In the 80s, the customers who wanted a little more luxury with their vehicles bought a Mercury Capri and if you wanted more performance you would go with the ASC/McLaren. Both versions of this car came as a brainchild of engineer Peter Muscat, who created an SL-esque convertible roof for the mechanically similar Mustang. He was able to convince Mercury to offer some limited support for this new project. The Capris was contracted to be built by the American Sunroof Company (ASC) who was partnered up with the McLaren. ASC also decided to offer a coupe version with a few upgrades. Even though customers were impressed by both coupe and convertible options, the biggest issue was pricing. The Convertible option added $12k to the $10k base price of the 5.0 L Capri which was already about $6k more expensive than the GT convertible. Also, the ASC/McLaren coupe was only $4k more expensive than the Capri that it was based, but didn’t find a huge number of buyers. Once the Capri production was finally halted, ASC/McLaren offered a version of the Mustang convertible. Throughout this process Muscat and ASC had disagreements over licensing and royalties which ended in a stop in production in 1990.
PRODUCTION QUANTITIES
YEARCONVERTIBLECOUPE
| ASC/McLaren 5.0 SC | 1984 | 50 | 25 |
| 1985 | 257 | 150 + 30 Grand Prix IV cars |
| 1986 | 245 | 115 + 47 EuroCoupes |
ASC/McLaren Ford Mustang
| 1987 | 479 | 0 |
| 1988 | 1015 | 0 |
| 1989 | 247 | 0 |
| 1990 | 65 | 0 |
1988 Ford Mustang ASC MCLAREN Convertible. #861/1015. Only 42,839 miles. I spoke with the head of the ASC McLaren Registry and he said it is one of 6.8% made with this color combo and COULD BE 1/1 or 2 with a 5 speed manual transmission. New tires, new battery, A/C converted to R134a and works great!. Condition is used and is sold as is.
