1980 Ford Mustang - Doesn't Get More "'80's" Than This

Chances are, if at the drop of a hat you were asked to name a quintessential "1980s car," you wouldn't knee-jerk answer, "Oh, 1980 Ford Mustang!" Neither would I, frankly. But when I came across this '80 Mustang for sale on Marketplace about 45 minutes west of The Triple Wide, it fish-hooked me back to the '80s in a way your stereotypical "80s cars," like a DeLorean, simply don't.

After five years of the Pinto-based Mustang II, Ford introduced what became known as the "Fox-body" Mustang for 1979. The Fox platform itself debuted for the 1978 model year under the Ford Fairmont and Mercury Zephyr; the Mustang followed a year later. The "Fox" name was reportedly inspired by the Audi Fox, although the precise origin of the name isn't entirely settled.

The Fox platform would go on to underpin scores of Ford, Mercury and Lincoln models through the 1980s and early '90s. The original Fox architecture lasted through 1993, although a heavily revised derivative carried the Mustang through 2004. So, technically, saying the Fox-body ran all the way to 2004 needs an asterisk—but considering the basic architecture's extraordinary longevity, "Fox" certainly had one hell of a run.

Arguably, the most famous and certainly the longest-running nameplate application of the Fox architecture was the Mustang.

While it was no Chevrolet Camaro or Pontiac Firebird, I thought the Fox-body Mustang was a most welcome breath of fresh air when it debuted in 1979. I even like this factory installed carriage top. The Fox Mustang was roughly four inches longer than a Mustang II and rode on a wheelbase roughly four inches longer—100.4 inches versus 96.2. Goes to show you what a couple of inches here and there can do for an automobile's design.

Have to wonder: if the Mustang II had simply been downsized and remained on the Falcon-derived architecture used by the original Mustang, would it have made a big enough difference aesthetically that it wouldn't be the black sheep of the Ford Mustang stable it is today?

As much better looking than a Mustang II as they were, and far more in line with the loosely defined "pony-car" classification, everyone I drove left me vexed, perplexed and confused. They ride stiffly and feel primitive in ways that other Fox-body-underpinned cars, like the 1983–1988 Ford Thunderbird, simply don't. I say the same about my 2005 S197 Mustang GT: its inherent crudeness feels purposely dialed in.

Although there are no pictures of it, our '80 here is powered somewhat curiously by Ford's 200-cubic-inch, or 3.3-liter, pushrod, one-barrel inline-six. At the risk of sounding like a punk-ass, know-everything Gen Z car blogger who goofs on the cars us Gen Xers grew up with, the little engine that could not cranked out all of 89 horsepower and 143 lb-ft of torque. 

Here's where the story goes off the rails. Ford had intended the Cologne, Germany-built 2.8-liter, 60-degree V-6 to be the optional six-cylinder engine in these cars, the 2.3-liter four was standard. While the 2.8 was offered in the 1979 model year, Ford ran into supply problems with the 2.8, and midway through 1979, replaced the V-6 with the old 200-cubic-inch inline-six. The 2.8 V-6 was then dropped from the Mustang lineup for 1980, leaving the 3.3-liter six as the optional six-cylinder engine.

Couple the little sixer with its light-duty C3 three-speed automatic and factory-standard 3.08:1 rear axle, and it's safe to say no one has driven this little pony very quickly over the last 46 years and 66,000 miles. 

So, what to do with this thing? Sky's the limit. Do we drop a junkyard-truck 351 Windsor in her? A fuel-injected "HO" 5.0? How 'bout we go nuts and go Coyote, leaving the body as-is? A pure, modern-day-ish rat rod. I find that oddly appealing. We can gussy up the suspension, so it doesn't ride like a truck with square wooden wheels too. 

There's a network of Fox-body aftermarket parts out there to rival any Camaro, Firebird or even Corvette. It's a $2,900 asking price, low enough that I'd like to think you could probably take this off their hands for closer to $2,000, if not less than that.

 

1981 Ford Fairmont - Oh So '70's Vibe (And Not in a Good Way)

Although my birth year coincided with the debut of the Pontiac GTO and I was born within a month of the launch of the Ford Mustang and the Plymouth Barracuda, by the time I approached driving age, thanks to two gas crisis and EPA emissions and safety regulations, the cool car party was long over. Due to increasingly stringent safety, emissions and gas mileage regulations, staid looking economy cars were king and anything with a V-8 engine, not to mention any modicum of performance, real or imagined, was verboten. 

However, what came about at the Ford Motor Company as result of circumstances and government scrutiny, was actually quite good. Although, I had little use for the game changing 1978 Ford Fairmont and its corporate kissin' cousin, the Mercury Zephyr. Even in two-door guise like this '81 Fairmont.  

To be honest, though, as good as these cars are based on what became known as the "Fox-body", or platform were, they have not aged well. At least in comparison to their far more famous sibling, the Ford Mustang. And to a lesser degree the 1979-1986 Mercury Capri. The Ford Motor Company used the Fox-body on a wide variety of automobiles across all three of their divisions including Lincoln. The origin of the name, by the way, the subject of much conjecture but the common notion is Ford named it after the Audi Fox which was supposedly the benchmark they aspired to when they first started drawing it up in 1973. 

The "Fox-body" was a radical departure from most anything the Ford Motor Company or any domestic manufacturer had come with before it. The relatively lightweight, unit-bodied Foxes featured a then "space-age" Macpherson strut front suspension and rack-and-pinion steering that afforded drivers a near European level of ride and handling. Well, for at the time anyway. 

Ah, but where it counted to pre-pubescent me, its simple styling was a decided turnoff; not that there were any Ford's of the era that I cared for save for any Fox-body Mustang or Capri with a "5.0" glued to its front fenders. Simple by design and straightforward in ways what they replaced (the Ford Maverick and Mercury Comet) certainly weren't, the Fairmont and Zephyr were the Ford Motor Company's literal and figurative interpretation of a Volvo 240. Ha, as if? Well, auto pundits raved about these cars in ways they didn't gush about General Motors downsized full and mid-sized models that were really, if we're being honest, nothing more than shrunken versions of what they had been pushing out for the past thirty years or so. Your opinion may vary, see dealer for details. 

Funny how some of us have to learn life's lessons the hard way. While my first car, coincidentally or not, was a 1974 Mercury Comet, what I refer to as my "second first car", was exactly what I wanted in the first place - a big, spatially inefficient, V-8 powered "personal luxury car" that was a wallowing monster to handle. But I thought it cool as all hell even though I was smitten by the handling prowess of a friends tiny, early '80's Toyota Corolla. That little car along with a number of other smaller, sharp handling cars subliming stoking the coals of my inner race car driver; I didn't realize at the time that not only was I a budding automobile enthusiast, I actually really enjoyed driving. 

Back to our '81 Fairmont here in the '23. I found this on Facebook Marketplace not long ago for sale near my home here on the west side of Cleveland, Ohio. Asking price was a fair $4,500 for a rust-free, forty-year-old, 50,000-mile anything although I chafe at the thought of dropping that on this. Attempting to look at it through the goggles of my 26-year-old, semi-car conscious older son, I still can't see past it's, as he would put it, "not in a good way, oh-so-'70's-vibe". He adores my 1977 Corvette so he does know a thing or two. I might me somewhat alone in my contempt for this car as I went back to Marketplace to find it and it seems to be gone. 

2003 Ford Mustang GT - Never Say Never

My anticipation was fervid in the early 1990's when news first broke that Ford would update their very long-in-the tooth Mustang with something that hearkened back to the seminal Mustangs of the 1960's. After a couple of model-year delays, coincidentally or not, for Mustang's thirtieth anniversary for 1994, Ford pulled the wraps off this thing and I was reminded of so many childhood Christmases when I was  heartbroken over not getting what I wanted for Christmas. Oh, don't feel bad for me; I've gotten over those slights and it's helped make me who I am today. Although, I've never gotten over the 1994 Mustang. 

Code named "SN-95", these Ford Probe like Fox-body Mustangs lacked the visceral appeal that all other Mustangs had, save of course for the 1974-1978 Mustang II's, and was certainly lacking in comparison to GM's wonderful and fresh 1993 Chevrolet Camaro and to a lesser degree their Pontiac Firebird. I emphasize fresh since today's pony\muscle car designs are all retro or throwback inspired and haven't been wholly updated in more than a decade. They're so familiar they're almost not just stale, they're getting moldy. 

All mostly forgiven come 1999 when Ford face-lifted Mustang injecting botox and collagen in the all the right places to create, my blog my rules, the Mustang they should have come out with back in 1994. Want proof I'm not alone with that sentiment? Mustang sales shot up nearly twenty-five percent year over year and they stayed at the 1999 level through the end of the SN-95's production run in 2004. 

Rarely does a manufacturer improve on a design with subsequent updating but Ford's 1999 reboot of the SN-95 wasn't so much an updating but a "do-over". The '99 successfully blending cliched Mustang design cues with a healthy dollop of a modern-esque design ethos that obliterated the hokey, cartoon-ish retro non-sense. If anything, these cars looked like an up-to date 1969-1970 Mustang. Underneath the car still rode like it had square wheels but damn, it sure looked tough in a good way. 

Our subject here is a 2003 not unlike a 2002 Mustang GT I came thisclose to purchasing years ago when my family and I lived in Dallas, Texas. A community whose weather is conducive to use of a sporty car as a daily driver. Well, on paper anyway.  

A Mustang a Camaro lover could love? Imagine that. Well, frankly, I didn't much care for the front-end rehash GM did to my beloved 1993-1997 Camaro for 1998 and, subjectively, the updated '99 Mustang was the better looker of the two. That's saying something given how much I loved the 1993-1997 Camaro and disdained the 1994-1998 Mustang. Legend has it there was a federal mandate in the late 1990's for manufacturers to move away from multiple headlights to singular ones and that necessitated the unfortunate plastic surgery to one of my favorite domestic designs of the 1990's. 

That didn't stop me from getting a Z28 instead of a Mustang in that wonderful fall of 2006; me eschewing the easier-to-live-with nature of the Mustang for the jackhammer explosiveness and styling wantonness of the Z28. Do I regret getting the Z28 and not the Mustang? Well, seeing that I didn't much care for that 2005 Mustang GT that I had recently, and it being a vast upgrade over the Fox-body "SN-95", suffice to say that as a daily driver, knowing me as well as I do, ultimately I know that I'd have all the same misgivings about it as a daily driver that I had about the Z28. 

I have to respect anyone who drove older pony cars as daily drivers and regardless of what part of the country they're in. Nowadays, Mustang, Camaro and even the Dodge Challenger have rides as supple and compliant as sedans and crossovers but "back-in-the-day", all-practicality aside too, man, those were some kidney smashing, obnoxious cars best taken in small doses. Kind of like that super-hot party girl back in high school. She was so much fun but not someone you'd want to spend a lifetime with. 

Although, like I said in my soliloquy about the day I got rid of my '05 Mustang, never say never. In the right part of the country with the right sized garage, I can't honestly say that I'll never own a 1999-2004 Mustang like this lovely, low-mileage and priced right GT. A 1993-1997 Camaro Z28 as well. Thing is, I won't make the mistake again of thinking either one is a suitable daily driver.