We have to point out to the rest of the world that in the UK a single flake of snow causes carnage all over the country; trains stop running, roads close, satellite TV’s stop working, power cuts you name it! The bit that we are concerned about is that the bad weather brings out a certain type of driver who hits the roads and then hits you if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time. We think a picture can say more than a sentence or two could, enough said? OK, the cock is on top of the car not driving it. Perhaps they should be forced to drive with this little modification so we know who they are from a distance?

Seriously though; we have been warned by some couriers that due to the “snow” which lasted only a couple of hours in our area, some deliveries could be delayed. However any orders from our point of view will still be as normal with no delays expected. Please be patient with your delivery drivers.

WebShop

We was going to start with the dreaded “C” word – yep “Christmas”, not sure why everything is now starting to be called “Holidays” these days, perhaps it’s the PC crowd not wanting to offend anybody, even though it’s a religious celebration called Christmas for Hundreds of years now. The tradition is to give gifts to your loved ones, with that in mind the WebShop vouchers have started to sell as we would expect coming up to Christmas, in order to keep up with the demand a new batch will be arriving soon. So if you want some vouchers for that special person in your life the link is here, or they can be found on the WebShop along with lots of other goodies! Now it has to be said that Mustang Maniac does get into the swing of things at this festive season and Adam just wanted to prove the point here:

But as it’s cold around the yard, Santa’s helper – OK it’s Adam! he needed a nice warm hat. Words fail us at this point, but it did provide a welcome sight carrying a few cups of tea!

A little quiz just for fun – Adam says “Can you guess what this hat says?”

Customer Cars:

OK, sensible time now. The blue racing coupe has had her paint, been given the Mustang Maniac “works”. We are just waiting for a time slot for the MOT then she can go to her owner. We have some before and after pics for you.

After:

We have also had in a customers own Restomod Coupe into us which he has been working on for the last ten years, a real tribute to the owner. We just needed to sort out a few little niggles with engine running which was not your normal 289!

The car has HID headlights and some nice touch daytime running lights.

Interior.

Under the hood it’s not what you would expect to see.

The owner of this car has hinted to us that the car could be up for sale for the right price.

F100

Not our normal project work but we were happy to oblige with this nice example.

Ford Facts:

1) The Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) initially refused the request from Ford to declare the Mustang a “sports car” – important to allow Ford to race the new car. Ford asked Caroll Shelby to negotiate for them and he suggested the only real issue was “sports cars don’t have rear seats” so he modified every one of the 560 1965 GT350s with a floor panel to replace the rear seats. Later in 1966 the SCCA, understanding how important the Mustang was for them, relaxed the rear seat issue – all 2274 1966 GT350s had rear seats.

2) Wilson Pickett’s ‘Mustang Sally’ was a huge hit….but did you know it was actually a ‘cover’ of an earlier song written and performed by Mack Rice. It was originally called ‘Mustang Mama’ but Aretha Franklin suggested the change. Ironically, before Mack Rice wrote and performed Mustang Sally, he was in an R&B band….called ‘The Falcons’. The irony is that Mustang was based closely on the Ford Falcon.

3) One of the four evaluation 1965 Shelby GT 350 Convertibles was sold after its evaluation work was completed by Caroll Shelby to Bob Shane of the ‘Kingston Trio’. The vehicle still exists in pristine condition.

4) Ex President Clinton owns a 67 convertible in light blue. One could expect that it’s a fire breathing muscle car…but is in fact a 6 cylinder . It was loaned to a classic car museum in Arkansas for the term of his presidency and never stored at the Whitehouse or used in any official cavalcades.

5) Ford got Kar-Kraft to build a prototype mid-engined Boss 427 code named LID Mustang (Low Investment Driveline). It worked well but never went into production. The whereabouts of the prototypes remains unknown.

6) In the cult film Bullitt, Ford initially insisted that the car chase would be an ‘all Ford affair’ and a number of Mustangs (390 S codes) and two Galaxies were supplied to the production company. Shooting started but while the Mustangs stood up quite well to the chase scenes, the Galaxies quickly suffered from the rough landings around San Francisco and were replaced with Dodge Chargers (440 Magnum L codes).

7) The most popular 1969 Boss Mustang colour was yellow (well over 1/3 of all production were Bright Yellow).

8) Pontiac borrowed Ford’s 3 speed manual transmission. If a post 1965 GTO has the ‘heavy duty option’ (code S) then it’s a Ford Transmission.

9) Mustang 2 with its Pinto engine was a complete flop…true or false? False, in fact sales in the first year got to within 10% of the first edition (385,993 versus 418,812) – a sales volume any maker would be delighted with!

10) The launch of the new Ford Maverick was on April 17 1969, the same date as the original Mustang in 1964. By the April 64 launch date Ford had produced just 8000 Mustangs – just enough for one for each dealer on launch day. By the end of the month they had produced near to 20,000.

(source: Steve Magnante’s 1001 Mustang Facts)

Finally:

As it’s pretty cold we also decided to clean a car, but in the warm.

Drive carefully out there!