Hello from Oregon. A word regarding MII. If Ford had not made these, the Mustang line was dead........The 74 was the FIRST Mustang named Car of the Year...........First Mustang with the 5.0 designation. I believe the 74 outsold the 65. MII WAS NOT A PINTO!!!!. Just saying the MII has had a bad name because it did not come out with a V8 the first couple of years.......But it did SAVE the Mustang, no doubt about that!
'74 was the car of the year, but years later Motor Trend said they regretted that and apologized for it, true story. Those idiots also gave that award to the 1995 Chrysler Cirrus, 1980 Chevrolet Citation, 1999 Chrysler 300M, 1983 Renault Alliance, 2001 Chrysler PT Cruiser, and the 1971 Chevrolet Vega, all of which are objectively worse than the Mustang II, so who cares what they retroactively think?
The II was the first car to carry the 5.0 designation, but only on the '78 King Cobra, all other V8 IIs were "302-2V" on the air cleaner.
It was totally a Pinto, I embrace that by calling my '75 (my third II, by the way, there's something very wrong with me) "ElSuperPinto". (Okay, so it's got less Pinto in it than the original had Falcon or the fox-bodies had Fairmont... but... screw it, if everyone wants to think it's a dressed-up Pinto, most of us around here don't really give a damn.)
1974 was the only year without a V8 option... in the United States; Ford of Mexico was smart enough to have a 302 and even a 351W option for Mexican-market Mustang IIs of all years. In fact, when Dearborn realized their mistake, they had the engineers from Mexico show them how to make a 302 fit because Ford had zero plans for a V8 Mustang II until there was such an outcry when the '74 models debuted in 1973 without one.
This thread of
@Manoah 's is one of my favorites... you should keep an eye on it.