The fifty-six-year-old car
05/22/2024
"Year-old car condition" is generally one of those words that are carelessly used when describing the condition of a used car. This is because the total mileage usually exceeds the distance that can be covered in a year many times over. But every now and then they appear on the open market: those barely driven time capsules whose only difference to a genuine year-old car is that not just one year has passed since delivery - but sometimes more than fifty.
Like this 1968 Ford Mustang, which rolled off the production line at the Ford plant in San José almost exactly 56 years ago - and still hasn't even accumulated enough kilometers for its first major inspection. Ford recommended this after 15,000 miles (24,140 km). However, the counter in the speedometer is only at 12,016 miles (19,337 km) - which gives an annual mileage of just 214.6 miles (345 km).
Instead of asking ourselves why the new car buyer has driven her Mustang so little in the 34 years of her first ownership, we prefer to marvel at the condition of this not-so-mobile automobile. It is both impressive and frightening at the same time.
On the one hand, it is as close to new as it can be after more than half a century: Splashes of color, checkpoints and letter-number abbreviations are still, without exception, where an assembly line worker once slapped them down listlessly. On the other hand, it mercilessly shows the low US manufacturing standards of those years that have not yet been optimized by a dedicated amateur restorer: welding rod that has not been removed and painted over, tire remnants as exhaust brackets and a paint splatter on the left sill that not even the worst bodger would accept as halfway acceptable.
The 1968 Ford Mustang shown here in "Lime Gold" is currently being auctioned on bringatrailer.com. And you really should bring a trailer, because with every additional kilometer, the yellow-green coupé would become a bit more like an ordinary used car. On the other hand, you would probably never again come so close to the feeling of driving off the lot of the Ford dealer in 1969 in a year-old car.
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