I found this '86 Mustang GT recently for sale down in Columbus, Ohio recently and it brought back a lot of nice old memories.
I've joked for years now that I asked my wife on a second date because I wanted to spend time the "Five-Point-Oh" she had when we first met in 1988. It was a 1983 Mercury Capri RS with a funky bubble hatchback, but it was all Mustang GT aside from that. I don't recall why my future father-in-law up and sold it and I somewhat regret not buying it from him; janky hatchback and all. He let it go for a song. Probably just as well.
My wife and I talk about perhaps picking up a Capri or Mustang just like it, but I don't think we're really serious about it. As the wife of a "car guy", my wife knows as well as I do that there's a lot to consider and a whole lot can go wrong with an old car. For more on that, feel free to browse through my blog and see how much pain and discomfort our 1977 Chevrolet Corvette has given me over the years.
If this '86 was a little closer, it's a good two-hours plus south of us, I might just burn a weekend afternoon to kick its alloys. A joy ride for old time's sake and the pictures for social media would be worth their "likes" in gold.
Buy it? Well, its $12,995 asking price is not out of this world unreasonable like a lot of older cars are these days. NADA pegs this at $14,200 high retail, average retail $6,950. It has 118,000 miles on its thirty-six-year-old ticker, and it appears to be in great shape but the real deal killer for me is it's been in an accident.
Seeing it lacks its badging on the hatchback lid here tells me, without seriously checking, that it was hit from behind. How bad was the damage? Would you drop the dark side of fourteen-grand on a car pushing forty with a less that perfect Carfax? For that money, I'd keep digging.
This car does have its strong points, though. It's an '86 which means it has the 200-horsepower, port-fuel injected "5.0" that also makes 285 foot-pounds of torque at 1,800 rpm. Those numbers aren't impressive today but back then they were astounding and seeing how light these cars are, they could really go. My wife's Capri had a Holly four-barrel "5.0" that made 175-horsepower and 245 foot-pounds. Compared to my 148-horsepower, 700-pound heavier '82 Riviera I was driving at the time, her Capri was a cruise missile.
This has an excellent Tremec five-speed manual too. These cars were always much friendlier daily drivers than their nemesis, the Chevrolet Camaro were too. Not that I'd use this as a daily, but it's nice to know you could if you needed to.
I might lobby the wife for this if it was half the price but at the asking price, let it be someone else's nostalgic joyride.
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