All right, Mustang II experts, I'm going to start right off by saying that this Pinto Mustang might not be a numbers-matching real Mach 1. Maybe it's a FrankenMustang with what appears to be the correct collection Mach 1 of options. Either way, this fine Malaise Era machine— which I found at a San Francisco Bay Area wrecking yard a few weeks back— is a fascinating museum of the diminished automotive expectations faced by car shoppers in a grim period in American history.
The Mach 1 for '74 came with a mighty 105 horsepower. No, really.
Thanks to Ford's European operations, a very compact 2.8 liter pushrod V6 was available for the Mustang II. If a Ford dealership also sold Mercury cars, Cologne-powered Capris could be found in the same showroom.
This car received a thick coat of what appears to be gray latex house paint, probably just before it took that final tow-truck ride to the Parking Lot of Automotive Doom.
Automatic transmission with factory tachometer! Yes, that's a 5,000 RPM redline on an allegedly sporty V6.
Remote passenger-side mirror!
Truly amazing vinyl-on-vinyl-on-pleather PetroPolstery™ seats!
Either the original buyer of this car cheaped out and got the $61 AM radio instead of the $346 8-track player (that's $1,634 in today's dollars, for those of you who scream that your Bluetooth-enabled head unit cost too much), or this is an aftermarket Philco that replaced a stereo ripped off by Seconal-crazed junkie thieves in 1976.
You'd never see a pre-1974 Mach 1 in one of these low-buck self-serve wrecking yards, because such a car would be snapped up at the auction for much more than the junkyard chain's buyer would ever pay. Poor unloved Mustang II!
from The Truth About Cars http://ift.tt/Jh8LjA
Put the internet to work for you.
via Personal Recipe 680102
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