Last week marked the 50th anniversary of the Ford Mustang. I didn’t do anything to celebrate the date, but it did remind me of the the first car I ever owned, a 1979 Ford Mustang.
Although it might look dated in the above picture, my 1979 Ford Mustang was only 10 years old when I got it in the summer of 1989. 1979 was the first year of the “third-gen” Mustang, commonly known as the Fox body. My Mustang had over 100,000 miles when I got it — either 120k or 160k, I forget. The car had a maroon interior and a stock 302 v8 — Ford’s infamous 5.0 — under the hood. The only thing not original on the car were the tail lights which had come off of the nearly identical Mercury Capri.
I don’t need to be told what a bad idea it is to give a sixteen year old a muscle car; I lived it. I’m sure I spent more on tires than I did on gasoline, leaving “scratch marks” from one end of Yukon to the other. I once did so many donuts in Walmart’s parking lot that my hubcaps fell off. Jeff and I had to pay a kid in the parking lot $5 to get one of them back. Andy and I once smacked the ‘stang into a parking block out behind Mazzio’s parking lot. I think Susan and I changed a flat tire after I accidentally drove it off the side of an interstate on ramp. I once got banned from parking on campus after peeling out and almost running over a teacher. And those were the good times.
My dad did what he could to keep the car running but his mechanic skills were no match for my apparently burning desire to destroy that car. The engine lasted longer than it should have before blowing up. Then he put another engine in the car and I blew it up too. I am mentally bookmarking this page and will revisit it someday when my kids undoubtedly put me through the same torture.
Nice car! I had a ’79 fox body coupe, picked it up in 1990. It has 77,000 miles and a blown clutch. But, for $300 it was a bargain. Only a 2.3 liter 4 cylinder though, many fond memories of the shenanigans with that car. It was a well faded silver, a bit of rust on the bottom of the doors and a warped plastic front fascia. I found a set of 13″ inch aluminum slots, polished them and bought the cheapest, widest raised white letter tires I could find.
The most expensive thing in the car was the Pioneer Supertuner 3 (it could fast forward to the next song on a cassette automatically!) and the aluminum hurst shift t-handle shift knob.
Of course I wanted a 5.0 and a year later bought an ’84 gt (which is still in my garage).
The ’79’s were an odd duck. The horn was on the turn signal stalk and the inside door handles were on the very bottom corner of the door panel, no one could ever find them.
Now I want that car back…