It was the coolest car I ever owned. Maybe the coolest car anybody ever owned.
But obviously Mustangs and I are not as cool as we used to be. Because on a just-released list of “cars Americans no longer drive,” Mustang finished third. Only Chrysler 300 and Ford Taurus had less coolness.
The list was compiled by a financial news and opinion company called 24/7 Wall St., which reported that Mustang sales have plummeted 58.2 percent in the past five years.
In a similar, but not necessarily related report, the company name Michelob as the No. 1 beer Americans no longer drink. But if you write about drinking and driving in the same column you get all sorts of nasty reactions from groups such as MADD, so I won’t go there.
Besides, I never cared one way or the other about Michelob. But I loved my Mustang.
It was lime gold, it had 289 somethings under the hood and it was nearly as cool as Elvis Presley.
Sure, the sticker price was $2,898. But my salary had swollen from $80 a week to $100 a week, so I figured I could swing it as long as the price of gas stayed at 33 cents a gallon.
And the strain on the budget was worth it. Not only did my ’67 Mustang have those distinctive side scoops and a split glass rear window in the convertible top, it had concave tail lights. Whatever the monthly payments, they were worth it for the satisfaction of driving down the street knowing that people were looking at your car and saying, “Wow, concave tail lights.”
Sadly, Americans don’t seem to be nearly as impressed by concave tail lights as they once were and Mustangs have lost their wow factor.
Some people still value them, though. They show up regularly at classic car shows and for $24.97 you can subscribe to Mustang Monthly.
According to an ad in that magazine, I could sell my ’67 Mustang for $29,500 if I still had it. But I don’t. In 1970 my wife insisted we no longer could stack the kids in the backseat and we needed a new car. So we traded it in on a Chevy. It was muddy brown. It was a station wagon.
I haven’t been cool since then.
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