And what percentage of a production run qualifies as rare? 2 %? 5 %? 0.005?
I own a 66 Tahoe Turquoise Sprint convertible with (27) Aqua interior and 2.77 3-speed.
Of the 607,568 units produced in 1966, 582,981 came equipped with bucket seats (All Sprints had buckets because of the standard equipment console).
40.7% of the cars reported in the MPG had 6-cylinder engines, or approximately 274,001.
Sprint production is believed to have begun in January of 1966 (with just a few pre-production exceptions). Given the calendar days available for production, and assuming a constant rate per calendar day, that would mean that approximately 60.46% of all production happened from January to balance out. This would give us approximately 165,657 6-cylinder cars with no bench seats produced after January 1st.
Of all 6-cylinder cars reported in the MPG after Jan. 1st, 11.36% of them are Sprints. Using that percentage on the 165,657 6-cylinder cars with no bench seats produced after January 1st would yield approximately 18,057 possible Sprints (
less than estimated GT production of 25,517)!
Of all 607,568 production, approximately 11.35% were convertibles with no bench seats and 60.46% of those were produced after Jan. 1st, giving a total convertible production for the period in question of 18,794. Using a ratio of 13% for Sprint convertible production would yield approximately 2,443 Sprint convertibles.
Regarding paint: A greater percentage of Sprints were painted Wimbledon White than '66 cars in general; about 22% of Sprints versus about 12.5% of all 66's. So the percentages for Tahoe Turquoise are probably somewhat different than the 5.5% reported in the MPG. But using the 5.5% anyway would yield approximately 134 Tahoe Turquoise Sprint convertibles. 45% of all Tahoe Turquoise cars had (27) Aqua interiors which would narrow it down further to about 60.
Of all Sprints reported in the MPG, 81% had automatic transmissions, 16% had 2.77 3-speeds, and 3% had 4-speed transmissions.
60 possible Tahoe Turquoise Sprint convertibles with Aqua (27) interiors times 16% for the 2.77 3-speed would yield about 9.7 cars like mine.
But you know what makes it rare? Of all the millions of Mustangs ever produced, or yet to be produced, this was the only car that was owned by my father-in-law Buddy Garlick. Love ya Dad
