Custom Mustang

Open hood scoops, Red interior-only.

The Hong Kong factory is believed to have had a head start in making the Custom Mustang casting, producing the very first cars with open scoops cut into the hood. Upon spraying the hood of these early cars, some paint tended to get into the engine compartment. To solve this problem, the Mattel engineers decided to touch up the engines with silver paint.  After a few weeks of this, it was decided that inspection and hand painting of each affected engine compartment was adding expense and slowing production, so the open hood scoop (“OHS”) was omitted from later run castings.

The very first colors off the HK production line were red and gold.  The red HK cars had a red interior and a black steering wheel. The gold HK Mustangs had a brown interior with a black steering wheel. Both castings had a flat dashboard, a painted rear panel with no fuel cap (this would later be painted black), blue-tinted glass, deep-dish redline 5-spoke chrome mag wheels, a detailed Hong Kong base showing exhaust with side pipes, four whole exposed suspension bars and a raked (“jacked-up”) appearance to the stance.  Deep-dish wheels on the back and eventually on the front were ultimately dropped from all HK Mustangs.  After the initial run of red and gold, different color exteriors were used with the introduction of white and dark interior colors. -Online Redline Guide