RagTop
Old Grumpy
I recorded an episode of Classic Car Rescue that just said it was about the Mustang. I figured I might learn something. The show is on Velocity TV. It features a Canadian vintage car dealer named Mario Pacione and a Brit named Bernie Fineman (an old British name). Anyway, the shows usually come down to Mario taking a flyer on a heap and Bernie going ballistic in a Cockney accent. All very funny. They look at a pile of rust 68 coupe that the owner is asking $5K for. They offer $2K, which was a gross mistake, and the guy hangs tough at $5K. No deal. So Mario goes out on his own and finds a 69 convertible in kit form. The car is in boxes scattered all over the owner's garage and is almost as big a hunk of oxide as the 67 they looked at earlier. It's just harder to tell since the car is in a million pieces. The owner is asking $6K for the vert and Mario, the cunning professional, talks him down to $5K. Did I mention that there is a ball of rust posing as a 351W on a separate skid? He drags this heap to the shop and Bernie goes nuts. The car's rocker rails, which are the source of most of a Mustang convertible's physical integrity, are so rotten he can pass his hand into them without turning it sideways. Good thing the car was on a trailer or it would have probably collapsed on it's wheels. The ball of rust 351W, not the original engine, turns out to be frozen solid. The tranny is trash too. No worries. They go back to the guy with the 68 coupe and buy the 302 and C4 from that car from him. These guys have a crew that welds in patches on almost every part of the body pan, sub frames, rocker rails, lower quarter panels, etc. using virgin sheet metal. No repops for these brave souls. Also, no jigs to keep the chassis aligned. They decide to test fit the windshield after all the welding on the theory that, if it fits the whole car must be straight. The windshield fits alright, but Mario drops the thing taking it off the car. No worries. They buzz over to a wrecker and take the windshield from a 69 coupe. Nobody mentions that the 69 Mustangs had three different windshields and that the coupe wouldn't fit a convertible or a fastback. Miraculously their windshield does fit. Hmmm. They take the reassembled vert with the standard interior and the deluxe rim blow steering wheel and paint it "an authentic Mustang color", Grabber Blue, a 1970 color. The sequence is hilarious when the car emerges from the spray booth with all the chrome and stainless trim on it, like Athena emerging from the womb in full armor. Who knows, maybe they always paint them that way in Canada. They slap a new standard black interior kit in the car, a new roof, and stick some American Mags on it and call for the appraiser to give them a value for the beast. Mario said the "restored" car would be worth $35K at the beginning of the show. The appraiser gives the car a thorough going over and notes that the passenger door sticks out about a half inch from the rear quarter when closed and that the bonnet (hood to us Yanks) bows in the middle a similar half inch above the fender on the same side. Maybe it was the Boss 302 stripe kit or the fastback spoiler they mounted on the trunk lid, but the appraiser concludes that the 69 vert is now worth a cool $29K. Far be it from me to denigrate a 69 convertible, but I would really like to see them try to sell that thing for that much. My 69 vert is a numbers matching car painted the actual color it came out of the factory with and I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't be able to find a buyer (pronounced sucker) to buy it for $29K in the present market. I can't tell you how disappointed I was in that show. Now I can never watch it again because I know how fast and loose they play with the facts.
