What’s a Chevy Guy Like You Doing In A Ford Place Like This?

“I always do whatever comes next….no matter how difficult it is!”

When talking with other slot-heads about racing and collecting these cars, one question that often arises is, “So which one is your favorite?” Most collectors will understand both the naturalness of asking that question, and the futility of trying to answer it! With over 200 Ultra G’s, all of which I have custom-built to differing degrees-and over 200 original Aurora T-Jets, how am I to choose?

But, actually, I can answer the question. And I have before. There is one car that I can call out as “my favorite,” and in doing so, I’m making my dear-departed friend and mentor Ken Leib scowl down from heaven. Ken taght me almost everything I know about wrenching on old cars. He passed away of a sudden massive heart attack in October of 2003…at the age that I am right now. A sobering thought.

Ken and I met at a company we both once worked at together due to a bond we shared: a passion for vintage GM brands, and especially Chevrolets. I’ve been a “Chevy man” since my teens, and I’ve made no bones about that on this blog. Out of a fleet of 1:1 scale classic cars I once owned, my ‘56 Chevy 210 is the only one I still have, the one I couldn’t give up. It would make Ken turn in his grave to hear that, at scale, my favorite slot car is not a Chevy, not even a GM, but a Ford!

And why? It’s because, when it comes to muscle cars, there is one car that I love more than any other! I love Chevelles and Malibus, I love Cutlasses and Skylarks, I love Chargers and Roadrunners and Super Bees and Barracudas and Challengers too…but the Ford Mustang fastback has always been that one American icon of the ‘60s that has most appealed to me! As much as I love Camaros and Firebirds-and for that matter, AMC Javelins too-if were given a choice of pony cars to own, it would be a Mustang: virtually any model from 1964.5 through 1970, as long as it was a fastback!

If you wonder why, look no further than the way the car looks! I certainly don’t think the Mustang was a better car than the competition; on the contrary, they are likely worse; the drive trains and the build quality of the Camaros and Firebirds was superior, and the Chryslers, likewise, were more impressive in their drivetrains, power offerings, and what they could do on the street and on the track. But the Mustang is just beautiful! Its an incredibly appealing car in every detail, from the shape to the interior design to the little elaborate details in every part to the way they feel to sit in and drive: there’s just something special about them that no other Ford-and few other cars of any brand-have!

Hey, maybe it’s all just nostalgia again because I loved these cars as a young child; when I was a teenager in high school you could buy a Mustang notchback coupe in good running condition for under $2000 and a fastback was a little more, and the school parking lot was full of them! Here is a promo video for a Drag City muscle car event I originally posted over 4 years ago in April of 2021, and here is the post proving that the first Road Race Replicas Mustang Fastback I ever bought-the one in Honey Gold-is my car! It’s the one that I race at Drag City under my own name, and as you can see in said post, I’ve done rather well with it!

The gold body you see here was the first of the now nearly dozen RRR Mustang bodies I bought, and since this was right @ the beginning of my slotting hobby and I was still learning things, I brutalilzed it pretty badly trying to figure out how to get it to fit onto an Autoworld Ultra G chassis. I stripped out the screw posts because I took it apart and put it back together probably 100 times trying to get everything to work without altering the appearance of the car; this was the car I learned on, and the lessons I learned on it were applied to half a dozen subsequent RRR Mustang bodies that would later join my collection, including the beautiful “Tropical Tuquoise” model that is now so valuable that I retired it from racing last year out of fear of damaging it.

I bought this gold one because by the time I found out about the existence of these cars, all the most desirable colors were already sold out, leaving only 2 or 3 still available. While I realize the “Honey Gold” isn’t everyone’s favorite color, I happen to be extremely fond of it, on the real car as well as the toy, and I think it looks especially good with either “Parchment” or red interior.

The latter is how “Golden Dawn” is configured: a completely stock red “Pony” interior complete with a console for the 4-speed. She’s be built for racing so the 289 is over-bored to a larger than stock capacity. She’s still no Chevy, and certainly isn’t the highest-horsepower car in the Drag City fleet, but with all the upgrades and with my ever-improving driving skills, she’s often a winner, usually in the top echelons of any tournaments she enters.

Any tournaments we enter, that is! Sometimes if she’s been tuned to the hilt and is particularly high strung, I won’t even drive her to the track, I’ll tow her there hitched to the back of my ‘56 “Hot One!” Oh, the indignity! Hey, it least it gives me something reliable to tow with!

It’s ironic that of all the cars that have passed through my hands over the years, a Mustang fastback was never amongst them. It makes sense, looking back on it, since I didn’t have the kinds of connections for parts and expertise for Fords the way I did for for Chevys, and also because my buddy Ken would never have allowed me to hear the end of it! (that said, I did own a ’63 Lincoln for a few years!) Now, like with everything else in life, from education to real estate to relationships, I’ve waited too long, and probably will never have a real one. It’s possible, sure, but prices on everything are so high now that I doubt it. That’s part of why I have the toys: it allows me to have to the beauty and the fun without the expense and the headaches! And damn, the toys are fun! So c’mon fellow racers, put your best up against me and Golden Dawn at Drag City! I’ll see you all off one by one…even give you Chevy guys a run for the money! How ‘bout it???