A Classic Ford Mustang Is Perfect For This Icelandic Enthusiast

Story by Sigfús Sverrisson // Photography by Stefan Bogner

I’m from Reykjavík, Iceland and I have been a car guy since I was born. When I was younger, I always drove cars from General Motors—a Chevrolet Camaro Z28, and one of only two Corvettes in Iceland—but as time went by, I became a sucker for a great design. So in late 2002, after failing to acquire a 1969 Dodge Charger, a lonely Ford Mustang Fastback caught my eye on Ebay.

After a couple of rounds and heavy negotiations, I bought my classic Mustang, and had it airlifted with Icelandair Cargo from JFK to Iceland. The “MIB” moniker was my son’s idea, he is quite the movie buff.

When he said, “MIB,” I, of course, said, “Men In Black?” “No, Dad: ‘Mustang In Black’.”

This Mustang is a 1966 Fastback in Raven Black, with an original interior and a lightly-modified small block V8. It’s a running restoration, and is constantly being pampered and loved. It was made in Metuchen, New Jersey on February 3, 1966—that year, Ford made a total of 607,568 Mustangs, 35,698 of which were Fastbacks, and 7,889 with the Pony interior, so not really a rare horse: but why is it “famous”?

It all started with Yamaha Europe—it did all of its photos for the introduction of the Yamaha MT-01 motorcycle in Iceland, and the marketing department concluded that the typical owner of the MT-01 would also have a classic Mustang in his garage—and guess whose Mustang that was?

A first paid gig for MIB, and very cool to have your very own Mustang as a model in all the brochures and web-based media for Yamaha Europe. Then came winning “Showoff Car of the Year” announced at the SEMA show in 2006; it was the first car to win the title on cardomain.com (when it was still a true car enthusiast website). MIB got a lot of support from local car guys and even a few newspaper articles were written about this event. I have a nice trophy, and did get a handsome cash prize.

But with fame comes a downside. A few weeks after winning, a Mustang friend of mine, Sigurdur Olafsson, called me up and asked if I was selling my Mustang—I said no. “Ok, better have a look on Ebay. Some scumbag has downloaded all the info and photos off of Cardomain, and is trying to ‘sell’ MIB somewhere in California.” After contacting Ebay, it pulled the page a few hours later and no one got scammed this time—thank you, Siggi .

MIB was in a nice photo shoot for the Bilar & Sport Magazine car show, where among others, a Koeningsegg was shown in Iceland for the first time. The wife of Christian von Koeningsegg came to the MIB stand and asked if she could sit in the Mustang—as that was her absolute favorite car at the show. Permission granted. She then graciously allowed my son to sit in the Koeningsegg as well!

One of the Bilar & Sport photos was solicited by Mustangs Unlimited for a 2008 Calendar, too.

In September 2011, I got a call from the CEO of Pegasus, an Icelandic film and television production company, and he asked if I still owned the MIB Mustang. He had gotten a call that morning from London and they specifically asked for the MIB Mustang to use in a music video with the two time no. 1 British recording artist Example, which I did not know at the time. They had found photos of MIB online, and knew they had found their Mustang for the video.

Anyway, they made a decent video, and the song Midnight Run has been viewed over 9 million times on YouTube—MIB played a large role in the video, but sports a different license plate to honor the music producer Jon Gooch, aka Feed Me, who produced the track .

In the summer of 2014, the famous, talented photographer and publisher Stefan Bogner of Curves Magazine did an action shoot with MIB in the unique Icelandic landscape at Bla Fjöll—the Blue Mountains.

Now a few years after my Ebay purchase, our beloved MIB might be the most famous Mustang in Iceland…and is pretty popular in the rest of the world, too.