1971 Ford Mustang Mach 1

The random vehicle selector program tonight has selected........

1971 Ford Mustang Mach 1

By using a program to randomly select vehicles I've owned or still own to blog about, I sometimes end up writing about some rather ordinary and boring rides.  The selection tonight, however, is a cool one for me.

 

This is certainly a car with a story.  It's a 1971 Mustang Mach 1 with only 35,000 original miles.  It is in absolutely showroom original condition right down to the 1971 Firestone Wide Oval tires and Magnum 500 rims.

  This car was perfect.  One time I drove it straight out of the garage to a large car show 20 miles away.  Without the aide of any presentation gear or even a good cleaning it placed 2nd overall.

 

It was an absolutely gorgeous head turner.  But it wasn't always that way.

 

This was my view the first time I saw the car.  It was sitting in somebody's yard / shop on a side street in Wichita Falls.  It caught my eye because it seemed out of place, so I asked the man who owned the place if it was for sale.  He said "everything is for sale" and $2800 later I had an old Mustang.

It had been sitting for about 10 years, and had seen better days.

My buddy Andrew and I were actually able to get it started with some ether and duct tape.  I followed him to my house because the brakes didn't work and I needed his car to bump to slow down.  We got it home and stuck it in the garage.  It didn't run again for almost three years.

The restoration process was long and expensive.  Nothing is cheap when you do something like this.  Other than the bodywork and paint, I did almost everything myself, including rebuilding the drive train.

Engine Before

Engine After - and it actually ran!!!

Slowly, the project started to come to fruition.  I finished it in 1994, and it probably didn't travel more than 1000 miles for the next 10 years.

For the most part, it stayed at my parents in Wichita Falls.  Either they or I would pull it out every now and then just to keep it fresh.  We usually took a few laps around the driveway for good measure.  The car has a 351 Cleveland 4V with a C6 automatic transmission.  I went back with the original color - Light Pewter Metallic - and the original black vinyl interior.  This one also had AC and the original 8-track.

I'm very proud of the car, but with receipts for more than $30,000 I can understand why a lot of these projects get started but never finished.

I kept this car for YEARS.  The down side of doing an original restoration, as opposed to a resto-mod, is that it ends up being almost too nice to drive.  I finally traded this car for a big 12-cylinder Mercedes and regretted it ever since.  The prices on these early '70s Mustangs took off a couple years later.  If the car is still in this condition, it's probably a 60K to 70K car today.  If it had the 428 and a manual, it would be a 100K plus car.