Here’s A Look At One Of The Rarest 1960s Ford Mustang Accessories

These days, Mercedes-Benz and Nissan will sell you cars with illuminated badges. It’s tacky or futuristic, depending on your taste. Other automakers have experimented with the idea, too, and there are a ton of aftermarket options on sites like eBay and AliExpress. But did you know that you could buy a Mustang with this very feature over 50 years ago? Yes, the famous horse emblem could be had in light-up form back when Ford was selling hundreds of thousands of Mustangs a year, and yet, the accessory is a rare and special find today.

When the Mustang hit the scene in 1964, it was a near-instant hit for Ford. The name and badging of the car had been an area in which Ford invested significant research. The badge design ended up with the now-famous horse inside a rounded rectangular border. This was known as the “corral,” and was developed from a big-cat badge featured on Gale Halderman’s prototype Mustang design which was referred to as the Cougar.

The badge quickly became an icon of Ford’s performance car for the masses. However, those buying a Mustang didn’t all stick with the standard badge from the factory. As shared by 196667Bob on the Vintage Mustang Forum, these badges have a rich history. He’s kind of an expert on the matter, since he’s been collecting them and researching the matter since 1978.

As early as 1966, Ford began offering a special badge known as the Illuminated Mustang Grill Emblem, or the Illuminated Medallion Kit. The kit came with a light with a horse badge over it, which mounted inside the original corral in place of the existing horse emblem. It was intended for use as either a parking or a running light, and was typically wired into the accessory terminal of the ignition switch according to Ford’s instructions. Ford would sell these illuminated emblems under two different part numbers—the C6ZZ-8B366-A to suit the 1966 Mustang, and the C7ZZ-8B366A to suit the 1967 model. The parts included in the kit are stamped directly with these numbers.

It was a pretty cool dress-up item that you could score directly from Ford as an accessory. And yet, the company did almost nothing to advertise the part. According to 196667Bob, the only printed advertising he’s seen for the light-up emblem was in the 1967 Ford Accessories catalog. One reason may have been that the accessory was technically illegal to use in a whole bunch of states due to the lighting regulations at the time. It’s a long list, including Arizona, California, Kansas, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Texas. In Canada, British Columbia wasn’t too keen on them either.

Barely advertised and illegal across much of the country, the emblem didn’t catch on as a mainstream thing in Mustang culture. However, Ford wasn’t the only brand interested in glowing bling. Aftermarket manufacturers were playing in this space, too.

Chief among the aftermarket parts was the Silhouette Safety Light. These are the type you’ll come across most commonly when searching for these parts across the Internet. Indeed, Kentucky Mustang LLC was able to sell 54 new-old stock examples on eBay in recent years. Produced by BJD Corporation in Lancaster, Ohio, the light was designed to be installed behind the existing corral and horse badge rather than replacing the latter entirely. Clear and amber glass options were available, with 196667Bob also noting his research indicates a blue variant existed.

Unlike Ford’s version, the Silhouette Safety Light could be installed on 1965, 1966, and 1967 model Mustangs. The text on the packaging is a treat, too. “Day and night it enhances the smart, luxurious appearance of a Mustang by outlining the classic metal medallion in soft, living illumination.” That it does.

Packaging and parts for the “Silhouette Safety Light” are marked “Pat. Applied For.” According to 196667Bob, the patent in question was awarded on December 12, 1967. Indeed, US Patent Number 3,358,135 was awarded on that date to Leo J. Weismantel of Lancaster, Ohio, for the Illuminable Silhouette Display Unit. In any case, despite having filed for the patent on January 14, 1966, it didn’t stop anyone else from manufacturing their own versions of the emblem.

As it turns out, JC Whitney also had a horse in this race, pun very much intended. The company offered an “Illuminated Grill Ornament and Running Light” in Catalog No. 227, listed under “NEW, 1966 Parts”. Quite opposite to the more common designs here, it doesn’t have a backlit corral with a horse in front. Instead, the horse itself was a white plastic part that was itself illuminated.

According to 196667Bob, the aftermarket may have actually been first to offer light-up ponies. All these designs seemed to pop up around 1966 or so, though Ford’s instructions note a date of October 26, 1965. It’s likely that many of these designs were all in development in 1965 amidst the then-raging Mustang fever. It’s difficult to say which exactly came first, as contemporary materials are scarce online and Ford’s own public archives only mention the accessories in the aforementioned accessory catalog. In any case, The Autopian has contacted Ford for background on how the idea for the accessory may have come about, and when.

Most of these emblems look great when illuminated at night. In contrast, they do tend to sacrifice aesthetics in the light of day. It’s of particular note with the JC Whitney part, but really, it applies to all these emblems. Instead of a bold silver horse set against a dark background, you’re left with something that doesn’t quite stand out as much. This may have had some impact on the popularity of the parts, too.

With that said, though, the parts were at times in demand enough to actually spur the creation of fakes. According to 196667Bob, there was a “miraculous warehouse find” in the 1980s of what were claimed to be new-old-stock Ford illuminated emblems for the 1966 Mustang. This was followed a few years later by similar parts for the 1967 model. The lack of authenticity was obvious, though, with packaging that differed greatly from the Ford versions. Furthermore, instead of a metal horse emblem on a proper lens, the fakes were a single piece of white plastic with the horse painted in silver. Up close, they simply don’t measure up.

Modern versions exist, too. The most common is one manufactured by Scott Drake, a company specializing in reproduction parts. It uses LED backlighting and a white plastic panel that mounts behind the standard corral. It doesn’t look bad, per se, but the pure white output from the LEDs can be a stark contrast to the more yellow light from a typical Mustang’s regular headlight bulbs.

As is obvious, there was a rich ecosystem of illuminated emblems for the original Mustang. And yet, neither David Tracy nor I, nor even Mr. Torchinsky himself, had seen them before. Indeed, his glorious article on illuminated emblems doesn’t mention Mustangs at all!

Thus, I reached out to the community to get an idea of what these emblems meant to real Mustang owners and fans. In this busy world, I didn’t get too many bites, but Chris Jansen from Michigan was more than happy to tell me about his own experience of these neat accessories.

“The first time I ever saw one was at a car show, fitted on a ’65 Mustang,” Jansen told The Autopian. At the time, he was too young to drive, and the Mustang was working its way into his heart as his dream car. By the time he bought one of his very own, the corral light had drifted out of his mind, until a chance encounter years later at an antique fair. The light was sitting in a jumble of other parts, and caught Jansen’s eye. “The guy who had it approached me and asked me if I knew what it was,” he reminisces. “As soon as he told me I remembered that baby blue ’65 I had seen, and I had to have it for my own car. That was close to 25 years ago and it’s still the one that resides behind the chrome pony today.”

Jansen’s example is one of the Silhouette Safety Lights, in the clear design. “When people notice it, it’s an instant conversation starter and they want to know all about it,” he relates, noting he’s heard of blue and green versions in the wild. Mounted on his car, it’s a handsome thing that looks absolutely period appropriate. Much of that is down to the contemporary styling of the lens, which matched the lighting of the era.

Jansen also later acquired what he reports as a new-old-stock Ford example. By his description, it sounds like it could be one of the fakes mentioned by 196667Bob above, as Jansen reports it has the horse molded into the plastic with a painted chrome finish, though having not seen it, we can’t be sure. As is the case with so many of us auto obsessives, the part is somewhere in Jansen’s collection and he can’t be sure precisely where it lives today.  “I never installed this as I never did like the way it looked,” he explains.

His love of illuminated emblems stretches beyond the original Mustang, too. “I also had a ’94 mustang that I had a lighted horse in,” he says, noting he’s never seen another example out on the street. “I saw an ad in the back of a Mustang magazine for one and sent away for it.” He’s swapped it through a few cars he’s had over the years, and today it lives in his wife’s 1998 Mustang convertible. It’s actually a sharp looking piece, with the illuminated horse an excellent fit for the SN95 design.

If all this has you excited, but you’ve got a newer model Mustang, fear not. Illuminated LED emblems are readily available online for newer models and they’re actually a decent match when it comes to styling. They illuminate the horse, rather than silhouetting it, as modern Mustangs don’t use the corral emblem design. They’re a bit showy, sure, but you should have fun and exercise your own taste when customizing your car.

If we were smart, we’d throw an affiliate link here to score some extra dosh on the side, but we’ll trust you to hunt one down for yourself. Alternatively, you could 3D print your own pretty easily, and maybe chuck in some rainbow LEDs for good measure. Or, I could do that? Someone lend me a Mustang.

In any case, the history of illuminated emblems on Mustangs goes all the way back to the dawn of the model. If you can find an original Ford or BJD example, or the obscure JC Whitney part, it would make a great addition to a classic original Mustang. Or, you could find a way to mount it up as a beautiful bedside lamp, which would also look particularly excellent. Either way, hopefully you’ve enjoyed this deep dive into a classic piece of Mustang history. After all, here at The Autopian, if there’s some kind of weird light on an old car, we’re going to tell you all about it.

Image credits: Ford, Chris Jansen, Paul H.W., Etsy, Kentucky Mustang LLC via eBay screenshot