Ford wants you to help name Mustang’s black-accent package

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What do you call an American-made sports coupe with equine-based branding and blacked-out features? No, really, what do you call it? Ford wants to know. 

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Ford wants you to help name Mustang’s black-accent package Back to video

The Blue Oval is outsourcing part of the creative process around a new special package for the outgoing sixth-generation Mustang. Namely, the naming part.

Formerly called simply the “Mustang black accent package” or “Stealth,” the special edition will bear a new signature title, assuming Ford receives one it likes.

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Other than the computer-generated image of the Mustang’s darkened emblem and Ford’s word that it will have “black pony badges and black painted aluminum wheels,” there’s not a lot of visuals to get the creative juices flowing. But you can picture a dark horse, can’t you?

Name suggestions can be submitted via a special microsite, but before you go typing in whatever inappropriate joke just floated into your dirty dirty mind, you should read the note Ford added to the bottom of its call to action: “Oh, and by the way, we will not be including any offensive or inappropriate names, so please keep them family-friendly. Or else we’ll tell your mom.”

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Canadians who want to submit their dark humour and pony puns will have to do so via an American friend (or with some sneaky IP work) as the naming contest is only open to legal U.S. residents. Submission deadline is 8 p.m. EST on June 7, and winners will be sent an email confirmation if selected. 

Regardless of where you live, however, you can 100-per-cent weigh in our poll of suggested names. 

Ford isn’t the only automaker taking a darker approach to branding. BMW recently announced that all of the new models and platforms from its M performance division will arrive with a redesigned black badge with titanium bronze surrounding the blacked-out logo. All existing M models and other BMW models will carry on with the duo-blue-and-red BMW logo.

“The overall future direction for completely new cars is that we have a black M badge and the existing cars like the M4, for example, we will not change,” BMW M sales and marketing VP Timo Resch told Australia’s Which Car. “For next generation type of cars that’s where you will see an M badge that is black. Only new platforms and completely new models will get a black badge.”