When I was 18 years old, I owned a 1968 Mustang 2+2 that I custom ordered direct from the factory. Despite the fact that I was still in high school, had no job but had a pregnant girlfriend, I knew it was the right thing to do. I think the movie Bullitt had a lot to do with my decision to purchase a Stang!

When I moved closer to work and decided to drive a smaller family-type car (I had a

family now-see above about pregnant girlfriend), I sold the car to my twin

brothers-in-law. These guys were younger than I was, lived in the country, and being

co-owners of the car they always fought about who was going to drive it and who was

going to fix it! On a day when they both agreed to get it repaired, the shop that was

doing the work burned down, with the car in it. ‘Twas a sad day.

Wow! Were these things ever nice! After an hour or so of chatting with a salesman, I

was asked if I wanted to go for a test drive. "Well," I said, "no." "No?" came the reply.

I then proceeded to explain that I was already in love with a car I chose and if I went

for a drive that I would probably buy a car I couldn’t afford! Well, to a car salesman,

these sounds are like those of a cash register, and there’s no way I could have left the

dealership alive after saying that! Once again my arm had to be twisted to "just take it

out for a ride". "No obligation", he said.

Having driven little 4-cylinder cars for the last 20 years I was thinking that this 8

cylinder Mustang was just two little 4-cylinder engines together. So when I put the

pedal to the metal as we left the parking lot, I knew in those first 10 seconds that I was

going to buy this car. I had fallen for the old "just take ‘er out for a spin" trick. After 6

hours of haggling the next day for the best possible price, I drove away with the car .

On Friday before a weekend. A little boy with a big, new, fancy, fast and sporty car.

This reminded me of the day I got the girlfriend pregnant! Life was worth living after all! As the plates were being put on my new 1987 Mustang GT convertible, another salesman asked me what I had been driving before. When I pointed out my little wagon, he said "You had a 4-bangerwagon, and now you have a 5.0 Mustang rag?" To which I answered "Yep". I lost 15 years in age that day.

I drove it for two years, summer’s only, storing the car in a protected environment for the winters. For my "getting-around" car I bought a used 1982 Mustang LX with 4 cylinder, 4 speed standard. I was hooked on Mustangs now. I was hooked on power. There ain’t nuthin’ better for a man’s spirit than a bunch of horsies under the hood. Soooooo.... Out came the 4 banger, in went a 351 Windsor, balanced, blueprinted, cammed and Edelbrock’ed! I shaved the beard, took up Karate, squash, and body-building and started dating horny women. Could it get any better than this?

After driving the souped-up Stang I was kinda sad that it beat the hell out of my nice rag-top! Starting in 1989, and to this very day I’ve been on a mission to have the rag beat the LX! And so the quest begins... Ford of Canada was allowed to use the name Cobra on these Mustangs, so to augment the "cobra" lettering on the trunk I added chrome cobras from a 1971 Mustang. A 1968 chrome running pony was put on the trunk lid, replacing the Ford blue oval. The first performance mod (in 1991) was a set of zinc-coated underdrive pulleys. Also in 1991, I added the 180 degree thermostat and 65 mm throttle body. I really wanted to get the engine cleaned up at this point and made the decision that the only way to do a good job was to pull the sucker. It was hard thinking about chroming anything when the engine itself was, for some reason, extremely rusty. (I say "for some reason" because the car has never been driven in winter, very seldom in wet weather, and the relative humidity in Calgary is about 40%.) I rented a hoist, marked every wire, cable, and hose tied to the engine and took lots of pictures. All this so I could re-install it and make it work! I took 5 days vacation to do the job, and by myself, was able to pull the engine and re-install it. I have horror stories about pulling the tranny without a jack, just my chest to let it land on. Geez these T-5s are a lot heavier than the 3 speeds I used to pull out of my ‘56 and ‘57 Ford when I was a kid. I’m okay now, just a little breathing difficulty.... I detailed the engine bay with same color paint as the outside and the engine with gold ol’ Ford blue and did the "Phase I" chrome job. And the engine actually started up on the first turn!