80s Mustang GT -original post date 4/4/2013
Check out this
1983 Ford Mustang GT spotted in the parking lot of an Autozone I
stopped at to pick up a new air filter for my own Mustang.
Clearly, this is somebody's project, and given that the interior of this car was pretty well gutted but for the front seats, and the lack of any plates or registration info displayed on the car, I'm thinking this pony will soon be hitting the track as a home-made race car.
While the front, back, and interior of this car are 1983, that side glass just behind the doors is not. It appears they swapped out the smaller glass and surrounding panel that was originally there for glass from what was probably a 1990 model. As pieced together as this FrankenStang is, there are likely other bits and pieces from similar model years mixed in too.
This era of Mustang styling (1979-1993) is referred to as "Fox" body, and is the 3rd generation of Mustang. In contrast, the car parked behind it in the picture (mine) is a 5th generation Mustang, and it is built on the D2C platform -which doesn't sound as cool as "fox", but has some meaning. The "D" represents the vehicle class, "2" is the # of doors, and "C" is for coupe. It's a bit redundant, I know, because a coupe is by definition a 2 door car with a fixed roof.
I don't know what this car has under its hood now (I assume it's not the original engine, or at least that the engine has had performance modifications for racing) but originally, this car had a 5.0 V8... the 1980's version of it, so it's not rated for 420hp like the new coyote engine. The 80's 5.0 produced 175hp and unlike pretty much every car nowadays that has fuel injection (which spritzes the right amount of fuel into the combustion chambers for more efficiency and better performance -a big enough deal that, if you'll recall a post from a few days ago, BMW thought warranted the inclusion of an "i" in the name badge on its cars to brag about it -this 5.0 came with a four-barrel Holley (brand) carburetor. Carburetors mix what's hopefully the correct ratio of gas and air together (they often need adjustment and tweaking, I've found), and work by using the vacuum created in the cylinders on the downstroke to inhale the mix into the combustion chamber so the spark plug can ignite it.
Less performance oriented cars would have just had a 2 barrel carburetor, so this one having a 4 barrel is kinda like having an extra set of nostrils to breathe with. Some cars will even have what you'll hear people refer to as a " 6-pack", which consists is 3 two-barrel carburetors working together.
Back in '83, this car probably had a sticker price of around $10,000.
This work in progress makes me nostalgic for my high school days when I worked at Merle Hay Mall, and after closing, a bunch of the guys I worked with would gather in the back parking lot and race their fox body 5.0's. Those guys dumped pretty much every paycheck into upgrading their 'stangs. It was a labor of love, and a hell of a lot of fun. Sometimes, my coworkers and I would go up on the roof of the mall using the hatch access in the food court to watch the mayhem and keep an eye out for mall security. This nostalgia is why, even though a lot of people will say they don't like the look of the fox body Mustangs, they hold a special place in my heart.
Clearly, this is somebody's project, and given that the interior of this car was pretty well gutted but for the front seats, and the lack of any plates or registration info displayed on the car, I'm thinking this pony will soon be hitting the track as a home-made race car.
While the front, back, and interior of this car are 1983, that side glass just behind the doors is not. It appears they swapped out the smaller glass and surrounding panel that was originally there for glass from what was probably a 1990 model. As pieced together as this FrankenStang is, there are likely other bits and pieces from similar model years mixed in too.
This era of Mustang styling (1979-1993) is referred to as "Fox" body, and is the 3rd generation of Mustang. In contrast, the car parked behind it in the picture (mine) is a 5th generation Mustang, and it is built on the D2C platform -which doesn't sound as cool as "fox", but has some meaning. The "D" represents the vehicle class, "2" is the # of doors, and "C" is for coupe. It's a bit redundant, I know, because a coupe is by definition a 2 door car with a fixed roof.
I don't know what this car has under its hood now (I assume it's not the original engine, or at least that the engine has had performance modifications for racing) but originally, this car had a 5.0 V8... the 1980's version of it, so it's not rated for 420hp like the new coyote engine. The 80's 5.0 produced 175hp and unlike pretty much every car nowadays that has fuel injection (which spritzes the right amount of fuel into the combustion chambers for more efficiency and better performance -a big enough deal that, if you'll recall a post from a few days ago, BMW thought warranted the inclusion of an "i" in the name badge on its cars to brag about it -this 5.0 came with a four-barrel Holley (brand) carburetor. Carburetors mix what's hopefully the correct ratio of gas and air together (they often need adjustment and tweaking, I've found), and work by using the vacuum created in the cylinders on the downstroke to inhale the mix into the combustion chamber so the spark plug can ignite it.
Less performance oriented cars would have just had a 2 barrel carburetor, so this one having a 4 barrel is kinda like having an extra set of nostrils to breathe with. Some cars will even have what you'll hear people refer to as a " 6-pack", which consists is 3 two-barrel carburetors working together.
Back in '83, this car probably had a sticker price of around $10,000.
This work in progress makes me nostalgic for my high school days when I worked at Merle Hay Mall, and after closing, a bunch of the guys I worked with would gather in the back parking lot and race their fox body 5.0's. Those guys dumped pretty much every paycheck into upgrading their 'stangs. It was a labor of love, and a hell of a lot of fun. Sometimes, my coworkers and I would go up on the roof of the mall using the hatch access in the food court to watch the mayhem and keep an eye out for mall security. This nostalgia is why, even though a lot of people will say they don't like the look of the fox body Mustangs, they hold a special place in my heart.
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