A green Mustang showed up on a my street recently; a welcome break from the Honda CRVs, Nissan Pathfinder, Ford Escape, and Toyota Matrix that are anchored next to the curb regularly. The 1966 Mustang belongs to my neighbour and it originally was owned by his grandfather. It appears to be in pretty good, but not perfect, shape – which is fine by me. As much as old cars that have been perfectly preserved against age and wear seem perfect in every respect, to me they always look too sterile, as if the only time they’re driven is onto an auction stage somewhere. Cars, as we all know, were meant to be driven. This Mustang looks like it was driven and that it will continue to be driven. Only a few houses around here have driveways and garages are rare so the Mustang, I presume, will remain parked on the street when not in motion, vulnerable to the elements like the rest of the cars and trucks. Besides the fact that you don’t see too many mid-Sixties Mustangs on the road, or parked for that matter, one thing that struck me about this car was its colour. It’s a pale, metallic green very similar to the metallic green worn by some of the new Mustangs. Apparently Ford flipped through its archive of paint colour books and found one that could be pulled from 40 years ago and tweaked a bit for the early 21st century. Around the same time the Mustang arrived on my street, I was told a story about some cars that were found in the garage of a man who had recently died. One was a mid-80s Lincoln Continental and another was a Corvair. I instantly enquired about the state of the Corvair, but found out both cars had to be junked because neither had been driven in years. Truth be told, I’ve never been a fan of the Continental, having seen many on the road that were well past their prime (if they ever had one). But the Corvair would be an interesting car to own, and of course, to drive.
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Paul Ferriss 