Antique & Classic Cars Blog

Most any car has its club. But Plymouth Reliant owners have to drive a lot more miles to run into fellow club members than those addicted to Ford’s pony car. Forty years on, you drive an early Mustang into a restaurant parking lot and no one comes out scratching his head. Instead they have stories and memories and questions for the owner.

Mike Patterson has had the Mustang disease since he was 16 years old. He was fortunate enough to have parents willing to spring for a car. His first Mustang, a ’66, was already more than 20 years old at that time, yet he talked them into it. He had the car into the 21st Century and parted with it only to free up dollars for a more special example of the breed.

Today Patterson has a ’69 Mach I, plus an unusual ’Stang—a Florida Highway Patrol 5.0-liter cruiser. I did a piece on this car, a Locals in Motion feature, and met Patterson in Eden Prairie to snap a few pics. I suggested we shoot both cars, which—and I didn’t think of it at the time—created a situation in which I would need to drive one of them.

Since the Mach I is worth more, I took the wheel of the FHP cruiser. If the body style falls shy of the Mach’s, what’s under the hood is equally enticing: a 5.0-liter Ford stroked to 347 cubes and ramped up with speed parts—to 500 horsepower!

I followed Mike to a lakeside spot and kept my cool, but holding your foot when there’s 500 ponies on tap is no easy feat. I was sweating from the restraint because burying that throttle would have been a ride to remember. And this is a Hurst 5-speed car. Grabbing rubber in one through four would have been gooooood fun.

Yet somehow, seeing the terror on Mike’s face as his newest prize blew by at 80 on a residential street would have been equally memorable for opposite reasons. And local police cars might have taken interest in such antics. Second gear was all she saw.

Though I click a lot of pics in the name of efficiency, I’m no photographer. I rely on my fully automatic Olympus camera’s electronic bits and the programmers who tweaked them. This shoot was a challenge because although it was nearing sunset, the big fireball was opposite the lake from where we needed to put the cars. We chose an oblique spot instead, more with a huge blue spruce behind than the lake and sun. But things turned out OK. I thank the Oly for that—a film camera in my untrained mitts would have produced pure whitewash.

As always, the shoot ended with way more pictures than necessary but a couple turned out all right. Mustangs are beautiful cars and a chance to drive one, photograph two and talk to a guy who loves these cars as much as anything in life is always a pleasure. So is jumping cross streets at 120 MPH in the FHP cruiser, but that was just in my mind. Don’t tell Mike.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 1st, 2007 at 9:21 am and is filed under Car parts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.