Cool Spot!

The 80's and 90's were a time of excess and colorful marketing. Seven up was no exception and the soft drink company invented the mascot cool spot. A living representation of the red dot on the can there was a time where he was literally everywhere. Video games, commercials and bill boards he was as unescapable as the California raisins and the Noid. But one place you may not have expected to find him was in your sports car. Yet that is what almost happened in 1990.

In 1990 Ford partnered with the 7Up company to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the iconic sports car with a splash. The Fox Body car would receive a special edition pain job, 7Up green, and convertible top. The cherry on top, the 5.0 logo's dot would be red. 7Up special ordered only 30 cars to give away as prizes during the NCAA finals, but it never happened. The canceled competition left Ford with a problem. Ford needed to re-coop the cost of developing the special car. So in an unprecedented move Ford put the car into production building and selling about five to sixth thousand units.

The car came with the aforementioned green paint and white top and interior. The standard 5 liter V8 was also included although the car was not branded a GT but and LX. The car is full of strange little touches like that all pointing back to its very odd roots. I personally just sold mine which had a manual five speed and a clutch that would not seem out of place in a fifty year old truck. I tried to replace the clutch ford with only minimal improvement. This made my version a bit of a chore to drive and lets not forget to mention the rattling. People who are not used to the foibles of old cars often climb into a classic or semi-classic in this case and are appalled by how much noise they make particularly old convertibles.

But none of that really matters when you are driving it. It is far from the fastest car Ford has ever built but it feels through and through like a muscle car. It is hard not to rev the engine at every red light and leave a little rubber on the road almost every-time you drive. It is an odd throwback to a time when cars were slowly recovering their spunk and learning how to live with the admission restrictions of the 70's and 80's and still feel like a proper sports car. The car always got a lot of looks and questions every-time I drove it and on a semi regular bases people offered to take it off my hands. With the pressures of a global pandemic and other projects I value personally more I finally gave in and let the old girl go.

If I am completely honest its was because while my kids loved it my wife refused to ride in it referring to it as the Frog. She obviously does not agree with my assessment of its beauty being timeless. Many people would probably categorize it as an acquired taste though. Picked up from decades of dreaming about owning one. Well now I have owned one and lived with it for a few years, so how did it hold up. Well I am going to miss the old car in the garage. But I have to say if I ever own another old Fox Body, it will probably be a hard top.