The first car I ever fell in love with was the 1965 Mustang but I was only 5 at the time. It would be a long time before I could buy my first Mustang.
In 1982 I purchased a white 1965 Mustang Convertible with the pony interior. It only had abut 24K miles on it and I loved that car. In 1986 my first son was born. I thought it was time for me to grow up and act like a responsible father. In a panic about paying for the mortgage on our new house, diapers, baby furniture and saving for his upcoming college tuition, I sold the mustang and regretted it ever since.
When I saw the new Mustang concept car at the NY International Auto show in the spring of 2004, my son (now 18) and I drooled over it and I knew I was destined to own one. Seeing the final product at the Auto show in 2005 closed the deal and after leving the show, I started shopping for a 2005 Mustang GT Convertible.
I ordered the car in April of 2005. The pony interior that I loved wasn't available so I ordered the next best thing, the red IUP interior. All of the dealers were asking for a $3,000 - $5,000 premium for the car at that time, and I refused to pay it. I shoped for a few weeks and found a Ford dealer that would be willing to order the car to my specifications at MSRP. The exterior was ordered in Torch Red. Every option available was ordered except for the fan blade wheels. I liked the stock Bullit wheels on the GT better. The only bad thing, it would be a 13 week wait. In retrospect, this was not really that bad since I had been reading on the forums about people that had been waiting as long as 6 months and many never even got the cars they had ordered.
Those 13 weeks went agonizingly slow. I passed the time by reading the various Mustang forums and seeing what others were doing to improve their cars. By the time the car was delivered in July of 2005, I already had over $2000 in parts in the garage. The car was christened Scarlet after my wife's favorite movie charachter.
Scarlet was in the driveway about 15 minutes before I installed the first mod. The CDC classic Chin Spoliler. I took the next day off and while my wife was grocery shopping I proceeded to tear the car apart to install all of the modifications I had planned. When my wife arrived, she could not believe the car we waited so long for and spent so much money on was torn apart and sitting in pieces in our driveway. Fortunately when everything was back together she was pleased.
The comment I get most often abou the car when I tell them it is modified is "what did you do to it?" My goal was to modify the car to look the way Ford should have built it. All of the modifications were done in such a way that it would always look stock but somehow be different then all the others. The list of modifications to date include the following:
List of Modifications
Cosmetic Mods
* Web-Electric Sequential tail lights
* Antenna Delete
* Painted Lower Grille
* Painted CDC spoiler
* Painted Mirrors
* Rear Black out
* Ford GT/CS side Scoops
* Tri-bar Spinners
* Painted Calipers with mustang lettering and pony
* Modified Ford GT Plenum Cover
* Pony on strut towers
* Red-line hood struts
* Painted Valve Covers
Interior Mods
* Billet AC knobs and door lock pins
* Woodview Dash (Selected pieces)
* Painted IUP door sill
* Amplified interior antenna
* Engine start button
* Trunk release button
* 4 piece carpeted pony floor mats
* Hurst T-Bar Shifter knob
* Shifter Bezel
* CDC light bar
Performance Mods
* C&L Cold Air intake
* Predator Tuner with C&L tune
* Moto-Blue underdrive pulley
* Throttle body spacer
* Granatelli Strut bar brace
In 2006, I entered the car in 9 shows and walked of with 10 trophies.
I developed a web site to track the build and modification process and to provide how-to articles on the modifications I had made or planned. Here is a link to my web site:
Here are a few more pictures of Scarlet.
