When I was 14 years old, my dad brought home the car shown above. He traded his Honda 750 motorcycle for it. It didn’t look exactly like the picture back then, but I thought it was the best-looking car I had ever seen. My mother commented that she could barely see out of it, and I wasn’t much taller than her. But, I did have something of a growth spurt before I turned 16, so I never had a problem with it.
Mustangs were common in Dutchtown in those days. My cousin Eddie had one when he started driving, and I believe he bought another one new by the time I was driving. My cousin Kenny, who lived next door, also had one. The car that would be mine was not just your garden variety Mustang. It was the Mach I. It had the 250 horsepower, 351 cubic inch engine in it, and it was particularly quick from 0-60. I was late for a date one time, and I launched it out of the driveway. As I crossed over the bridge at I-75, I saw the blue lights and pulled over. The officer said he had clocked me at 70 mph as I went by Chambers Road, and he had to run 100 mph to catch up to me.
In those days, I dreamed of being an auto mechanic when I grew up. The thought of getting to work on cars all day and getting paid for it sounded too good to be true. Cars were much more straightforward in those days, and I certainly learned how to do many things with that Mustang. I never became much of a mechanic, but I could swap out parts with the best of them. Points, plugs, alternators, starters, radiators, water pumps, master cylinders, brakes, shocks, and universal joints were all experiences I had with that car.
I enjoyed all that, but the things I really liked to do were mainly just adding ‘bells and whistles’ – dual exhausts, chrome wheels, the obligatory chrome air cleaner, and of course, the aftermarket 8-track tape player. I also added a couple of Jensen Triaxial speakers in the back, rounding out the best car stereo system the world would ever know. That’s what I thought anyway.
That was where most of my money went as a teenager, trying to make that Mustang look and sound like a 500 horsepower beast. I recall cruising down the road, the purr of that 351 through the dual exhausts, Lynyrd Skynyrd blasting through those speakers, and a lovely young lady by my side. You would not have been able to convince me in those days that it would ever get any better than that. But it did.
As an adult, I have owned some more practical cars than that Mustang. On occasion, I have also drifted back toward the muscle car, including most recently to a 500 horsepower beast that no one would ever buy for practical reasons. Sometimes a car is just transportation, and sometimes there’s more to it than that. Sometimes the look or even the sound of an old car can take you back to a place you remember, where you’d like to return, if only for a moment.