A Family Heirloom

1965 was a busy year for me.  I got married in January, graduated from the Missouri University Master's program in May, got a job, and moved to Corona, California in June...........and in August I bought a new car.  I was 24 years old.

Like a lot of people in 1965, I fell in love with the Ford Mustang, and when I started making money from a real job, I bought one. 

I drove it for 13 years, during which time we had two children and a dog and explored a lot of California.  Then I got divorced, moved out, and left the car behind.  By that time we also had a van so I could haul my dirt bike to the desert, and I needed the van. 

My ex-wife kept the car and now after all these years she has given it to our son Brian and we are making it a father/son/grandsons restoration project.  Brian rented a trailer and hauled it up from Riverside a couple of weeks ago.  We are going to keep it at our house while we work on it and here he is arriving:

The car still has the original yellow on black plates that were issued back then, but it hasn't been registered since 2001.  The data plate on the door shows it was assembled in San Jose, California in August of 1965, and when I was rumaging around in the glove compartment I found the owner's manual with this in the front:

So we must have bought it as soon as it was shipped to the dealer. 

Brian's plan is to do a leisurely restoration as money becomes available.  The object is to make a modern daily driver rather than an exact restoration.  This means disk brakes rather than drums all around, electronic ignition, rack and pinion steering, and high back seats with shoulder seat belts.  The plan right now is for a four speed manual transmission. 

 We will do what work we can, but farm out the body work and paint and will probably have to buy a new engine as the original is pretty well used up.  Brian and his boys have already decided on a paint scheme based on something they saw in the movie "Gone in Sixty Seconds". 

This past weekend Brian and Colin came down and we started preparing the engine for removal and taking off a few grill and headlight parts.  The wonderful thing about these old cars is that they have almost no smog control equipment or modern electronic controls, so they are really simple and straightforward to work on. 

I'll keep the progress updated on this blog.  Pretty amazing to see this car that I bought almost 50 years ago and to have it still be in the family.  I wish I had some pictures of it when it was new, but I couldn't find any.  We took slide pictures back then, and when we divorced they got split up and mixed up.