Thread: "Mustang Down" - Long and emotional

I posted this on Supraforums but after rereading it, I figured the lesson I point out at the end may serve as something good to anyone unexpected. Any comments would be appreciated, thanks gentlemen.
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I can already feel the tears starting to build up. Never did I think I would be sitting here needing to type this out, but life throws curve balls and some of them are very ill-timed. The point of me sitting here and typing this all out is not to fish for sympathy, while some may think so anyway. To be totally honest, I don’t know why I feel the need to share this. I may just be needing to get all this off my chest.

My father is the most hard-working man on the face of the planet. I know most people can say the same thing, but my dad’s work ethic is something that I have grown absolutely astonished by in my early manhood years. My dad, Robert, is the supervisor of hematology and coagulation in the Eisenhower Hospital main laboratory here in Rancho Mirage, CA. He has two Master’s degrees. Not only does he work at EMC (as it is abbreviated), he also picks up shifts as a lab technologist at another local hospital, works a day or two on-call at the hospital in Avalon on Catalina Island, evaluates and readies laboratories in doctor’s offices for CAP and other inspections, and takes on additional at-home work maintaining a strict calibration log for the machines at the Eisenhower laboratory. I would say 5-6 days out of the week he works 14 hours each day going from one job 6am-2pm and another from 3pm-9pm. He sometimes mentions how he won’t have a day off for 20-something days and how he just looks forward to that one day he has free and how he wants to do something special as a family.

My father does not own a fancy house, he does not have 3-4 different cars he can decide between in the morning before work, he does not take extravagant vacations with my mom (they are still happily married after 28 years), he works this hard strictly because he wants to provide as much as he possibly can for his three kids and his wife.

One of my earliest memories I have is one hot, summer day my dad took me for a short car ride to go check out “a new car”. I remember parking in front of this man’s house and seeing this black car with a For Sale sign on it and a guy out standing next to it. I remember thinking then, and even for a few years after, that I didn’t understand what it was about the car that my dad liked so much. It wasn’t a NEW car! It was old! And it had no air conditioning! But I could see in my dad’s eyes that this was much more than a car to him. I could tell he had been looking for one of these for a while, and from the look on his face, I think he had found it.

She was a black on black 1967 Ford Mustang Fastback with 44,000 miles on the odometer. Stock 289, 3-speed auto, every single VIN matched, California car for its’ entire life (even had the black license plates), and didn’t have a spot of rust to be found. Of course now, 15 years later, I realize what car my dad and I had gone to see that day, but back then, it was just another old black car to me. She came home with us that day, and since then, my dad has had something to officially call his “pride and joy”. The first thing he did when we got home is ask my 4 year old sister what she wanted to name the car. She said “Pudding” and the name stuck.

Fast forward about ten years and now it’s time for me to buy my dream car, an MKIV Toyota Supra twin turbo. After a few months searching around, I found a mint, unmolested ’94 with low miles owned by an older local guy. The car comes home, space is made in the garage, and the car bonding begins. From then on, my dad and I spent countless hours in the garage working on our cars. I brought up the idea of maybe redoing his interior while I was considering getting my seats reupholstered, and the next thing I know, boxes upon boxes from California Mustang are showing up at our front door. After spending what seemed like months in the garage, my dad finished the redoing the interior of the Mustang and I must say it looked PERFECT. He retained every classic aspect of the car while using newer materials for a more “up-to-date” look. Sitting in that car, you felt like the king of the world.

I guess you could say that I kind of light a fire under my dad when it comes to car projects. Of course the desire for more power was always haunting me with the Supra, and one day I decided it was time to pull the motor, remove the stock twin turbos, and build a bulletproof, 1000+hp 2JZ. As if he had been waiting for me to make the first move, immediately I see invoices for my dad’s Mustang showing up all over the house. The motor would stay a 289, but it was in for a complete rebuild from the ground up, using nothing but the best of the best parts with no expense spared. We removed the motor, working side-by-side through hours desert summer heat with sweat pouring in our eyes and our hands being cut by the machined edge of the heads. It was a bonding experience if there ever was one.

His build was completed about a year ago. Mine is still ongoing, but that’s another story about my indecisiveness and serious case of OCD when it comes to my Supra. Over the past year, my dad has expressed so much dedication to that car. He loves when people ask him about it. His face lights up every time someone asks to take a picture of it. If there was ever anything that my dad called his own and cherished, it was that Mustang. Of course he knows he provides well for his family. My dad knows that the countless hours he spends at all four of his jobs go to support much more than just a car sitting in his garage, but he has told me before (in one of those father-son half-joking sort of ways) that when he opens his garage and sees his beautiful ’67 Fastback sitting there, he thinks to himself that it’s all worth it.

Thursday night around midnight, my brother put the car into a wall at 45mph. He had been driving it on and off while his BMW 3-series was in the shop and his CBR-600 had a tire showing threads. First and foremost, my brother walked out unscathed and didn’t even need to go to the hospital, even though he broke the wooden steering wheel in half with his chin. Who knows what really happened, whether racing was involved or not (of course he says no), but he was making a left through a protected intersection when the car fishtailed right, then left, then right, into the curb, sending the front of the car up into the air and back down onto a wall about three feet high. The call he made to my father was one that I have honestly had nightmares about having to make myself. The police came, my brother was not cited for anything, and the car was towed to the body/paint shop of a family friend who has cared for the car before. I didn’t find out until the next day when my dad sent me a text saying “Mustang down!!!” (my dad’s attempt at cracking a joke to hide the pain he was feeling). I immediately called wondering what was leaking or what the symptoms of (what I thought was) his car problem were, and that’s when he broke the news to me. I got off the phone, called my brother, and spent an hour or so on the phone with him as he sobbed and sobbed, repeating over like a broken record “I just feel so sorry for dad”. I felt the same. I immediately thought of the times we had cruised in it, about that day I went with him to see it for the first time, that first start-up after building his motor, all the times we had walked in the house covered in grease from head to toe while my mom yelled at us to get the hell out… They all seemed like they had just happened yesterday.

At the beginning of this short memoir, I guess you could call it, I said I didn’t know why I felt the need to write all of this, but I might have an idea now. I have no idea what to do. What am I, the oldest sibling, supposed to do in a situation like this? Obviously I have told my dad how sorry I am that this has happened, and I’ve spoken with my brother about how it’s just a car and that the only thing that really matters in this situation is that he walked away just fine. However, I feel as if my role in this ordeal is not complete. I feel the need to do more, way more, than just show my sympathy for what happened. Fortunately, my dad had amazing coverage on the car and even had it appraised and insured for the appraisal value which will serve as a blessing in a situation like this. The insurance company has not inspected the car yet, but the roof is creased so there is obvious frame damage.

In the end, what I really hope is learned from this, is how things can change in the blink of an eye and that racing or driving fast should only happen in the right places AND at the right times. I fear for my brother’s life every time he hops on his CBR-600 and speeds off, and I hope that this serves as a big wake up call for him.

R.I.P. Pudding; 1967-2012

Thanks for sharing. I'm really glad your dad got so much joy from that Mustang before this happened. If I were you I'd bust my ass until i can get him another one later on as a surprise, if he likes that year and model that much. Or maybe you and your brother can save up together, which would bring you guys together rather than push you apart if you buy the car alone and make him feel worse since he wasn't involved. You sounds like close brothers so it sounds like something he can help with/be involved in. Your dad got the car for himself, and that feels good. But if your SONS got something like that for you, that should change it from "it's all worth it" to "it's all way more than worth it."

With that said, I hope your brother manages to stay safe and honesty I hope he stops riding. It's not up to him whether he is safe or not on a bike... it's up to the rest of the world. I stopped riding after a high speed highway run at night on my CBR (nothing bad happened at all. it was a great rush) and I just thought.... wow, that was so stupid to do... I could have died and I don't want to ride anymore...

Thanks again for sharing.

Ian,

Thanks for replying. I do plan on talking with my brother about buying my dad another car. My dad has already made references toward buying the car back from the insurance company and pulling the motor out for another project, but what would really make me happy is to see him in something a step up. He LOVED that Mustang, but only because it was his and he had had it for so long (~16 years). He told me before that his favorite/dream car is the Shelby Cobra (*ahem* Factory Five) and his favorite Mustang model is the '69-'70 Mach 1. I've been doing research and trying to think of ways to make this happen. I have even considered selling my Supra to fund the Cobra project but of course I'm going to try everything to keep from doing that. However, if it comes down to it, I won't have a problem selling my Supra because I'm still a student and have a lot of time left to own a car like the one I do now, while my dad works hard as hell for things like putting me and my brother through school and I think he deserves a Cobra more than I do my Supra. We shall see. We are still waiting to hear from the insurance company. I think a representative is going to meet us some time today.

Patrick

The car can be fixed.
They sell everything for those things.
Buy it back from the insurance co and find a competent shop to get it done.

Definately worth it for the sentimental factor.

Originally Posted by just-bill

The car can be fixed.
They sell everything for those things.
Buy it back from the insurance co and find a competent shop to get it done.

Definately worth it for the sentimental factor.

The frame is probably bent and if we were to fix it, after all that time and money, it would still be stuck with a salvage title. Rebuilt title if we were lucky. I could buy a second-hand Factory Five Cobra for around $40k.

Things will definately be bent.
Any compentent shop can staighten and/or replace the damaged areas.

40k is probably double what the car is worth but you and your family have strong ties to the car.
If you get the car fixed I would imagine that it would be in the family forever so a salvage/rebuilt title is not a big deal.

Will a Factory-Five Cobra "move" your dad like the Mustang? Probably not.

He has been showing more and more interest about building a Cobra over the past year or so, so I thought maybe it'd be a good idea to get the ball rolling. And I think you are underestimating the value of a mint, low mileage, matching VIN, original California fastback. A quick eBay motors search for cars of his caliber net around 30-40k, sometimes even more.