A 1966 Ford pony car wearing a galloping horse on its grille just showed up on Bring a Trailer. It has a high-performance 289-cubic-inch K-code V-8 under the hood, a four-speed manual, and 271 horsepower from the factory. But according to its badges, it is not a Mustang.
It’s a T5. And the reason it exists is one of the great petty triumphs of Cold War-era trademark law.
When Ford launched the Mustang in 1964, Europe was already paying attention. That first year, a Mustang won the grueling Tour De France endurance race, beating out three Shelby Daytona coupes that entered in a higher class and failed to finish. Ford wanted to sell its new star in Germany.
Germany said no — at least not under that name. The problem was Krupp, the industrial giant whose factories had been bombed by P-51 Mustang fighters during World War II. By the 1960s, Krupp was building trucks, and one of them was called the Mustang.
The irony is almost too perfect. Krupp held the trademark and wanted $10,000 to release it. Ford did the math and decided renaming the car was cheaper than fighting.
So every Mustang sold in Germany became a T5, borrowing the internal project code from the car’s development. Ford stripped the word “Mustang” from the steering wheel, swapped the fender badges for T5 emblems, and quietly retuned the suspension. The T5 cars actually got a shock tower brace borrowed from the Shelby GT350, making them arguably better-sorted than the American-market cars.
Ford figured German buyers would know exactly what they were looking at regardless of the name. They were right.
This particular example, finished in black over tan, is claimed to be the last T5 ever built with the K-code V-8 and the only one to leave the factory in black. It was restored roughly a decade ago and presents in exceptional condition. Recent work includes a rebuilt carburetor, a new radiator, a brake overhaul, and fresh valve cover gaskets.
The odometer reads in miles, not kilometers, with an estimated 29,000 miles after rollover. Any T5 is rare. A K-code T5 is rarer still.
A black K-code T5 claimed to be the last of its kind occupies a very specific corner of the collector universe — the kind of car that rewards the obsessive, the footnote-hunter, the person who finds more pleasure in explaining what something is than in simply owning it.
The collector car market has spent the last several years rediscovering the value of oddity. Cars with strange production histories, limited-run variants, and bureaucratic quirks now command premiums that would have seemed absurd two decades ago. A standard 1966 K-code Mustang is already a serious car.
Wrap it in a trademark dispute involving a German arms manufacturer and a naming rights standoff, and you have something that transcends the machine itself.
The Bring a Trailer auction closes May 6. Bidders will be paying for a 271-horsepower, four-speed coupe that drives like a Mustang, looks like a Mustang, and wears the running horse like a Mustang. It just refuses to say the word.
Ford spent decades building the Mustang into one of the most recognized nameplates in automotive history. Krupp’s goofy truck is long forgotten. But this one black coupe from 1966 is a reminder that even the most iconic names are only as powerful as the trademark office says they are.
Sometimes the best stories in the car world have nothing to do with horsepower. They start with a lawyer and a $10,000 invoice that nobody wanted to pay.
Share this Story