Rubbing Tires (Standard size)

Mustang5L5 said:

...Only the control arm rub raises my eyebrow. The other rub I would agree is typical

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I agree, mine never rubbed the control arm. The other rub looks exactly like mine.
Back then, they were producing these so fast, all kinds of mistakes were made & QC was ignored or nonexistant. Not as many robots then (if any). A friend of mine had an early 80's Dodge Charger, took the rear wheel off to change it & noticed a large yellow circle drawn in crayon or paint. Compared it to the opposite side & it was clear that QC had caught a missing weld. They completed, shipped & sold the vehicle without ever repairing the unwelded section. Ford was no different.

In the case of the early GT's, the rubbing issue finally got back to engineering for a fix but it wasn't implemented until later years when existing parts supplies were used up. It was done when the wheels went to 5-lug, 16 inch. If you put an early & later GT side by side, you can see a very subtle difference in the skirts. Just in time manufacturing was introduced by the Japanese & later adopted by US companies in the early '90's which eliminated inventories of "bad" parts.