(This is part 10 of a multi-part series. If you wish to start at the beginning, click here)
(From part 9): About a week or so later, my dad got home from bowling night. He told me one of his bowling buddies had a salvage yard and dabbled in used cars. The buddy knew of a lead…
It was a Mustang…
“Mustang?” I repeated, surprised. Dad nodded with a smile as he stripped off a bowling shirt that carried home the fragrances of beer, secondhand smoke, and onion rings. My heart thrummed as I tried to formulate some intelligent clarifying questions. Instead, they came out tripping over one another without waiting for answers: “What year? Is it a V8? What color? Where did it come from? Who is this friend?” finally devolving into just gibber-sponses: “Can we, blommm, go look, see-mit?” Dad clearly had not anticipated my need for details and possessed precious little info. “1980-something…..I think” and that it fell within the $2k budget mark was about all I got. He promised to set something up in a couple days to take a look. I left his room with dazed joy on my face, eyes drifting at the ceiling in imagination of the beauty that awaited.
The days and events between the receipt of this news and actually going to see the car never properly etched into my brain’s archives. Little attention was paid to schoolwork. Finally, Saturday came and Dad and I went to a local industrial area to gaze upon this fine steed.
When we got there….only….where was it? Oh no, is that it?! It had to be it. The only car sitting in the weedy parking lot was this turdy brown looking thing. The nurse shouted, “Quick Doctor! The patient has a terrible case of High Expectations and he’s crashing! What are we going to do?!” “Nurse, that’s a 1980 Brown Ford Mustang with a tan plaid interior. I’m afraid there’s no cure. Better notify the family.”
We got out of Dad’s Cherokee and walked over to where his beaming friend was looking at me expectantly. “Whaddyaa think, huh?” The saying is true: Beggars most definitely cannot be choosers, but sometimes that choosiness must first be expunged from us. To a guy who’d spent the last few years lusting after the current generation of fox bodies, this was like having the rug pulled out from underneath. I’m sure disappointment shone plainly on my face. Then I remembered I did indeed possess some modicum of manners and that all the people assembled that day were there selflessly to put a snot nose teenager in a car. So I smiled and said, “I’d like to look at it.”
As we approximated the brown beast, the buddy gave some details that interspersed a few bright spots: 1980 model with a straight six engine (at least it wasn’t a 4), modest miles (about 65k), and the price was cheap. Automatic. I tried not to recoil too much at that tan plaid interior with fake wood veneer, but man was it 70’s hideous. All it lacked was a pair of bell-bottoms.
No fair looking at this through 21st Century eyes as retro cool. I do think the body lines of the 79-82 foxes have aged well, and even then the hatchback wasn’t totally unappealing. Four-eyed foxes count many fans today.
Another bonus was the car started right up, a major upgrade over the ’83 I’d looked at. I test circled it around the abandoned parking lot a few times, watched upon like a toddler taking his first powerwheels spin. It had a little get up and go to it.
I got out. The logical part of me wanted to leave. It was a mustang, but it wasn’t. It was ok. It was not ok. I wanted keys of my own. I’m so conflicted.
They asked me what I thought and I kind of shuffled my feet and said, “Well, I wish it was black,” thinking that might convey it wasn’t for me and shut things down, since repainting a used car in this price range was several steps east of the line of lunacy. However, the friend was quick to say, “Oh, we can paint it black for you!” At that point, I looked over at Dad and started getting an impatient vibe that this was getting to be about more than just a car (their friendship, basic courtesy), and I should take the deal. I suffocated my dream for a better set of wheels right there on the spot.
“Ok.”
The bowling buddy shook both our hands and earnestly promised a great black paint job, ready in a couple of weeks. We left. I felt both happy to have my first set of wheels and conflicted by pangs of reality disappointment. I had never dreamed it up that way.
In a sad twist of fate, four days later the mechanic from Missouri called us. He had found an estimably much better car: an ’82 or ’83 Camaro Berlinetta with reasonably low mileage and a V8. He had personally inspected the car and thought it solid. It was too late. I thanked him for calling and said we had already purchased a car. That great Samaritan had done everything he could to try to prevent us from making foolish choices, and yet we pushed right on past. Ever known people like that?
In truth, the black paint job (along with a small white pinstripe added) was the best part of the car. They really did a fine job dressing it up. If I had known seat covers in 1990, it might have even approximated attractive.
The car itself was pretty awful. It didn’t so well in cold starts, though most of the time it came to life. The straight six belted out 91hp/160ft-tq. Power wasn’t terribly wanting here for the times, but the handling dynamics allowed a lot of rear wheel slippage and back end sliding (the latter was fun once in a while, but that car was squirrely in bad weather).
Inexplicably, the horn was engineered to be activated by pushing a column stalk inward: Nothing like sending a message of irritation by bringing your right index finger to a skinny stalk and pushing it enthusiastically in anger. For that, one was rewarded with a feeble, “thweep” sounding more appropriate to a Corolla than America’s pony car.
The car had a cool center info display, but mine never worked. The dash fuel gauge was always a little optimistic and I once emptied the tank without warning while giving a classmate a ride home, fortuitously coasting into a gas station with my last 20 yards of momentum.
After a few months, the left column stalk, which housed the turn signal, gave up the ghost. Well, not completely. Raising or lowering the stalk would light up the front and rear signal, but only if I wasn’t braking. This being an ’80 model, there was no third brake light in the back. Ultimately, this meant that were I simultaneously braking and turning (which only accounts for, oh, 100% of the time) with a car behind me, I either needed to roll down the window and use hand signals (which no one paid any attention to) or delay braking while I manually flicked the stalk up or down to simulate blinks. After a month or two of doing this (with lots of diving into turns to avoid irritated honks or accidental rear end collisions), I was able to save some money, go to a Ford dealer, and get a new functional unit installed. Then the horn died.
I tried to make the most of it. There was a classmate with a similar 1980 crap-stang (hers was maroon with a more subdued interior) and we bonded in the hallways like fellow castaways. I was fortunate to have a relative who did car and home audio. His shop installed a nice Pioneer deck, car alarm, amp, and two 12” subs in a custom enclosure in the hatch at a family price. The Led Zeppelin boxed set released September 7, 1990. I had good tunes.
Then one day, after only about a year of ownership, the ‘stang met its end. It was a January or February after a recent snow and I remember it well—blaring Aerosmith’s Sweet Emotion while tooling around a neighborhood and came to a 2 way stop. I was turning left and slow-going through the intersection due to modest tire slip on slush. A Nissan Maxima coming opposite me slid through the stop sign and plowed into the Mustang, spinning me into the opposite curb. I think a cloud of dust escaped from that wheezy old car upon impact, as if releasing its sad spirit. Am I a jerk to admit a part of me was secretly elated?
The aftermath of this wreck was somewhat interesting. Thankfully, no one was hurt. The driver of the Maxima was a doctor who admitted fault for sliding through the stop sign into me. Interestingly, when the officer arrived to take a report, I, the teenager, was largely ignored while she took account from the doctor. I was pretty chill with the whole thing –no tears would be shed over this mercy killing. Until the cop came to me and said, “Well, I’m not going to write you a ticket on this.” Why? For getting hit by another car sliding past a stop sign into me?!
As could be reasonably assumed, the Mustang was totaled out by insurance. Unfortunately, now I was a 2-time accident offender. I later found out my rates were raised again by our insurer, even in the no-fault scenario. That couldn’t have been pretty.
When it came to cars, everyone around me must have been thinking that above my head resided a black cloud, and underneath my feet: thin ice…with cracks.
Coming soon, Part 11.
Summary
Vehicle: 1980 Mustang GL (or just “L” after the “G” emblem fell off the trunk)
HP: 91 (not bad considering the V8 of that year was only putting out 119)
Torque: 160ft-lb
Interesting Facts/Opinions: I hated writing this. Having a car beats walking any day of the week. I’m very grateful for what I was given and I drove that car anywhere I could. I’ve always been a sucker for a story where someone still possesses their very first car. It’s hard to praise this one, as it was mostly garbage. It had a couple good qualities and in retrospect probably wasn’t as ugly as I made it out to be. I have no surviving pictures, though I know a couple once existed. Something might surface in the future.
Soundtrack: Aerosmith – Sweet Emotion (has never sounded better than through those 12” subs).