Jay Leno had a special treat for viewers on the latest episode of his YouTube series, Jay Leno's Garage, in which he showed off 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 about it, it's the actual one," Leno says in the beginning of the episode. As he further elaborated, the muscle car was the same exact one he saw go "around the track" when he was 14 years old watching it on black and white television.
But that's only scratching the surface of the significant history of the pace car. When it debuted at the Indy 500, the Mustang line was so new that the majority of the general public had never actually seen one before the race. As Bill Ford, executive chair of Ford Motor Company explained to Leno, the car was No. 241 off the line on the very first day of Mustang production.
According to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum, the Mustang is technically considered an early 1965 model. But because it was introduced in April of 1964, just one month before the Indy 500, it's commonly referred to as a 1964 1/2.
Ford also had a personal connection to the vehicle. While Leno watched the race on TV, the great-grandson of company founder Henry Ford was actually at the race, where he watched his uncle drive the car.
Additionally, Ford shared some other historical facts about the model. He noted that it was one of three made for the race—the actual pace car that was driven, another that didn't make it in time, and a third that had been given away and subsequently wrecked. He also noted that the car had to be modified for the Indy 500 because the regular models sold to consumers weren't able to get up to the required speed of 140 miles per hour.
When the Mustang debuted, with no small thanks to the Indy 500, it would go on to become the biggest car launch in automotive history. Check out the full episode below for even more facts about the history of the classic car.
