough for me.
11 1979 Mustang Ghia Hatchback (No Sense)
I’ll bet by now you are wondering where all these ugly cars came from? Or at whose desk these deigns plans got approved? As shockingly ugly as some trash piles look today, there was a time and a place for them way back when, and it's true, your brand new (insert car here) may very well be tomorrow’s pile of compost. The Ghia is basically a Mustang II luxury edition; it had a vinyl top, shag carpeting (yea baby, very yea!) and a bunch of other goodies. The Mustang II was nothing more than a Pinto platform acting like a downgraded Mustang to respond to an oil-deprived car market. Treat it like a drug, and remember what they taught you in D.A.R.E.
10 GT Heritage Edition (No-Brainer)
As rare as the Ford GT is to spot on the road, there’s an even rarer variant; so rare, in fact, that they don’t even exist yet. Actually, that’s the truth. This is brand-new and set to debut as the 2019 model year Ford GT.
It’s a tribute to the legendary Le Mans Gulf Racing GT-40 in the same awesome Zenith Blue and Tangerine livery, and it sure wears those colors well.
Some may gaze upon it with disdain— you wouldn’t exactly redecorate your house off the Llewellyn Ryland color palette—but all those familiar with the legend, even to any superficial degree, seem to find some small comfort in their presentation together (for the most part).
9 Edsel (No Sense)
The problem with the Edsel wasn’t the actual car itself. In fact, it was designed to be a cutting-edge luxury “car-of-the-future” (so the brochures said) and Ford spent a fortune and a small village to aggressively market their new machine. They teased it for over a year and when they finally did pull the curtain, people hated it immediately. They hated it so much, really, that they never really gave the Edsel a chance. Ford eventually pulled the plug on their biggest flop ever and watched $250 million in 1960s dollars flush down the drain. This frightening degree of commercial failure makes Edsel’s “Makes History by Making Sense” slogan comically ironic when you think about it.
8 Top Gear Hennessey F-150 (No-Brainer)
If you’re a Top Gear fan (or even if you casually like cars), you’ve seen that cheerful, round face floating around the media before, and despite the “reality feel” of any such show, it was actually put together halfway decently by the man at the top. Clarkson has since been dismissed from the production following a bit of a snafu, but at the very least, his Top Gear legend lives on in the sheet metal of a yellow Ford F-150 Raptor that appeared on an episode or two. It actually went to the auction block with the designation of being one of the only Raptors to have Clarkson’s sweet cheeks warming up the driver’s leather at one point in time. (That’s worth something, right?)
7 EXP (No Sense)
Someone at Ford saw the spare CE14 platform laying around and decided it was time to build a post-oil-crisis road warrior (on the Mercury Topaz platform, no less). Two generations of filth were produced starting from 1982 and even though the whole car weighed 200 pounds more than the Escort, it was outfitted with a 1.6-liter inline four.
And there you have all the reasoning why this is nothing but garbage.
It’s essentially a Ford Probe that was produced in just enough capacity to fool people into thinking they were collector pieces. The correct course of action, should you encounter one of these in the wild, is to set it on fire and run like hell.
6 F-22 Raptor F-150 (No-Brainer)
Just as comics are expected to exploit and take advantage of double entendres when the opportunity presents itself, auto makers are expected to capitalize on marketing opportunists as they become available. When Ford was selecting the next vehicle to donate to the Experimental Aircraft Association’s non-profit Wings program, it was only fitting that the appropriately-named Raptor be the subject of the charity drive at least once. That meant they could use clever wordplay and assimilate it to the real Raptor, the Lockheed Martin F-22. For the event, they’ve pumped an additional 100 horsepower into the driveline and at 545 horses, I’m definitely on board.
5 "Rallye" Pinto (No Sense)
Actually, any Pinto will do here since they’re synonymous with two things very bad for any automobile’s reputation: explosion hazards and being lonely for the rest of your life. Which of those do you want less, though?
Ford knew this and had to find a way to make the Pinto more attractive.
And what better way to “make” it special than just simply “making” it special? That’s what they did: same car, same 2.3-liter inline-four, but it had Rallye badging! What that meant was some variants were equipped with a porthole-style rear window, and that’s about all you got for your money. (It’s almost like Ford hated the Pinto as much as everyone else did.)
4 Ford Falcon Sprint (No-Brainer)
The Falcon was produced across the span of three generations over a 10-year timeframe. Possibly one of Ford’s most beloved little cars, the Falcon has rightfully received a fitting place in Ford’s lineup of all-time greatest cars. They were small-ish cars that were being crammed with big V8s, what could be more patriotic that ozone-destroying gases and some slick style? A $38,000 Sprint? Maybe. The Falcon already has enough love to have earned itself the unofficial title of the Model A’s Successor. The Sprint series was given a “Challenger” V8 (which sounds cool no matter what it is) and you know you want one now.
3 Wildtrek Ranger (No Sense)
Just because we don’t see them here doesn’t mean they aren’t frolicking in a field of daisies, probably somewhere like Australia. While we’ve been not missing the Ford Ranger here, it has been not missing us, either.
In fact, it’s been all over the rest of the world doing all the things you’d expect a Ford Ranger to do without adult supervision...bad things, badly.
Among those bad things, transforming into a “Wildtrek” is one of them. It purports to solicit additional performance to the end user, but a review of the spec sheet will find even the diesel's output in some cases to struggle to break triple digits. A 118 horsepower diesel engine? Keep it.
2 Hennessey VelociRaptor 6x6 (No-Brainer)
If you’re looking at this thing thinking to yourself, “Now this is what a truck should look like,” there are millions of people who agree with you. Ford may not the best brand to implement a third axle on their light-duty trucks (they do have to set an environmentally-responsible example, after all), so who better than Hennessy to pick up the slack? Their reputation is staked on disassociation with such malarkey, and the bigger and badder they make their cars, the better—that’s what they do. What they did with the Raptor is added an axle to the rear, packaged it up in a 600-horsepower setup, and dangled the keys in front of your nose for a cool $349,000.
1 Moonshiner (No-Brainer)
Here’s a special edition Ford you won’t find in the showroom because these babies are a bit more exclusive than that. We all know the general story in some variation: moonshiners needed fast cars to evade the law, so they started fixing up their old coupes with big motors, blackout switches, and heavy-duty suspension.
But that was only the beginning.
With the ingenuity of NASCAR’s finest rule-bending legends, moonshiners devised clever ways to store the 'shine in scarcely detectable locations, such as fuel tanks, headliners, wheel wells, and even engine compartments. Possibly the coolest attribute of the these 'shiner specials is that you don’t even know you’re looking at one, making it a perfect bucket-list entry that you’ll never get to cross off.
Sources: topspeed.com, roadandtrack.com, sunsetfordstlouis.com, cjponyparts.com, and hennesseyperformance.com.