What U.S. County Has the Most Mustangs Per Capita?
April 17 marked sixty years since the Ford Mustang’s public debut at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The original pony car immediately became a pop-culture and automotive phenom, and it remains one of the most impactful cars in history. Click here to follow along with our multi-week 60 Years of Mustang coverage. —Ed.
There’s a town in Oklahoma called Mustang, with a population of nearly 20,000. There’s another one in Texas, and it has a population of zero as of the 2020 census (for some reason, Mark Cuban bought it in 2021 for $2M). There is not, however, a Mustang County in the United States of America. At least not officially. This got us wondering where it is in the country that Mustangs are most popular. We surveyed our insurance data to find out. The result was this map—hover over it to see which U.S. counties have the most Ford Mustangs per capita.
A dry county named after Civil War general Philip Sheridan, Sheridan County, Kansas isn’t known for much. But it does, according to our data, have more proud Ford Mustang owners per capita than any county in the nation. Kansas in general has relatively high rates of Mustang ownership, as do North Carolina, Virginia, Montana, and North Dakota. As for places like Arkansas, Maine, Louisiana, and Illinois, maybe they’re more into Camaros—stay tuned for future maps. Where does your hometown stack up?
***
Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.
Who, me.
Looks like you only need a few Mustangs and fewer people
It would be interesting to know how many Mustangs are on the road today?
The map is interactive. My county is ranked 1,478 which for me is the highest concentration of Mustangs for any county I have lived in. But yeah population would have something to do with it.
Wonder what the ratio of republicans versus democrats driving mustangs is.
I saw a chart a few years back that showed Democrat’s are far more likely to drive a foreign car.
Mike, let’s keep pollytiks out of these forums. Besides, the most of the GOP have lost their licenses now and can’t drive their Fordodge dually 6X6 Greasel coal blowers!
Pollytiks? Please don’t vote in November.
Since many pickup trucks are made OUTSIDE the U.S.A. the fact is many Republicans do drive “foreign built” vehicles. Once again Mike ruins an interesting thread with his ignorant political opinion!
I thought democrats only walked or rode bicycles
Came here to read about cars, not political views, jokes or commentary. We hear about it enough in the news every day. Let’s leave an article that is apolitical that way.
AMEN!
With or without valid driver’s license and insurance?
I live western Washington lots of dims also lot of beamers audis and of course vws also lots of American muscle machines. I am not sure but it seems like Mustangs are more plentiful than the other brands when it comes to performance vehicles. Off subject l saw a news report that showed a repaid shop for evs that was packed with evs that needed their batteries replaced the car owners are having trouble coming up with around 12 grand to replace a battery that is only 2 or 3 years old .
Why?
and once again, you have ignored your Canadian customers.
No one in our unsanctioned Mustang Club in Ohio has Hagerty insurance, so you need to survey Grundy and all the rest.
I didn’t know that Canada was a State in the USA?
The biggest state!
Canadian County, Oklahoma
Ranked: 1,457
1 Mustang per every 2,416 people
Well, since we can probably just extrapolate the results northward, with our flyover country roughly similar in demographic terms, at least in the rural areas, it does not seem to be a big omission. My prediction is also that Quebec is Camaro/Firebird territory, and Vancouver Island is MGB territory… with the distribution of Ford and GM coupes in the US matching my experience and/or impressions of those places pretty closely.
My county is ranked 692, but we have 3. My wife has a 64 1/2 V8 manual convertilble, my son has a 65 V8 coupe, and I have a 66 V8 coupe with factory AC.
So we are trying to do our part.
American cars aren’t very common in Europe, but of those we saw during a month driving throughout the continent, Mustangs were actually the most frequently seen. This, in the land of some really interesting “foreign” cars I’d give my eye teeth for!
Au Contraire! Dodge and RAM are owned by Stellantis out of the Netherlands. It was owned by Fiat/FCA that also owned Jeep, Alfa Romeo, etc. And, of course Tesla is in the top 20. Germany buys billions$ in American cars. Additionally, there is an enormous vintage car culture in Sweden having the largest car meet in the world with over 13000 cars last year. We have many friends that import cars year round to Sweden from US and another with a dealership in Stockholm that specializes in big American pick up trucks and new muscle cars for enormous prices. The Finns also love American cars and Fords are in their top ten new cars too!
The Bureau of Land Management has a Wild Horse and Burro Abatement Program’ out here in the west, and I think they’ve made significant progress in eradicating those Mustangs locally. Can’t even give ’em away, according to what I’ve heard! Understand they’d crossbred with Fairlanes and Falcons, also. Too bad. Tsk-tsk!
And as for crossbreeding, do you count the Mustangs with LS swaps. For the record, I don’t have one.
It’s only to be expected that the counties with the most and least are going to be in the lowest population states because they’ll be the most variable. This is especially the case because it’s not a very high prevalence in the country generally ~ 1:3000. When some counties measures in the few thousand on the prairies you only need a few cars to swing the proportion a great deal. Case in point, the winning county here doesn’t even have 3000 people so the 10 cars they have really bumped the cars per capita.
Another Mustang article on Hagerty…what is it with Hagerty and your obsession with Mustangs? I know a lot of people like them but I never have. How about some more articles about classic Pontiacs–now you’d have my attention!
We took a couple weeks to recognize the Mustang’s 60th anniversary. It was a big milestone for a significant car, so we had a slow rollout of Mustang-specific stories. We now return to our regularly scheduled coverage…
This is less a measurement of Mustang ownership and more a measurement of Hagerty insurance marketing effectiveness. Show me the map based on vehicle registration data.
Yep – Available from Polk for a price.
Or unlicensed uninsured mustangs sitting in yards fields or whatever that would be more accurate
Give credit where credit is due. If it wasn’t for the 1964½ and 2005 Mustangs, the Camaro/Firebird and challenger/Cuda probably wouldn’t have existed.
The statistics are based on Hagerty customers only. To be accurate, they need to either research the DMV database (if possible), or include mustangs from all insurance companies.
1ST of all, these numbers are NOT “mustangs per capita” or “MCP”, which would be decimal fractions less than 1.0, since not everybody likes mustangs – altho MCPs can obviously be calculated from that data. Instead, they are the inverse of MCPs or “people per mustang”, which is equivalent data and admittedly is easier to handle but just doesn’t sound as fancy. 2ND, the article says this is “our insurance data”, so these numbers are actually “people per Hagerty-insured mustang”, which is probly why the numbers appear sorta low. ?And, wonder if that’s for all people or just drivers? Estimating from a typical data point (say ~1/2000), for a town of ~20,000 people there would only be about 10 Hagerty-insured mustangs, and in the whole USA there would only be ~150,000 Hagerty-insured mustangs in total (give or take some unknown factor of ~2 or even more). => Looks like Hagerty must be very popular in Sheridan, KS. And does Hagerty insure in Canada or elsewhere than the USA? By the way, statisics often can be pushed or driven or towed anyway you want, to make your desired point. :} / sn