by Tim Falconer
Most car clubs are social organizations as much as anything else, but all of them bring together people who share an interest in automobiles. Many clubs, such as the Mustangers, are devoted to one marque, but others welcome anyone who’s interested. (Variations on the theme include the Car Club for Men, a humorous website for those with an automobile that’s at least ten years old and has at least 160,000 kilometres on the odometer. My Maxima became eligible shortly after I left Toronto.) For most members, this hobby is a healthy, if expensive, passion. But some people cross the line into obsession. My friend Mike Harper, a Toronto advertising consultant, owns two Porsches and races his 911 with other members of the Porsche Club of America (Upper Canada Region). He’s seen marriages break up and people spend their way into bankruptcy. “Cars,” he said, “are like crack cocaine for some of these guys.”
The garage day in Colorado Springs was one of the few events I’d planned before I started my road trip; after all, it combined Mustangs—not just an iconic car but my favourite (along with the Galaxie 500) when I was a kid—and the Rocky Mountains. It had to be done. Beyond following my own whims, I hoped to glean a better understanding of at least one side of our love–hate relationship with the car.
Ask serious car aficionados what they hate about automobiles and they’re not going to start whining about sprawl or fretting about the environment. Instead, they’ll complain about the hassle of gas prices and speeding tickets and traffic jams—and about the headaches and heartaches that go with fixing, restoring and customizing their beloved cars. As for the love, I’m not sure it’s much more complicated than a kid’s love for a puppy: it’s wideeyed and unconditional.
LESS THAN AN HOUR south of Denver, Colorado Springs is home to the Garden of the Gods, a park full of stunning red sandstone formations in the shadow of Pikes Peak, one of the best-known mountains in the country. Originally a resort community, it has since become home to several military bases, including the United States Air Force Academy, as well as defence contractors and hightech firms. Now the second-largest city in the state, with a population of about 370,000, the growth has been rapid, much of it taking place in the last couple of decades, and some of the people who moved here are now complaining about big-city problems such as crime, homelessness, high house prices, traffic and even overcrowding (although the density is under 2,000 people per square mile).
Colorado Springs also has a reputation for being extremely conservative. The population is 80 percent white, and evangelical Christians abound; Focus on the Family is just one of the many religious organizations based here. So I didn’t expect to see a Jeep with a bumper sticker that read, “If you aren’t a race fan, blow me (kneepads optional).” I got over my shock—and my giggles—and found my hotel just before Jamie and Neil Case showed up in their 2005 Mustang GT.
Four decades before that car rolled off the line, the original Mustang was as much a cultural phenomenon as it was an auto industry sensation. In 1960, Lee Iacocca became the vice-president and general manager of the Ford Motor Company’s Ford Division. While the colossal failure of the Edsel in the late 1950s was the case of a car in search of a market, he saw an emerging market in search of a car. Not only would the number of people aged twenty to twenty-four increase by 50 percent during the 1960s, but a larger percentage of this generation would go to college than any other—and college grads bought more cars than those without higher education. The company’s research also suggested that older consumers’ tastes were shifting from practical economy cars to sporty and luxury models, more and more families were buying second automobiles, and women, who liked small, easy-handling vehicles, were buying more cars. Iacocca was particularly interested in the blossoming youth market and figured he could capture it with a product that combined style, performance and price. But it had to be more than a sports car. In Iacocca: An Autobiography, the father of the Mustang wrote, “We wanted to develop a car that you could drive to the country club on Friday, to the drag strip on Saturday, and to church on Sunday.”
At the same time, he was surprised to learn how many people who bought the Ford Falcon—which had been a huge success for the company—were paying to add white-wall tires, automatic transmissions and more powerful engines to what was supposed to be a low-priced economy car. “The American car buyer,” he realized, “wants economy so badly he’ll pay almost anything to get it!” So instead of offering several different models, Ford made one base Mustang and let buyers customize from an array of options, including eight-cylinder engines, automatic transmission and radios. That flexibility kept the base car affordable—it originally sold for $2,368, though buyers spent an average of $1,000 on options—and helped ensure the Mustang’s enduring popularity.
And popular it was. Although the Big Three traditionally introduced new models in the fall, Ford unveiled the Mustang in April at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. On the day of the launch, people swarmed dealerships. After fifteen people in Garland, Texas, vied for the lone Mustang in a display window, the highest bidder—fearing someone else would snap it up—slept in it until his cheque cleared. Ford sold more than 417,000 Mustangs in the first year.
The Rocky Mountain Mustangers started two years later. Today, the club counts sixty-two families, including the Cases, as members. When Neil, who is a mechanical engineer with the school district, was in high school he worked on a friend’s Camaro, but he’s a Mustang guy now. He and Jamie joined the club in 1992, before they even owned a pony. Neil soon bought a 1968 Coupe for seven hundred dollars, which was his daily driver for six months before he got around to restoring it. The couple now owns four Mustangs, including a 1966 Coupe, which he put a 302 engine in so he could enter Autocross races; a 1967 Coupe; and a 1968 High Country Special, one of only 251 made, that sits outside waiting to be restored.
We had some time, so Neil, who wore jeans on his long, thin legs and a jean jacket, took me on a quick tour of town and a drive-through of the Garden of the Gods. Jamie, a physician assistant who specializes in chronic pain management, sat in the back seat and admitted wearily, “I kind of adopted Neil’s interest.” She’s now a convert and especially loves racing. They both do Autocross, which is safer than traditional racing because the drivers go through the course one at a time. Though the clock ticks away, car-handling skills and the ability to come up with the best strategy for getting through the traffic-cone course matter as much as sheer speed.
The first house on the garage day itinerary was in Peregrine, an upscale neighbourhood on the western edge of town between the Garden of the Gods and the Air Force Academy. Despite the cold and the occasional snow flurries when the sun would disappear, most people milled about on the driveway. There were three cars in Dave Gardner’s garage—a 2005 Corvette, a red 1969 Mach 1 Mustang and a black 1967 Fairlane—but he owns a total of twelve vehicles, including a 1967 Mustang convertible, a Volvo and three school buses for the three daycare centres he owns. He introduced himself by saying, “Car people are different.”
Tall, thin and balding, Gardner wore a suede jacket, a plaid shirt and wire-frame sunglasses. He was in the military for many years, including stints as a chopper pilot in Vietnam, a rescue pilot and an air traffic controller, but says none of that was as stressful as running three businesses, so his car collection was his great joy. While he admitted many Vette owners are snobbish about their wheels, he declared, “I just love cars.”
Gardner’s special project was the Fairlane. A couple of years ago, his son Brent was diagnosed with ALS and Gardner wanted to get the Fairlane restored before his son could no longer drive. Already his son was unable to help but still likes to be there when Gardner and other club members do the work. “It’s the only thing that makes him happy,” Gardner said sadly. He has put many, many hours and about thirty thousand dollars into it so far. Before we moved on, he started the Fairlane and let it roar, much to everyone’s delight.
The next stop was Stew Harding’s place, a split-level with a two-door garage in Village
Seven, an eastern neighbourhood that wasn’t as posh as the one Gardner lives in. The turnout was growing: ten or twelve members, at least as many women as men, had dropped by the first house, but an additional half-dozen showed up to the second. A black 1969 Mach 1 Mustang sat in one garage bay, but Harding was storing his other Mustang, a 1965 Fastback, in a friend’s barn, so several people hovered around the food table in the other bay. He has reddish hair and a goatee and was wearing a red sweatshirt and blue workout pants. As a boy in Wyoming, he was thrilled when his parents bought a pony in 1967. “I grew up in the back of that old car. So I’ve just loved Mustangs since I was just a kid.”
His first car was a Chevy II Nova, but he soon traded up to a 1966 Mustang. And he hasn’t looked back; although he sells auto parts at a GM dealership, he admitted, “I’ve been a died-in-the-wool Ford guy my whole life.” For him, part of the allure of the Mustang is that it was a blue-collar performance car that a buyer could personalize. A row of photos on his garage wall shows the eight Mustangs he’s owned over the years. One of the pictures shows him drag racing at Bandimere Speedway in Denver. “Never was very successful, but I sure tried hard,” he said. “It was a blast. There ain’t nothing like doing a big old hairy burnout to get the slicks hot and then a couple of dry hops and then the light comes down. I’m getting goosebumps even thinking about it now. Just a blast.”
For about five years in the mid-1980s, he didn’t own a Mustang because he was buying and fixing up his house. After all, it’s easy to spend four to five hundred dollars a month on a couple of old cars, and he estimated that it would take at least thirty thousand dollars to fix up an average unrestored mid-1960s Mustang. He bought his Mach 1 six years ago for twelve thousand and has put another five thousand into it and could probably sell it for about thirty thousand; on the other hand, he’s sunk a lot more into the 1965 Fastback than he could ever hope to get out. “It’s extremely expensive and if I had to hire out a lot of the work, it would be worse yet.”
The third house of the day belonged to Mike Taylor. There were Mustang posters on his garage walls and a food table in the middle of one bay. In the other, there was a 1993 GT under a fitted tarp and an engine from a 1965 Fastback on a stand in the corner. A maintenance technician for Schlage locks, he bought the Fastback for just $275—much to his wife’s displeasure—and for the amount he’s spent on the car, he could have picked up a brand new Shelby Mustang. He’s been working on it for more than twenty years, including as much as ten to fifteen hours a week in the past year, and still doesn’t know when he’ll be finished except to say, “I think my grandkids are going to get a nice car.”
Next, I rode with Kathryn Blacharski. Since she lives up in the mountains and the weather was iffy, she’d left her 2004 Mystichrome convertible Cobra at home and drove a black Ford 150 XLT pickup with a licence plate that read “Tall 1.” Country music played softly on the radio. A tall woman with long blond hair, she works as a systems administrator. Her father was a mechanic, and as a girl she liked to hang out with him at his garage. She says she fell in love with the Mustang in “1964 and a half.” (Because Ford launched the car in April instead of the fall, the model year of the original Mustang is 1964 ½.) But she didn’t buy her first one—a 2003 six-cylinder yellow convertible—until two years ago because as a single mother she had to wait to raise her two kids before she could splurge. “I loved her to death,” she said. “And there was absolutely nothing wrong with her and I’m not exactly sure why, but I went looking for a Cobra.” When she had a chance to buy the Mystichrome convertible, she scraped together every penny she could find. A limited edition option in 2004 only, Mystichrome is paint that appears to change colour, depending on the angle and the light, from green to blue to purple to black. “It’s pretty nifty.” She drives it to work once a week when the weather is good, takes it to car shows and runs it in Autocross races. She got into racing after riding with Jamie Case. “It was just so exciting. All it took was one ride-along and I got hooked,” she said. “It’s a whole lot of fun and it’s legal.” Even better, she does it in a car she loves so much she’ll never sell it. “I’ll eat pork and beans before I get rid of my car.”
The fourth house was out in the country and belongs to Terry Myers. The general manager of a wholesale distribution company, he wore bib overalls and a black racing shirt. He looks a bit like John Denver, but wound tighter. Judging from the way he keeps his three-door garage, he’s also a bit of a neat freak. On the wall, he’d put up Mustang posters, a Ford racing flag and a sign that read “Ford Parking Only All Others Will Be Towed.” He does own a Chevy pickup, but insisted, “I hate it.” His first car was a Ford Torino at the insistence of his father. Then he had a 1964 Fairlane, the first of three Fairlanes he owned. “I was working up to a Mustang,” he said. The grandson of a car dealer, he’s owned about thirty cars in his life, but one year he bought and sold seventeen. Today, he owns a 2001 Cobra and a 1965 Coupe, which was up on blocks, and spends five to six hours a week on them. Several club members crowded around to inspect the work he’d been doing on the Coupe’s engine. Myers, who Autocrosses it, explained that racers actually make up only 10 percent of the club; it just seems like more because they talk about it all the time. His appetite for Mustangs will never be satisfied. “There will always be another one,” he said. “My wife concedes that. There will always be another one I want.”
Upstairs, the second floor of the garage was his parts department. It was all chipboard and exposed rafters; the insulation that would someday go up was still in bags. Myers held court, regaling half a dozen other male club members—the women all stayed downstairs—with the trials and tribulations of fixing the 2001 Ford Focus he’d given his son. It was supposed to be a reliable car to get to and from college, but they also put a supercharger in it for Autocross races. Then the engine blew and it was one frustration after another to get it working again—and suddenly two days to fix it became seven. The people listening had obviously heard this tale before, perhaps many times, but that didn’t matter—they clearly enjoyed hearing it again.
The final stop of the day was Bambino’s, a restaurant with unremarkable Italian food in a sketchy section of town. While the club executive put up a yellow club banner, other members chatted about cars mostly, though occasionally real estate crept into the conversation. A few people ordered beer. It was a mostly middle-aged crowd, fortyish and up (there is another, less-formal club in town called the Mustang Mafia, which attracts younger enthusiasts). Everyone in the room was white, but there was diversity of professions—from an engineer to a postman—and socioeconomic class. Jamie Case, who wore a sweatshirt with “Colorado” on it and kept her light brown hair in a ponytail, chaired the meeting, and though she had a casual, occasionally giggly attitude toward Robert’s Rules of Order, she was good at it, moving through the agenda efficiently and good-naturedly. One item was the gift exchange at the upcoming Christmas party, and Case, apparently speaking from past experience, asked that everyone spend about fifteen dollars, resist the temptation to give gag gifts such as blow-up dolls and refrain from giving alcohol— even if it came in a “really cool Mustang decanter”—because some of the people getting the presents might be under twenty-one.
Case introduced a former member, Jack Howard, who had a Mustang to sell, and three new members. One was a young guy who was there with his wife. He stood up and described himself as recently married—and recently married to a 1967 Mustang, which he’d just bought for eight hundred dollars and was “all primer,” meaning it was painted with primer. Case welcomed him and suggested that as he got to know the other members, he’d find there were several who had experience restoring Mustangs. “They’ll be able to tell you what not to do.”
That prompted several mock cries of “Don’t start!”
TWO WEEKS BEFORE I met the Rocky Mountain Mustangers, I’d spent the day with the Gateway Camaro Club. By 8:30 on Sunday morning—half an hour before the official start of the annual Fall Colors
Tour—a few Camaro lovers had already gathered in the parking lot of the Drury Inn in Fenton, Missouri, about twenty miles from downtown St. Louis. Since the Chevrolet Camaro, launched in the fall of 1966, was GM’s response to the Mustang, I wasn’t surprised to hear some of the Gateway guys cracking wise about ponies and their owners, though when pressed they admitted it was really just a friendly rivalry. Said one: “At least their cars are American.”
Marv Hoefel, a potbellied guy with a red face dressed in a purple shirt, black suspenders and a baseball cap with the club logo on it, had organized the event and even did a dry run to make sure everything would go smoothly. The last thing he wanted to hear was the razzing he’d get if it didn’t. His wife, Briann, handed out maps of the route while club president Mike Steitz made sure every car had a two-way radio in case anyone got lost or broke down or ran out of gas. Shortly after nine o’clock, we got in the Camaros and took off.
Most members were riding with someone else—a wife, a son, a friend—but Steve Blumfelder was alone, so I started the day in his 1997 Z28 SS 30th Anniversary Edition, a pre-production West Coast auto show model that’s white with orange stripes. As we all filed out of the parking lot, a driver at a stop sign just let everyone go instead of taking his turn, and along the route, a lot of people turned and stared. Twenty Camaros in a row was something worth watching.
“I don’t know if you inherit the car disease from somebody,” said Blumfelder, whose uncle was a driver at GM’s Desert Proving Grounds in Arizona. For some reason in 1987, as a fifteen-year-old in Florissant, another St. Louis suburb, he fell in love with a Hugger Orange 1969 Camaro Rally Sport SS that was available for three thousand dollars. It was mostly primer and he spent all his savings on it. “My dad had a fit,” he remembered. “He didn’t understand, but I always liked the way Camaros looked. I needed one of those cars.” Despite his misgivings, Blumfelder’s father drove the car home for his underage son and now sometimes joins him at car shows.