Family Stealth Fighter Convertible

The Year was 2012 and I needed a new car. Having recently sold my daily driver I had bought GMC Sonoma pick-up truck and I hated it. It rode like an ox cart and was incredibly tiny. Of course, I bought it because I thought I would like it but after only a few weeks driving it around I could not take it anymore. The truck was not new by any means, but it was incredibly low mileage and had been sitting in a barn for most of its life. Buying it felt like the deal of the century but considering how much driving I was doing at the time for work on not the smoothest roads in the world it was just not working out.

One of the reasons I bought it in the first place is that I had recently had to buy the family a new car as the old SUV had gone lame and I sold my two trucks to pay for it. The GMC was cheap and in theory would last a long time if it did not kill my back first. I did not have a lot of money to spend on something else but the more I drove the little truck, the more I realized it just was not the one for me. My wife and I were driving through our local town talking over the problem when I saw it. Jet black paint and top it was a convertible 1999 Mustang. I drove by as drool leaked out of the corner of my mouth. My wife knows me incredibly well and seeing my state told me to turn around and go look at it. “No” I responded, “if I like it, I will buy it and I cannot afford it.” She insisted saying “well if you don’t like it then you won’t have to think about it anymore.” This sounded logical so I turned around. My daughter was in school, but we had our son with us that day. So, we took out the car seat from our SUV, put it in the car and put the top down and pulled out of the dealership. I shifted the manual transmission from 1st to 2nd gear and smiled. I looked at my wife and said, “this was a mistake.”

Standing in the parking lot for the second time that day with the little red GMC I stood hoping that it would appraise high enough so that I could afford the Mustang. The dealer made several laps around the little truck writing things down on his notepad. The truck due to its history only had 35,000 miles and the Mustang had 66,000 I knew it was going to be close but everything I had read told me the truck had a higher blue book value than the car. The dealer came back to me scratching his head. “I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “They are worth about the same amount of money, but I cannot just do a swap,” he explained, and I nodded. “I do want the truck though,” he continued turning back to it. He told me that living close to farmland he would have a much easier time selling the truck than the car. Now I had looked very carefully at my finances and I knew that I only had 400 dollars to spend on the car, no more and no less. “So how much do you need me to give you?” I asked tense. He shook his head rubbing his chin. “I don’t know,” he said enough to cover his fees he explained. I reached into my pocket where I had the 400 dollars cash rolled up. “I have cash I can give you for the car,” I said, and his face brightened up. “How much?” he asked unable to contain his curiosity. “I am not going to tell you,” I answered. He looked puzzled but I continued, “if you can guess the amount, I will give it to you and the truck in trade.” The man laughed and looked long and hard at both vehicles. “Three hundred dollars,” he said. I reached carefully in my pocket and separated one bill from the others and pulled three hundred dollars out. We shook hands and after some paperwork I was driving away in the car.

Now for the gear heads out there I must specify that this was not a GT. It came with the standard V6 engine toting 190 bhp and while a lot of true muscle car fans might balk and proclaim it inferior, it turned out to be one of my favorite cars ever. It was still plenty fast, with a 0-60 in under eight seconds. If it had been an automatic, I might would feel differently, but shifting through the five speed made the car infinitely more fun to drive. It was fast enough for the family man stage I found myself in and everyone fit comfortably in it. At the time my kids were still pretty small but even with the car seats there was room for all four of us in a pinch. We would all load up in it and just go cruising all the time and I drove the car everywhere I could. It was just so easy and fun to drive. It rode as smooth as butter and whether the road was curvy or nice and straight it was the perfect car for any drive. Of course, it did not hurt that the car looked great. I love the styling of the 99-2004 Mustang, and it is probably my favorite looking modern version of the car. In black it looked like a stealth fighter with aggressive lines and wide wheel arches. It is not what I would call a very “nostalgic” styling like todays Mustangs, but it gives the car a unique look that still stands up today in my opinion.

At the time I was living over 150 miles north of my parents and my Dad was recovering from cancer surgery and my Aunt was very sick as well. I got a call one evening at 8:00 telling me that I needed to come down that the family was gathering, and my Aunt might not make it through the night. I fired up the little car and for the first time since I owned it, I pushed the car to its limits, and it never missed a step. I arrived in time to be with my family during that critical time in our lives and It is something I am still grateful for today. Another fond memory I have with the car is driving home from a different trip to see my parents and passing through some country backroads. I had the top-down listening to Elton John when suddenly I heard gunshots to my left. I looked over to see a man standing shirtless with a revolver firing it parallel to the road. Less than a mile later I had a flat tire and while the nail in the tire assured me that the two incidents were unrelated it left a humorous impression none the less. But my favorite drive in the car was going back down south with just my wife to a Doctor’s appointment she had. My wife’s family had driven up to watch the kids and it was a rare occasion where we had the car all to ourselves. We drove with the top down south and spent the day just enjoying each other’s company and it felt like we had been transported back to the first few years of our marriage.

I will not go into a lot of details, but that period of our life was difficult. Our marriage was fine, and our kids were great. But we were far from home and the conditions related to my job at the time were abysmal for both of us. Things finally imploded at my job not long after we got back from the trip I mentioned above, and I resigned. We packed up our things and moved back south to be closer to family, specifically my Dad whose cancer had returned and was about to start radiation. Financially it was a difficult time for us, but we managed to make ends meet and I found fulfilling work. But the debt you incur between jobs haunted us and I decided that as much as I loved the car, I had to let it go for my family’s sake. All four of us were heartbroken to see it go and I often catch myself thinking about looking for it, or one like it.

I have driven a lot of cars over the years and several of them have been special because they were powerful or rare. But on the short lists of favorites I have owned this is right up towards the top. It was not perfect, I found out later that the car had a fair bit of rust on the undercarriage and sometimes the traction control would cause one of the brakes to overheat. But the car was there when I needed it and was genuinely fun car to have as a family. Sometimes a car becomes more than just wheels and a means of getting from one place to another. It may not have been much more than a base model Mustang to some, but it was special to me.