The Newfoundland man who sold the first-ever Ford Mustang has passed away.
Harry Phillips, better known by the nickname Herk, passed away last Friday at the age of 91.
Phillips, a career salesman, holds the unique honour of being the person to sell the first Ford Mustang to ever come off the assembly line while working at George G.R. Parsons Ford in St. John’s back in 1964.
Phillips wasn’t supposed to sell it, however, and Ford would eventually give the man who bought it, Stanley Tucker, the one millionth Mustang ever built in exchange for the first.
The original Mustang now sits in the Henry Ford Museum in Deerborn, Michigan, with its NL license plate still intact.
In 2019 a campaign was launched so Phillips could make the trip to Michigan to see the vehicle, and in September of that year that’s exactly what he and members of his family did.
Harry Phillips is reunited with the vehicle he sold in 1964. (Via the Send Harry to Henry Facebook page)
Scott Halliday, a key driver behind that initiative, says Ford “rolled out the red carpet” for Phillips.
“A guy in a tuxedo and white gloves led him over to the car and they gave him a full tour and treated him like royalty…Harry never forgot it, it was such an important event to him that he was finally recognized.”
Phillips has also been recognized as an accomplished athlete, having been inducted into the St. John’s Baseball Hall of Fame in 1988.
