Saleen Signs Rental Deal for Dressy Mustangs

In a marketing campaign aimed at whetting prospective buyers’ appetites for his expensive post-factory performance cars, Ford Mustang tuner Steve Saleen has signed a deal with Budget Rent A Car to place more than 300 Saleen S281 Mustangs at Budget lots nationwide by mid-1998.

The cars, mostly convertibles that will rent for $150 a day or $895 a week, are the same mildly tuned and dressed-up Mustangs that Saleen builds in Irvine and sells through a network of Ford dealers for prices that begin at about $29,000. Saleen Performance Cars also builds and sells far more muscular Mustangs with 5.0-liter V-8 engines that start at about $40,000.

So far, Saleen has placed 30 cars at Budget lots in Southern California, Arizona and Nevada. Two of the Southern California lots are in Orange County. The number grows next month as Saleen supplies Budget with 100 more cars, the rest following by the spring of 1998.