In the latest episode of Jay Leno's YouTube series, viewers had a special treat, Jay Leno's Garagewhich featured the original Mustang pace car driven in the 1964 Indianapolis 500.
“Every time you think of a pace car, it's a replica, but this is the actual pace car. That's the coolest part of it all, it's the real thing,” Leno says at the beginning of the episode. As he further elaborated, the muscle car was exactly the same as the one he had seen “circling” the track when he was 14 while watching it on black and white television.
But that only scratches the surface of the pace car's significant history. When it debuted at the Indy 500, the Mustang series was so new that most of the public had never seen one before the race. As Bill Ford, executive chairman of the Ford Motor Company, explained to Leno, the car was number 241, the very first day the Mustang was built.
According to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum, the Mustang is technically an early 1965 model. But since it was introduced in April 1964, just a month before the Indy 500, it is usually referred to as the 1964 1/2.
Ford also had a personal connection to the vehicle. While Leno was watching the race on TV, the great-grandson of company founder Henry Ford was at the race watching his uncle drive the car.
Additionally, Ford shared some other historical facts about the model. He noted that it was one of three cars built for the race – the actual pace car that was driven, another that didn't make it in time, and a third that was sold and then wrecked. He also noted that the car had to be modified for the Indy 500 because the standard models sold to consumers could not reach the required 140 miles per hour.
When the Mustang debuted, thanks in no small part to the Indy 500, it became the biggest car show in automotive history. Watch the full episode below for even more facts about the classic car's history.