The Mustang Era

Finally started August 18, 2003

Mustangs have been in this family almost since their inception.  I got my first new car, a '65 GT hardtop, in August of 1965.  It had few options, and was sort of an afterthought, because I had been waiting for a '65 Galaxie 500 XL that I had ordered in June of that year.  For whatever reason, it never showed up at the dealer until the fall, and I got tired of waiting, and my father and I found this Mustang in the next town up the road.  It was a 3-speed stick, and as such wasn't quite as much fun as a 4-speed would have been, but it was just as fast once it was going 40 mph or more.  Top speed was about 125 mph, and I'd cruise at 80 or 90 along our farm roads every time I was going anywhere.  I burned off the Goodrich Silvertowns in just a few thousand miles, and then started being more conservative after I had to replace them myself.  I went up to 775/14 Firestone 500s, which were very good tires for their era.  I learned to 4 wheel drift it through corners while commuting up the highway to Kings Canyon National Park, where I worked the summer of 1967, and had a great time taking all the pretty girls anywhere they wanted to go, as long as they bought the gas for the car, and hamburgers for me.  ...I was young and naive at the time.....!

Until I clean out my storage shed (hoping the constantly leaking roof didn't destroy all the old pictures I used to have), this picture of a painting of the original '65 GT is all there is.  It was originally Rangoon Red outside, with red vinyl inside. It stickered for $3,100, and we traded a '63 F-100 for it (which I'd like to have back, too). You either liked the School Bus yellow or hated it.  I liked it, but I heard others saying "I don't care for that", as they'd walk by it at Mustang Club functions.  That's OK.  It was pretty quick, with its Konis, 271hp GT350 modified engine, and 4-speed tranny that I got from a wrecking yard when it was two years old.  Like the Boss, this car has its own story, which would take a while to tell, and actually, would take some time to remember, since it is from the 1960s.  But it was a GOOD car.....had only a couple of minor problems, nothing serious.  I'd love to have it back.

The next car in line for me was the Boss 302, which has its own page.  It is still around, and is headed for the museum.

Fox Mustangs Invade My Garage!!!

This was the more satisfying period of my more recent Mustang ownership period.  In September of 1993 this picture was taken.  It's in front of the San Leandro California house I had during the '90s.  I lived there for about 7 years, and had some pretty good times with Mustangs.  On the far right is the first one, a 1987 GT convertible I got while I lived in Bakersfield, working for the FAA.  It was purchased along with the Thunderbird Turbo Coupe I got for myself in the spring of 1987.  That was a good year for me, but not for Ford Motor Company.  It's the one year that a 6 year/unlimited mileage warranty was offered, and both these cars had that warranty.  The Mustang had a chronic low oil pressure problem, which caused the dealer some headaches, and the Tbird had rear axle problems during the last part of its career.  But the Mustang was cheerfully diagnosed and fixed successfully by the dealer, and the Thunderbird served me well despite the axle.  The two cars in the center are the two Cobras I got in late summer of 1993, with the red one being stored, and the black one being driven.  It served me very well, although it did have some bad valve springs, which were changed by the dealer.  I enjoyed it for two years, then one morning it wasn't in the driveway where it had been parked the night before.  I never saw it again.  It probably was on a ship. headed for Columbia drug runners by noon that day.  I should have gotten the red one out of storage and started driving it, but instead I SOLD it....traded it (even WORSE!!)..for a '95 Cobra convertible, which is shown below.  That had to be one of the WORST automotive deals I have EVER made.  It is almost (but not quite) funny now, but it still makes me mad.

Here's the two Cobras close up.  They were both excellent cars....'93 Cobras are as good as Mustang lovers say they are....one of the ten best production Mustangs ever made.  The only problem they both had was that their driveshafts were out of balance....apparently a widespread problem with Mustangs.  Someday soon I'll have another one....there is a Teal one available in the area, but I have to get the AWA to let me get it, and she will take some convincing.  Here, they are both BRAND NEW....the red one will never wear its plates while I own it....a BAD mistake, once the black one became an outlaw. Below you have a look at their rear ends...a common view from other vehicles on the street where they lived.

SN95s......The Beginning of the End

I should have been satisfied with the '93 Cobras.  But noooooo, I had to have the newest thing there was, even though it was a bad financial deal, and a poor choice for performance.  I knew what I shouldn't do, but I did it anyway.  Here, on the left, is the '95 Cobra I traded the red '93 for.  I won't tell you how badly I did, but suffice it to say it would take a LOT of good cheap SHOs to make up for these blunders...both of them.  But before I got it, I got the one on the right.  Do you recall the white GT convertible that was on the LEFT side of the 4 car picture above?  I leased that car, rather than bought it, because I thought I would do better leasing than buying.  What did I know....!!??  But the dealer that sold it to me liked me enough that the deal I got was as good as paying the sticker price, which is OUTSTANDING for a lease.  Including the down payment, the 2 years of lease payments, the residual at the end of two years, and the interest during the 2 years, I STILL would pay no more than the total sticker price.  Not bad for a lease.  So...how smart am I....?  I got this car in Bakersfield, as well, at my still favorite dealer.  I drove it back to San Leandro, and on the way there is a speedometer check section along the road.  (California is only just now getting mile markers....back in 1993 there was only an occasional 5 mile stretch of interstate highway here and there marked off with mile signs, for checking speedometers.  So it turns out this car reads 2 mph slow at 65.  So if I try to stretch the tolerance I might get a ticket.  That fall, on the Nimitz Freeway in Oakland, I got a speeding ticket, for going two mph over what we were being allowed to drive in the '55 everywhere' era.  So I got so mad at the car, that I SOLD it.  I SOLD IT!!!!   How stupid is that?  I liked it completely, I got a good deal on it, but because I FORGOT about the speedo, since I had been letting my daughter use it, I got a TICKET, then I SOLD it......I traded it in on the '94 GT convertible.  For that piece of ...., I paid sticker, financed it over 6 years, and paid $500 a month.  I didn't own enough of the '93 to get anything for it...it just went away in a puff of smoke!!  The '94 was the very first of a new design, so what do you think it was like.....it creaked and rattled, and when you pulled the emergency brake handle (on the console) up, it tried to tear itself off the floor pan of the car.  What a piece of poo-poo!!.  It came from the factory with a defective differential.....now we are in the middle of the total garbage era of 8.8 rear axles....between these two cars I replaced at least 5 gear sets and bearings over the next 18 months.

Here's the Cobra getting one of its Griggs springs (the blue one) installed.  Notice how much larger around, yet shorter it is than the stock spring.  They were excellent, and should have been standard equipment on the car.

The '95 Cobra was also not one of my better negotiation attempts.  For all of 1994, and the first half of 1995, Ford dealers had added a $10,000 markup to Cobras.  Apparently in 1995 everyone but me knew they weren't much of a performance car, and were not selling well.  So, about the time the black '93 was stolen, they had pretty much removed the mark-up.  So I thought I was getting a really great deal when I went to the dealer and paid sticker minus $1000 for this car.  There was a line wide incentive of $1000 off the sticker, so I thought I was getting the deal of the century.  Ha!!  For my brand new, still window-stickered '93 Cobra, they gave me LOW BOOK...for a 2 year old car with 95 miles on it...it had 91 when I bought it....they gave me $12,000.  Someone KICK me!! So, after leasing this Cobra, rather than buying it, I walked out (or drove out, actually) of the dealership with a $625 per month payment, for two years, with a residual value of something like $21,000.  Do you BELIEVE THAT!!??  They were laughing on the floor after I left, I'm sure.  I went back to the used car section later on....they have a small indoor display area with a showroom, and the '93 was on the floor, in the center, in all its glory.  They probaby got $22,000 for it.  That's what I paid for it.  The '95 never got a chance for me to like it, after all this financial stupidity, and I only drove it about 1800 miles over 4 years.  It still blew a differential (I didn't hot-rod it...I drove it normally, just to enjoy it), after about 1600 miles, and I installed a gear-set from SVT (under warranty, but I had to buy the gears) with a ratio of 3:50/1.  It was a bit more fun after that, but the bearings still were no good, and that axle started to howl also, after just a few hundred miles more.  I took it back, but they couldn't quiet it down, so I just lived with it, since I'd have to pay for the gears again.  I finally sold it, also in 1999.  No more new Mustangs for me....too expensive, too small, and not dependable enough.  Don't ask me, Ford, whether I like your new Mustangs....you won't like the answer...and you SHOULD care, because I've had so many, and liked the early ones so much..