The Fox bodied Mustang is the car that brought us out of the dark ages of the no performance decade of the seventies.
Ford brought fun back with the 5.0 liter engine that continued to improve until the production of its last model in 1993 with the SVT Cobra. A super car in its day. While it produced only 245 hp it could still break into the 13's on a good day and that was stock.
The price for these cars was amazingly low, you could get a well equipped 5.0 LX for the 12ish range and they got pretty good mileage, about 25 on the highway.
Had this car not been the success it was, there would likely be no GT 500's.