Best and worst was the same car...my Mom's 1969 Mustang convertible. She bought it new, and then in 1974 bought another Mustang convertible.
Remember I am a woman as you read my story...
She let my older brothers drive the 1969 to w*rk until they could get their own cars. It had a 302 cubic inch, 8 cylinder engine that would get you from zero to 60 mph PDQ, so I can imagine what my brothers did to it.
Little by little the car began to deteriorate...rusting out rear quarter panels, really LOUD tappet noise from engine, floors behind the bucket seats rotting through. By the time I needed a car for living off campus at college, this car was a real beater. The passenger bucket seat bracket broke, so I used a log to prop the seat into an upright position. If you rolled down the windows, they would not come back up. I had those door panels open a lot, getting the windows back on the up/down mechanism. The rear window in the convertible top cracked, so I got a piece of plexiglas cut and installed it myself. The muffler and exhaust pipe was held up by a very artfully arranged metal coat hanger wire system.
I used fiberglas screen, glossy magazine paper and Bondo to repair the rust holes in the front quarter panels. I changed the belts as needed.
This car looked and sounded like hell. But it was a MUSTANG!
It faithfully carried me between my off campus apartment and campus, in the deep snow and bitter cold of Oneonta NY in 1977-8. Something shorted, and I had to replace the starter, solenoid, alternator and the battery. I paid my roommate's father (owned a repair garage) to do the brakes. I did the shocks myself.
The car held up after I gave it back to Mom. She continued to drive it as a spare car for several more years after I bought my own 67 Dodge Dart.
My Mom towed it with a UHaul truck and front wheel tow device to my house upstate in the mid 1980s, thinking I would want to have it restored. No way was that possible or even any sort of good ROI. The body looked like Swiss cheese at this point.
The frame was solid.
I stored it for 1 year in a local old cannery building and finally sold it for parts to a local guy here in East Nowhere. He needed interior parts for his Mustang. He could not believe his good luck to get a "parts queen" for only $600.
It still started, stopped and steered just fine and had valid inspection and registration stickers. What a tough guy that car was!
It was the best car for me because I learned how to be an auto mechanic out of necessity. I had no money to have proper repairs done, so the DIY plan kicked in. I had lots of guy friends to help me diagnose problems, but I bought the parts and turned the wrenches myself under their directions.
I am now the proud owner a 2005 black convertible Mustang. She never gets a speck of road salt on her. It is indeed a great memory sparking car when I drive it.
