You have no idea how old it makes me feel to be waxing nostalgic about a ’96 Mustang. I was a young adult in the fall of 1993 when seemingly every car magazine I’d pick up in the college bookstores featured large, two-page advertisements for the new SN-95 generation that arrived for model year ’94, proclaiming, “It is what it was… and more”. I was personally invested in what was going on at Ford with this celebrated nameplate, having purchased my own ’88 hatchback that summer as a used car, and with my own money. In the meantime, the fourth-generation Chevrolet Camaro had been introduced for ’93 and was a gorgeous piece of sculpture, and the Fox-platform Mustang’s would-be replacement, the Probe, was already on its second generation. I remember thinking, “Ford. Dude. Come on. What’s the hold-up?”
A print ad for the 1994 Ford Mustang, as sourced from the internet.
I did like that my ’88 Mustang, save for its old-style polycast wheels and black, lower-body rub strips (the latter of which would be made body-color for ’91), looked just like the new ones still being manufactured up to that point. However, when the ’94 Mustang came out with production starting in October ’93, it instantly made my car look like a big Escort or some other generic compact car. The new SN-95, to my eyes, combined the absolute best of both modern design and classic Mustang visual cues, save for a few wonky elements. I’m still not a fan of how the roof on the fastback models still looks like a detachable hardtop that was glued onto a convertible, and it looked a bit stubby at the time sitting next to the low, long, wide Camaro. But while the competing Chevy looks a bit large today for my liking in my somewhat dense, urban environment, the Mustang of this generation still seems perfectly sized and proportioned by comparison.
Indeed, the numbers confirm what would seems apparent by a side-by-side comparison of these two cars. Among the fixed-roof cars, the Camaro was 11.7 inches longer (193.1″ vs. 181.5″), 2.3 inches wider (74.1″ vs. 71.8″), and 1.6″ lower (51.3″ vs. 52.9″). The already one-year-old Camaro looked a bit like a rocket parked next to the brand-new Mustang, which made this then-#TeamFord guy a little salty… until I sat in both cars. Not only did the Mustang’s interior, with its beautifully executed, twin-cockpit styling look better to me, the front passenger’s seat was actually usable, with its flat floor versus that awkward, intrusive hump in the front footwell of the Camaro under which its catalytic converter was housed.
The Mustang fastback’s trunk also had more usable cargo space with its rear seat up, with 10.8 cubic feet of luggage capacity against the Camaro hatchback’s 7.6. The Mustang’s overall combination of style and utility seemed to satisfy both the right and left halves of my brain, so I was okay with its relatively few shortcomings and thrilled with the rest of it. I remember much being made of the fact that the new ’94 was the Mustang’s first major redesign since model year 1979. I was a very young kid when the Fox-platform Mustang made its debut, and though I would start paying attention to makes and models of cars maybe even within a year of that car’s introduction, I was still far too young to understand how impactful it was when it replaced the smaller Mustang II.
By my college years in the ’90s, my love of all things ’70s which had been born when I was in high school had entered full bloom. With the introduction of the SN-95 Mustang, I fixated for a long time particularly on the year 1979 and what a lot of things prominent in United States popular culture looked like at the time the last new Mustang had been unleashed on the world. I have heard it said that trends take about twenty years to come back into vogue (a time span which I’m sure is shorter now with the advent and ubiquity of the internet and its influence), but I’m pretty sure I was the only guy on my dormitory floor who owned a copy of the vinyl double-album A Night At Studio 54, also from 1979.
My college buddy Trevor with whom I am still friends today, a record aficionado and budding DJ at the time, had a turntable on which I was able to tape these records onto cassette and play them often in my Mustang, sometimes to the chagrin of my passengers. My imagination would run to how people of all stripes had been bumping this double-album in their new ’79 Mustangs, probably on the optional AM/FM stereo with eight-track which cost $255 on the option list (almost $1,000 in 2021). I’d think of this from the driver’s seat while wearing my nicest pair of polyester slacks or vintage jeans and “Sea Monkeys” t-shirt. I didn’t care then what people thought of the music or clothes I liked, and I don’t care now.
Getting back to our featured car, the big news for the third-year ’96 models from a visual standpoint was a ninety-degree rotation of the taillamp segments, which gave the rear of the car less of a Probe-like appearance (one of which I’d own after my Mustang) and made it look more like a “proper” Mustang. I can’t remember where I had first seen the new taillights, whether on the road, in a magazine, or at Sam Galloway Ford in Fort Myers, Florida, but I had a genuine moment of thanksgiving. These days, I can appreciate the back-end look of the ’94 and ’95 models as I just never see them anymore, but this tiny detail change made me think that this is how the ’94s should have looked in the first place.
The other thing I remember about the ’96 models was the introduction of Bright Tangerine Clearcoat as a newly available color. This car was a stunner in orange, and I would often drive past Galloway Ford in the hope of catching a glimpse of an orange Mustang parked under the front canopy. “Yeah”, I’d think. “My car is related to that.” Little did I know at the time just how much of the Fox platform had been carried forward or modified for implementation in the SN-95. (You can read about that here.)
This base-model convertible was originally powered by a 3.8L V6 with 150 horsepower. When new, its list price started at $21,060 (roughly $36,800). I couldn’t find a production breakout between base-model and GT convertibles for ’96, but soft-top Mustangs accounted for over 33,000 sales that year, out of 135,600 total. One source listed a 0-60 mph time of 9.2 seconds for the fastback, so I imagine the convertible, roughly 200 pounds heavier (at 3,300 pounds) might be about a second slower.
The original, first-year ’65 Mustangs were roughly thirty years old at the time the SN-95s were introduced, and I remember it seeming like there was a widespread sense of nostalgia about this even outside of those who were car fans, given the Mustang’s nearly unapproachable brand recognition. Looking at this ’96 convertible, which is now twenty-five years old, it would be really hard for me to explain to someone who wasn’t aware of them when they were new why I have such a strong, positive, emotional reaction to it. Would someone twenty to twenty-five years younger than me see this car as classic? Would it look as good to them as the ’64 1/2 model looked to me back in the ’90s? Granted, this generation wasn’t classically beautiful like the original to merit the receipt of a Tiffany Award, but it was still a darned good-looking car in its day. For me, anyway, the ’96 Ford Mustang still is what it was… and more.
Edgewater Glen, Chicago, Illinois.
Friday, October 8, 2021.
Ford Mustang brochure photos were sourced from the internet.
I will join you in being a fan of this Mustang from the time of its introduction. I really liked it when it came out, and it remains my favorite (at least in looks) of all of the Fox Mustangs. This was one of the best styled convertibles of that body’s post-LeBaron revival.
Knowing Fords of that era as I do, I ask in which year of this generation did the Great Cheapening occur? Might it have been at the 1996 mid-point?
I always thought that I might find one of these with a V8/5 speed as a fun but inexpensive cruiser, but I fear the time for that may have passed. Every time I looked I found three kinds of Mustang – V8/GT cars that were run into the ground, V8/GT cars that had been heavily modded, and V6/auto cars that were in the condition that would have interested me. Oh well.
These didn’t really seem to suffer the cheapening like many other Ford lines at the time, to some degree it could be argued these had it from the getgo though in that there weren’t many options besides colors and there was no longer an
LX model bridging the gap between the base and GT. The most obvious cheapening aspect came in 98 when Ford switched from a clock pod on the top of the dash to a clock in the radio display
V6s had the notorious 3.8 habit of blowing head gaskets, namely the 94-95s.
You make a great point about nice examples being somewhat thin on the ground. This is why I’m compelled these days to take note of them.
Also, I don’t really lump the SN-95s in with all Fox Mustangs, heavily based on them as they were, as we came to find out. Of the pure Foxes (1979 – ’93), I flip-flop all the time around which ones I like the best. My least favorite might be the 1985 -’86 with the single slot grille, only because its other looks tended to have a bit more substance to me.
I think stylistically Ford did a great job of updating these on the old Fox body bones. A very up-to-date look that wasn’t trying to look retro (I guess the “retro” part was underneath…). I also prefer the compact proportions of these over that of the contemporary Camarobirds.
That being said, I can’t help but see a Toyota Paseo convertible in the last pic; I think it’s the shape of the headlights, and that black smear on the hood really does no favors for this otherwise clean example.
Corey, I agree with you that these were both retro and so fresh and modern looking at the time. It seems to me that before the most current Mustang fastback, they represented Ford’s last attempt at new styling themes on a Mustang. I stan the 5th gen cars, but they represented no new styling ideas.
And “Paseo”… ouch. LOL
I never really liked the blobby styling of these. I don’t wish to offend anyone with this comment, but these also felt like the most feminine Mustangs since the Mustang II. The giant cheese-grater taillights were a ham-handed nod to the original Mustang that felt kind of tacky. I believe they were decent cars, but I just never took to the styling. I don’t hate it, but it’s one of the Mustang’s more forgettable designs IMO.
The Retrostang (5th gen), on the other hand, seemed to capture everything right stylistically that the SN95 didn’t. Those were (and remain) really beautiful cars with a much stronger and better executed nod to the original ’65s. I have driven both the SN95 and the Retrostang, and honestly felt like they handled pretty similar. But I’d take the Retrostang over an SN95 all day long.
Scott, I’m sure many people share tour opinion of the 5th generation Retrostang, which has an obvious beauty as such a close-seeming facsimile of the original fastback. That car and this one, though, are like apples and oranges, but I like both fruits. 🙂
My rediscovery of my love of the fourth-gen cars, though, is recent, almost finding a picture of an old flame I had forgotten about. There are so many things I loved about this Mustang then, and I’m happy to have been reminded of them when I spotted this example last month.
I had the opposite reaction originally, I remember being really excited when Ford teased the retro styling concepts for what would become the S197 body in 2002(?) but when the production car became finalized I remember being kind of let down by the heft of them, the body looked too big for the 16” and 17” wheels first equipped on them, the front end was blockier, the side mirrors looked like they were recycled from the F150 and the taillights were HUGE. I actually drew many Mustang II parallels with them after a while, being heavy handed in retro details but making some heavy concessions to the standards and fashions of the times, and even using the cologne V6! I wasn’t that impressed by the 3V 4.6, whose extra power over the outgoing 2V was somewhat defeated by the extra weight and had that troublesome spark plug design, and the Cologne SOHC I just never trusted after many people I knew had timing chain related horror stories on their Explorers and seemed needlessly complex for the power they put out. And what happened to the IRS in SVTs? I felt people were really blinded by much of this stuff by hype and nostalgia, to me the late SN95 cars for what they were seemed so well sorted by comparison, and oddly enough the New Edge styling ended up looking more contemporary modern between 2005-2014 than they did when new.
2005-2009s now kind of aged similarly, they don’t look as bulky in today’s mostly CUV heavy traffic as they did in 2005s mostly sedan traffic, and the details were actually quite attractive compared to the 2010 refresh(especially the rear end), with the benefit of hindsight if you know what your doing with the spark plugs the 4.6 is still as anvil reliable as any modular and has more than enough power for fun, and unlike 3.7s and EB2.3s making the same power the V8 makes the V8 sounds doing it, and even the 4.0 proved not as fragile as the old Explorer ones. Despite criticisms at the time the lack of IRS is kind of a fresh novelty, the 3 link with panhard bar design was well engineered and most of all rugged. Stuff like that makes it as if Mustang took the same kind of evolutionary trajectory as the Porsche 911, retaining all the engineering traits of old but thoroughly refined. I don’t think I really appreciated that until the S550 went for a more world class sports car like approach, eschewing any “old tech” aspects like the rear end, or worst yet the Mach E that completely throws the baby out with the bathwater.
When these first came out, being a Ford fan, I was interested, but actually found the Probe GT a more visually and mechanically interesting car. Yes, these Mustangs were a very good update on the Fox-body cars, and at least the powers-that-be at Ford had axed the idea of a 4 cylinder engine in a pony car (hopefully) for good. But I guess I felt that Ford might have tried pushing the envelope a bit, like Chevy did with the concurrent Camaro.
But I am older now. 18 months ago my friendly mechanic found a fairly nice 2006 Mustang convertible for me that is probably the image J.P. has when he visualizes a V6 Mustang. My car is a ruby red with tan top and interior with pretty much every available factory option. The car had one previous owner, a middle-aged woman who drove it sparingly as it had less than 44 thousand miles on it when I bought it in September 2020 and I have added another 5 thousand miles. To me, this car seems to be a sort of re-incarnation of the 67-68 model…with a few improvements/updates.
I enjoy the ” measly ” 205 horsepower V6, though wish it had a manual transmission, and to my ears the exhaust note is almost an exact duplicate of the V8 in my sister’s old 67 Mustang.
Your ’06 sounds like one of my dream cars. Seriously the kind of Mustang I would want versus an actual classic. All I’d want is a covered and secured garage space. This article is about my affinity for the early SN-95s, but make no mistake – I’d love a fifth-gen Mustang.
I remember being thrilled when the SN-95 Mustang debuted! And I remember how copywriters and automotive journalists were breathless in their declarations that it was an “all-new” design. In reality, the design was littered with Fox-carryover bits that manifested themselves in odd places.
The tops of the front fenders wrapped far inboard, leaving a relatively narrow hood opening. This was typical for American cars when the Fairmont debuted in the 1970s…but I can’t think of any other contemporary 1990s car with such a narrow hood.
Another odd 1970s-throwback element of the SN-95 was its anachronistic single-post head restraints, which were an artifact of the seat frames being carried over from the Fox model.
Wow. Andrew, before you pointed out the wrap-over front fender thing, I wouldn’t have paid attention to it. That is a great observation.
These should have commanded more respect when released. Instead they seemed picked on by at least a few enthusiasts who named it “Sushi-stang” and proclaimed it a sell-out. I’m not sure what they expected or wanted.
They were a nearly perfect, modern incarnation of a classic. The “new edge” facelift five years later is where they became somewhat unattractive, IMO, but that’s for another piece.
It took me a while to warm to the New Edge restyle. I still prefer the earlier SN-95s. My biggest thing with the New Edge ’99s was the way the taillamps looked lifted from a 1980 – ’82 Mercury Cougar XR7, the way they were canted inward.
Great Joseph… now I can’t unsee that! 😉
But great observation. I never noticed the similarities.
Haha! To quote Def Leppard, though: I’m sorry, but it’s true.
Wow, uncanny! Right down to the placement of the back-up light too!
Some folks put those chrome surrounds like the Cougar has on their Retrostangs like mine. I guess they’re trying to emulate a 1973 Mustang.
Looks like even my 2007 (not the one pictured below) has the back-up lights in that same spot….
The problem was under the hood. The base V6 was just horrible. The 1994-5 V8 was a 100% carryover…the wheezing, asthmatic SOHC 4.6 was a DOWNgrade for 1996.
While the F-bodies had GM’s typical build quality for the era (that is: poor to dismal), their basic design was, performance-wise, leaps and bounds superior to the Mustang…which was still, under the new styling, a 1978 Fairmont.
Exactly, the 1994 SN95 was heavier with much less 5.0 power which was even less with the 4.6L in 1996.
It was few hundred pounds but it felt much heavier. Much larger and heavier doors, larger on the outside, felt much larger behind the wheel.
The 4.6L 2valve engine was a gutless reliable dog. The 4.6L 4 valve Cobra engine had no low end torque.
The 1993 Camaro looked great on paper until you actually drove one.
It was a terrible car to live with.
The oddball LT1 engine had power but too many oddball engineering quirks.
The weak rear axle… Why did GM do that..
I don’t think the 1994+ Mustangs nor the 1993+ F-bodies sold that well at all.
I have driven 4th Generation F-bodies…as a car, the Mustang is better. As a perfoamance car, the Camaro is so superior it’s like comparing a Ferrari and a dump truck. The LT1 was a strong performer…the LS1 was otherworldly. In 1996, the 3800 V6 was on par with the SOHC Mustang.
My take on this era of Mustang has switched somewhat. I was also in my late teens
early twenties when this generation was current. At the time, they just seemed cheap
and sort of melted looking, like most other vehicles of the time, to be fair. Seventies
nostalgia was interesting back then, as it was cheap and easy to indulge in the clothing
when it cost a couple of bucks at Goodwill, an attribute that would change rapidly
over the next few years. It was also cheap to indulge in actual seventies cars back then,
as they had reached peak depreciation. I had a few dirt cheap luxo barges as
inexpensive beaters, that delivered good times all out of proportion to their price.
With the passage of years (decades!) however, the Mustang has grown on me,
and when I see a clean one, can enjoy it out of context. Still more of a first gen
Cordoba guy however, goes better with my candy colored ruffled tuxedo shirt.
First-gen Cordoba – another car I would love, though I have no experience with actually driving or riding in one.
Yes, vintage ’70s clothes are definitely more expensive these days. Nothing like back in the ’90s when a nice pair of vintage corduroys were relatively cheap and able to be found without going through too many racks at the vintage and thrift stores.
You also make a great point about context. When the ’05 Mustangs came out, I couldn’t be bothered with even looking at SN-95s. Now that both designs are older still, I can appreciate both in different ways.
My second car when I was 16 in 1984 was a 1 year old Fox Body 1983 Mustang GLX 3.8L Convertible. I thought it was the best car in the world and it surrounded my memories of growing up in Los Angeles and driving around with the top down as a 16 year old.
For my 50th birthday I bought a 1983 Mustang GLX 3.8 Convertible. All of those good memories came flooding back. My current version is stock down to the interior and the stereo. The convertible top even has a tiny hole (due to poor design) in the exact same spot.
What are my new beliefs of that car? It’s a pile of dung. Cheap and low quality. Seems like a death trap. I’m keeping it because I love it but wow it’s crap.
I love that you found another ’83 GLX convertible like the one you had owned before. A buddy of mine had one, too, back when he was in high school and just last Friday, he was talking about how much he loved that car back then, and also conceding that it was (in his opinion and not mine) one of the least Mustang-like Mustangs he could think of. The V6 power had something to do with that, but also his ability to carry a full load of passengers in it – none too comfortably, I might add.
I always liked the ’83 refresh, and also the fact that the convertible-look Mustang of ’82 was now an actual convertible.
I’ve never driven a V8 Fox body so I can’t compare but the V6 is basically a see and be seen car. You put the top down and enjoy the ride. It is underpowered and the brakes are terrifying. But it is also charming, maybe due to age and not seeing them every day anymore. I also have a Mercedes SL500 that gets few looks but I drive the old Mustang and its like taking a puppy for a walk, everyone will stop and talk to you about it. When I pull alongside a newer Mustang convertible mine defimitely comes off as NOT a Mustang but a relic from the past. Like I say, I love mine but I’m not impressed by it.
The roof seams were always a black eye to this and the new edge generation, there was a minor logic to it that a quarter panel repair was probably easy to replace and blend in an accident but it was a really obvious cost cutting measure. The taillights suffer the same affliction with their body color surrounds, more unnecessary seams, Ford probably had it in their heads they’d do a taillight change in a mid cycle refresh (as nearly every Mustang preceding it had) so rather than have clean cutouts in the sheetmetal they devised a modular housing that contained the painted section. Good news if you have one now you can choose which you like best but it’s really unflattering on light colors.
Those were my only two problems with the design really, and truthfully they didn’t really bother me at the time. There are some rose tinted glasses I have for these as they debuted when I was 5 years old and already really into cars and I thought the coolest car ever was the Dodge Viper and my favorite classic car at the time was old Mustangs, the SN95 seemed to morph the two together visually so I was pretty excited, I remember the yellow 94 RC car my parents got me for my birthday I cherished. My love waned as I became a teenager and got cynical, finding the no nonsense look of the original foxbodies more appealing as well as the more aggressive new edge restyle and its various novel high performance iterations way cooler, but today find myself liking them again.
Interestingly I find a lot of people who look at the 94-98 design with distain or embarrassment from a visual standpoint but seem to not hold the same opinion of the current S550, which to me doesn’t look all that different. There’s a strong argument to be made about engineering and performance of course, but at the same time I think the current iteration of real Mustang gives up some of the realistic day to day usefulness of these older ones. Low tech sure but there aren’t many chassis as cheap to maintain and as DIY friendly as the fox chassis, SN95s are still easy cars to keep maintained today, I don’t know how well S550s with their complex IRS mid mount fuel tank and electronics maze will be 25 years from now… actually I do, I have a MN12 with the same qualities and it’s a pain in the ass 🤣
Matt, you always make some great points, including about the mechanical aspects I’d have no clue about. Agree that the various cut-lines around the taillamps and bumpers as well as on the C-pillar were detrimental to this car’s overall look, though I still find it quite attractive. I suppose this kept production and yearly-change costs down, and given that this car was done on something of a limited budget (from what I understand), I think the engineers did just fine with the platform and funds they had to work with – at least from a visual standpoint.
I think they did a good job in the end too, there are a few fox chassis traits here and there but the designers really did make it appear as a totally new car inside and out, and realistically, much of the competition had many of the same “problems”, if you consider them such, both the F bodies and Nissan 300ZX had panel seams at the beltline as well. Like I said it bothered me when they were new, it’s one of those familiarity breeds contempt sorts of things that just started to stand out to me after a while, actually I may not have even started noting them as something unflattering until the 05s came out.
Other speculation that occurs to me is maybe the designers deliberately intended the coupe to look akin to a convertible with a removable hardtop or even retractable top. The 94s even initially offered the former, and if Concept cars are any hint at design aspirations the Mach III certainly hints at what they were going for. Taillights included
Joseph, Hey buddy, I’ve got your back! When these came out I was at the height of my Cadillac loving years, driving a two year old ’94 Seville STS. The young guys at work had been driving Fox body GTs, IROC Camaros, Trans Ams and then these SN94 cars. I remained above that fray as my Northstar belted out 295 HP and 300 ft/lbs of torque. Hey, it was really a fast car back then! Mustangs? Bah! Even though my first car was a ’66 Mustang V8 four speed coupe.
Years passed and the 2005 Mustang debuted. Wow! Something about it just grabbed my heartstrings, memories of Mustangs past. So much so that I bought a new ’07 coupe with V6 and five speed auto. It was a great looking and driving car that we used as a family car for many years. We gave it to our Daughter and it’s got 160,000 miles on it now.
I had wanted a GT convertible at the time, so I decided to get an earlier model. I first looked for Fox 5.0s, but the good ones were out of my price range. So I considered the ’94 and up models. I ultimately found my ’96 GT convertible with 150,000 miles on the clock. I bought it some time in 2010 and still have it. I’ve done whatever it needs to keep it reliable and it now has 215,000 miles showing.
I’ve really grown to appreciate the car over the years and can compare it to the ’07. My car has the same tweed sports seats shown in the brochure photo. I prefer the twin cockpit design of the dash, the hood slopes down and the car feels much more compact than the ’07. Passenger and luggage space is superior in the newer car. The ride is busier in the ’96 and the tail is a bit lighter compared to it’s younger sibling. But the ’96 is stable in heavy cross winds and comfortable for long trips, I’ve done over 400 miles in a day, and my old body didn’t object.
Powerwise, the first year 4.6 models were set up for fuel economy, not acceleration. They are really overgeared and you have to use the trans kickdown for better response. But it will cruise effortlessly at almost any speed and gas mileage is great at 25 mpg. at 70 mph. My ’07 is probably the same or quicker, with 27-28 mpg at the same speed. This follows the current Mustang tradition of offering a new base engine that matches the older GT. The later 3.7 V6 and turbo four both put out 300 hp. which matches the ’05 to ’09 GTs.
I now really like the looks of the ’96, it really did follow the tradition of the earlier pre ’79 cars. The wedge profile still looks contemporary when seen in the traffic mix. I’ve been really happy with mine and plan on keeping it for a long time. Compared to the classic F body GM twins it does come off as kind of petite, if that doesn’t appeal to you just step up to the post 2004 models. These have the size and heft that reminds me of my Brother’s old Trans Ams.
Old Ponys rule! Still here and thumping through those FlowMasters!
Thanks, Jose! I’m sorry your picture didn’t upload – would love to see a picture of your ’96, as I recall you having made reference to it in comments before this essay ran.
Here’s the pic.
Let’s try again. It could use a repaint pretty soon.
It looks terrific, Jose. I’d proudly drive this.
CC effect: went to the supermarket and there was a blue SN95 Mustang GT in the parking lot. It’s RHD (aftermarket I presume) and I see it around town quite a bit. I know I’m in the minority, but I’m not keen on the styling of these. The proportions don’t look quite right to me – the front wheel are too close to the front doors, so it ends up with a too-long frontal overhand. Viewed front-on (as was the one in the supermarket carpark) they look too narrow for their height. I don’t hate them, but I wouldn’t want one. Glad they exist though.
For Generation X these are our Mustangs. They even sold them in Australia in right hand drive with a factory warranty.
Nice article! Always had a soft spot for these SN 95 stangs. I recently picked up an 03 GT 5 speed and its a lot of fun, the rear end kicks out easy and that 4.6 sounds great!
I just purchased a 1996 GT Convertible. It had 9455 original miles.
I drove it from LA to Sandpoint, Idaho to Seattle down the coast through Oregon to Tahoe to Sacramento to Miami.
Only issue adding 7000+ miles. A new fuel pump.
I had a ’65 Convertible in 1977. This little thing is fun as hell!
Joseph, I love your writing and photography…and I love my own ’98 triple-white Mustang convertible. I’m the third owner of this particular car, having bought it in 2007, and like you I believe the design has aged well.
Back in 1985 I bought a 1965 coupe as a “collectible” and am amused that my current Mustang is even more of an “antique”. My partner and I have had a penchant for finding nice, lower-mileage vehicles a few years old and taking care of them mechanically and cosmetically. So we’ve wound up with a collection (’92 Lincoln Town Car, the aforementioned Mustang, 2001 Ford F150 SuperCrew 4×4, and – our first acquisition together- a 2004 Cadillac DeVille DTS) of “antiques” that, as we like to say, “weren’t antique when we got them!”
Mike, thank you so much. And that’s quite a fleet! I was starting to think from your comment that you were a FoMoCo loyalist before I saw you had a Cadillac in the mix.
There is something to be said for taking care of nice things that are *new to you*, especially things that have been maintained with a level of care. Given enough time, things thought of as just “old” at some point will be appreciated again, even as things that are used regularly will age and break.
Here’s to many years of enjoyment of your fleet.