That CRX was the talk of the neighborhood and no one believed it was my dad's friend that owns it. That should give you a picture of the car scene in Lithuania around 1995. Most cars were Ladas, crappy Russian cars that you could fix solely with zipties, causing them to actually run for a long time.
This is a Lada Riva (I think but who really cares?).
It's a landscape dotted with 1970s and 1980s cars, German and French mainly, with some newer ones thrown in. We had Peugeot (of which I still can't pronounce the name), Alfa Romeo that no one bought because they broke down, then we had the aforementioned Ladas for most people and then the few people with money might have had an older BMW or Mercedes.
A car enthusiast at 8 years old, loving Michael Schumacher in Formula 1, I was taken from a drab, gray city to New York. The culture shock was enough but the cars floored me.
I had never seen a Miata in person. I remember yelling at my dad to "Look!" We would walk around and just look at cars at dealerships. My first favorite car was the Lincoln Town Car. I swore I would have one but the looks surely didn't last... It doesn't look as good as it did back then.
Besides the trucks of which we have none in Lithuania (maybe 1% of vehicles), something else that didn't really exist was fast cars. Sure, we had Volgas (another Russian car; I like that one) with big, slow V8s. That was the luxury car.
It's a crap car, once again, but there's something about it that makes me want one.
This GAZ Volga was the generation before and some models came with a V12! And no, you do NOT want one (I do...).
As a kid and to this day, I thought the model right above was amazing looking.
You might be wondering why I'm telling you all this and not a dang thing about the Mustang. There's a reason. I realized that some of you may be wondering who I am.
Just give me the money and I won't kill you.
Fast forward some time later. I was enamored with the Lincoln for so long that I didn't even care about cars like the Mustang. I guess my perfect car is a luxury car - it's always been what I wanted. To tell you the truth, I started admiring the 3rd generation Mustang early but I didn't realize how awesome it was until my friend bought one.
Now, these cars never came with more than 200hp stock which was really weird to me because Dan the Man, my friend, would spin the tires every time he got the chance. It was stock and it was fast. Then again, sometimes it's not the horsepower. Actually horsepower doesn't mean crap if your car can't handle it.
There's basically two performance versions. Enthusiasts divide the Foxbody Mustang into two groups. Ones made from 1979 to 1982 and cars made after that until the Foxbody was replaced after 1986. Here's a fun fact. Ford was going to make the Mustang front wheel drive after this.
God Himself must have slapped some sense into them so they continued making them rear wheel drive and made the Ford Probe their front wheel drive sports car. Remember that hunk of s&#$? Barely, right?
Back to what I was talking about. Before 1983, the Mustang only managed to get 140hp out of their V8 which they called a 5.0 but was like 4.9l. The other "fast" one was the 4-cylinder turbo which came in at a whopping 132hp. 1983 and later on, I think some trim levels hit 200hp.
Those lines... So beautiful.
I can't hate on them too hard. This was when the government put into place much stricter emmisions testing, robbing cars of power until we figured out how to make catalytic converters that don't do that. At the same time, it's not hard to get more horsepower out of either model I mentioned. It will even take an LS1 if you're up for a swap.
The Foxbody Mustang, called that because of the Fox platform that Ford built to fit both smaller sports cars and larger economy cars to save money, is a missed opportunity because for under $3,000, you can buy a rolling chassis and that's about it. Should've picked one up when it was $1,000! Same thing with Miatas.
Hope you guys enjoyed today's article and I urge you to comment and let me know what kind of content you want to see. Take it easy, have a good day, and work on that car!
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