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Saturday, December 01, 2012

My Motorhead Buddy Mark Wrote This Story in Today's Tallahassee Democrat



The faithful old gal gets a reprieve

A 5.0 Mustang still favored over Fiat, Viper


T
he sexy Italian tried to seduce me. Others did their best to catch my eye.

Oh, I was tempted. After all, I’m not getting any younger, and to be honest, neither is she.

But in the end, I’ve decided to keep the old gal.


Naturally, I’m talking about cars.

What?

Back in 1999, I was handing my trusty old Honda Civic off to my son and looking in the used-car ads for a suitable replace­ment. I had a couple of small, sporty for­eign models in mind when my eyes set­tled on something I hadn’t thought of.

“How about a 5­point-oh Mustang?” I said to my wife. Her eyebrows may have arched a bit.

Still not sure whether I was seri­ous, we went out and drove it, and soon after I was the proud owner of a 6-year-old, used and abused Flori­da Highway Patrol car, complete with a number on the roof, a tan top and trunk, and a spotlight.

I yanked the spotlight (too many drivers were slowing down when I pulled up behind them), had the car painted black, and dubbed it my midlife-crisis-mobile.

For 13 years, I have driven it to the office, raced it and learned to work on it, while collecting surpris­ingly few tickets. (Next to my name, under the category “likely to be,”
 my high-school yearbook says “speeding.”) My gas mileage is ter­rible, the brakes are primitive and driving in the rain is an adventure.

But there’s no denying that it’s a fun car.

Still, with over 150,000 miles, she’s been showing her age. Anti­freeze, motor oil, power-steering fluid and transmission fluid were spotting my carport floor, the rear window leaked, and the cheap paint
 job was faded and cracked.

Road & Travel
 magazine reported on a survey by BIGresearch, exam­ining why people get new cars. It didn’t look good for the old Mustang. The top reasons, in order, were: lots of miles, wanted something new, always in for repairs and wanted better gas mileage. Others included better safety features, more room and new “techy toys.”

My search started with the Maz­da Miata. It’s modern, it sips gas, and it’s perfect for my short com­mute and weekend racing. That search ended quickly with a phone call from my wife. “I just saw a Miata,” she reported. “A
 woman got into it. It has a whiny engine. It has skinny tires. You’d hate it!”

The car that really tempted me was the tiny Fiat 500 Abarth. Have you seen the commercial in which the Abarth and a sexy Italian woman are one and the same? (http://bit.ly/ sZOnlb) A recent review in
 Road & Track listed all the car’s faults — bad steering, twitchy handling, harsh ride, etc. — before the writer ad­mitted, “You can’t wipe the smile off your face after driving it.”

My daughter-in-law’s brother has
 two very cool cars that I lusted after — a Viper (wow, but way too expen­sive) and, at the opposite end of the spectrum, an all-electric Nissan Leaf (very cool, but I can’t race it).

The new Mustangs are incredible, with more than 400 horsepower and all the new stuff like antilock brakes, traction control and stability control, whatever that is.

I walked out to the carport for a heart-to-heart with the old girl. The little problems? They can be fixed.

The gas guzzling? I live only 4 miles from work, so I rationalize that I use less gas commuting than somebody with a Prius living in Killearn Lakes. Is she still fun? Oh yeah. And she’s paid for.

So I had an actual mechanic fix the leaks. And just the other day, I took her in for a new paint job. It’ll cost more than the car is worth, but a friend who also races (and who, not coincidentally, has a 5.0 Mus­tang) said that I wasn’t crazy, and that sometimes the utility outweighs financial reality — a phrase he picked up in college economics.

Plus, if I got rid of the Mustang, I’d have to get rid of the Mustang posters, the caps, the T-shirts, the scale models and even the Mustang postage stamp stuck to my comput­er at work.

In the end, the old car gives me all I need — a way to get to work every day, something I can race, and something with a bit of character.

All she needed was a little love.


Contact Mark Hohmeister at  or (850) 599-2330. Or follow him on .

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