Better Beaters - Building Cars and Daily Drivers

Color My World. My first car, a 1966 Ford Mustang.

Ready to add your own touches and colors.
image source: Classic Cars Coloring Pages

Color My World. This was a hugely popular hit for the band Chicago. Chicago was one of the greatest groups during my high school years of 1969 to 1973. In so many ways our first cars are the blank canvases that we have colored with our hopes and dreams, however rooted in reality or fantasy. The car that we end up with is our "tabula rasa" that we will color with our expectations and the life experiences that we wish will accompany this vehicle. So much hope!

My first car was not my first vehicle. I had owned several motorcycles prior to this. I had been satisfied driving my Dad's cars whenever I needed four wheels. During my high school years I had owned a Honda 160, Suzuki X6 250 cc Hustler, Honda 305 Superhawk, and a Kawasaki 500 Mach Three.

I had been a huge Cadillac fan for many years, since I was a little kid growing up in Oakland California during the 1960's and 70's. The city had provided a constant parade of Caddies of all vintages. My Father and I used to hit the low buck car lots around the city, in the back row there were always plenty of clean 1950s and 1960s Cadillacs. I had my heart set on a 1956 model Coupe de Ville.

The year was 1974.

My Father on the other hand thought that I should buy a more age appropriate car, like a Camaro or Mustang. Even though I was paying for it myself, I thought that I would heed his advice. I decided to find a nice used '60s Mustang as my first car. They were cheap and plentiful at this time. I located it the way we all located cars for sale in those pre Craig's List days. I looked in the classified pages of the Oakland Tribune. There was a great section entitled "automotive bargains under 500.00." Where else would I look?

I know you've seen a million of these. Nothing special or outstanding.
 Mine wasn't quite this nice.

It sounded pretty good in the two line classified ad: 1966 coupe,V8/4 spd, duals, runs gd, 300.00. Ads were always kept short, you paid by the word, so there was a whole type of cryptic shorthand that was used. Kind of a vintage analog version of Twitter!

My Dad and I set off to see the car and test drive it. It did look okay. It was straight, with an obviously cheap respray of non original  green paint. The paint was quite dull. Why was the car re-painted? At the tine it was only about eight years old. The interior was nice and clean with only a cracked driver's seat cushion. There was that neat little Ford four speed stick between the seats. Outside I could see the tips of the exhaust pipes poking out ahead of the rear wheels. Under the hood was a clean little 289 crowned with the original two barrel carb. I fired it up and it sounded wonderful. The seller went with me for the test drive. "You'll have to slip the clutch a bit to get it started" he advised me. Why? "Because I put an automatic rear end for better cruising." I supposed my youthful naivete prevented me from asking him why he did that. What was wrong with the original rear end? But who cared? It could always be switched back. Three hundred bucks didn't seem like a lot of money, even back then. Believe it or not, another couple of hundred bucks could have gotten me a convertible or even a fastback. But the coupe would be good enough.

After I got it home I started coloring in my Mustang. I was finally going to get the opportunity to apply all that automotive knowledge that I had been soaking up over the years from the multitude of car and hot rodding magazines. During this time I actually learned a few valuable lessons that I promptly forgot over the next few cars that I bought.

On the other hand it didn't look this bad either.
This would have been a fifty dollar car back then.

First thing I did was to pull that huge horse out of the grille. I replaced it with one of the smaller Ponies that were used on the side of the fender, off set to the left side. Very cool looking. I removed the filler cap from the tail light panel by rotating it on the hose to locate the cap in the trunk. I was planning to fill the hole in, but never did. Might have been a good idea to vent the trunk, well, the open hole could take care of that. Of course I never got around to filling in any of the holes that were left after I removed the trim. The front gravel pan was dented up when I bought the car. I removed it to straighten it out and found it was full of Bondo. I took it to a sandblaster to have it stripped. The counter man asked me why I just didn't buy another one from a junkyard, it would have been cheaper and quicker. How would I have known that?

I don't remember how much I paid for these.

I wanted to lower the car but didn't  know how to, or want to, mess with cutting the springs. The car had come with two 13 inch, five lug wheels on the front, while the rear were the original 14 inchers. It gave the car a nice rake. I decided to swap out the rears for another another pair of 13 inch wheels which gave it a real nice low stance. I topped those off with a set of stainless steel Pinto hubcaps, it looked pretty good!

I drove it like that to watch the second run showing of American Graffiti playing in Alameda. Like Kurt in the movie I still didn't know the formula for finding a girlfriend and I watched the movie solo. I guess I needed a little more color in that area, too.

Where were you in '74?

I figured out how to stitch in a square patch for the seat cushion. Some routine wrenching followed: changing out the clutch, replacing the water pump, and switching out that rear end. I ended up spray bombing the front of the car in grey primer. Earl Scheib was still charging 29.99 for a full paint job, why didn't I go there? I don't think that I even kept this car for an entire year, didn't want to.

Another back row beauty.
 (Not the actual car.)

I found my real  "dream car" sitting on a used car lot on Broadway Avenue. Over thirty years would pass before I even thought of Mustangs again.