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I guess you could call it a mid-life crisis.
While some guys take up golf, buy a Harley, or learn to fly,
I thought what I'd do was buy a Mustang.
As a journalist, I get to drive all
kinds of new cars. A definite trend these days is for cars that can do more themselves,
so we have cars that can brake themselves to avoid an accident, cars that can park themselves,
and we're not far away from having cars that can drive themselves completely automatically.
Classic cars offer an escape from that. There's much more involvement with a classic car,
not just because you have to do everything yourself, but also because of the way they
sound, even the way they smell.
Some cars go further than that, they represent a moment in history.
American cars have always appealed to me, and for me, one of the greatest cars
ever to come out of America was also one of the most successful, the Ford Mustang. And
out of all the Mustangs they've given us over 50 years, the one that appealed the most,
has been the '67 Fastback. I knew I was going to need a hand with this project, so I got
in touch with a company called South Coast Mustangs, and commissioned them to source
and restore a '67 Fastback. The beauty of doing it this way is that you can have whatever
you want, and it just so happened that my preference was always for a green Fastback
with black interior. Through luck or fate, that's exactly what we turned up. We found
a '67 Fastback that was originally Dark Moss Green with a black vinyl interior. We sent
off for the Marti report, which confirmed that, but it also confirmed the car originally had
a pretty decent spec, with power brakes, power steering, and a few other tasty options.
The plan is to restore the car so that outwardly it looks much as it did when it rolled off
the line nearly 48 years ago, but while also upgrading a lot of what's underneath so it
can cope better with modern traffic - so, fuel injection, rack and pinion steering,
disc brakes all round, that sort of thing.
Now, the project actually started back in
May last year when we found the car, but we took the decision to leave it in the US and
have the more chunky bodywork restoration done before we shipped it over to the UK,
as it's a lot easier to ship an entire car than it is to ship a wreck and a load of separate panels
that can get damaged in transit. So since May it's spent much of its time being attacked
by grinders and welders, and has had new floors,
new rear quarter panels, wheel-houses, drop offs, the lot.
That work is nearing completion, so soon it'll be packed into a container and
shipped over to the UK, and once it arrives it'll get the last of the new body panels
such as the new doors, wings and a hood, before
being media blasted and prepped for its shiny new paint.
For me, this project is the realisation
of something I've wanted to do for many years, and while I could have found quicker, easier,
and almost certainly cheaper ways of getting behind the wheel of a Mustang, when it comes
to realising your dreams, I think that's worth taking your time over.