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Collector has tamed her unpredictable Mustangs piece by piece
Photo by Joe Gemignani
Priscilla Whitney talks about her two restored cars with great affection and humor, as if they were a pair of difficult but lovable children who’ve been taught to dress properly and behave. She adopted the first one, a 1966 Mustang, after spotting it four years ago in the parking lot of a restaurant in Arden. (Whitney moved to Hendersonville a decade back when she retired from her job with the Connecticut Department of Agriculture.)
“Just sitting there, it looked like it was in pretty good shape, so I went in and asked about it; it was owned by one of the restaurant’s servers,” she recalls. A deal was struck, and it was hers.
“Then I found out pretty much everything in it was shot.”
For starters, the steering was so stiff that it took Whitney and a friend both gripping the wheel to turn it enough to get the car out of its space. “After that, on the way home, it was OK if I didn’t have to make any big turns,” she says with a laugh.
But that experience did nothing to dampen her spirit — in fact, Whitney, a sprightly, trim woman with a cap of silver hair, added another Mustang to her two-car garage: she’s had to exile her everyday car, a Toyota SUV, to a carport she attached to her house. Joining the 1966 model, today painted a serene shade called “Phoenician Yellow,” is a lustrous, deep-burgundy 1968, discovered at a car show at Lake Lure last fall. Although the ‘68 was in much better shape than its older sibling, both have had extensive engine work and now sport 302-horsepower V-8s. Happily for Whitney after her initial experience getting it home, the ‘66 now has power steering, available only as an option when Ford produced the car. “You try and recapture the original spirit of the car, and then add your personal touches,” she comments.
The iconic Mustang, with its signature elongated oval of a grill and the galloping equine medallion at its center, was the original “pony car” — the name Detroit gave to a new, lithe body style with a long hood and a truncated rear deck marketed as a sports car for the middle class. It was later joined by similar models in GM’s Camaro and Cougar, and in Chrysler’s Plymouth Barracuda.
The Mustang, which entered showrooms starting in late 1964, is the third oldest Ford nameplate in continuous production, after the company’s F-series pickup trucks and the Ford Falcon, on which the Mustang was originally based. It was the most successful new launch in Ford’s history since the Model A.
Mustang enthusiasts like to debate the origin of the name, which may have been suggested by Ford’s head stylist of the time, who was an admirer of the P-51 Mustang fighter he flew in World War II. Or it may have come from a Ford market researcher and quarter-horse breeder whose favorite book bore the title The Mustangs. The prototype was a two-seater, but Ford executives remembered the poor reception given its first two-seater Thunderbird back in 1955, and redesigned the prototype with a full bench seat in back.
Whitney’s Mustangs, separated by only two model years, are nearly identical in body style. The younger 1968 is perhaps a bit more sleek, with more subtle body trim and with longer tail lights that extend below the trunk line. It’s also a convertible, while the 1966 version has a black vinyl hard top.
“I always wanted a convertible,” says Whitney, “and when I went to the show in Lake Lure I kept whining at everybody that there weren’t any, until somebody pointed out this one way off in the middle of a field.” It had fewer quirks than the ‘66, notwithstanding a mysterious short circuit that blew fuses whenever she tried to activate the mechanism that lowered the convertible top. (The problem was solved with a circuit breaker, a junction block and ground wire.)
The ‘66 was the greater challenge, taking two years to bring back to life. “Just about everything had to be replaced,” says Whitney. The interior was completely redone in the spirit of the original black pony style, including the signature Mustang embossed on the vinyl seats. “And for the longest time the horn would either blow continuously or wouldn’t work at all,” reveals Whitney. “All you had to do was turn the wheel a certain way, and the horn would go off.” The local restorer Whitney works with traced the problem to some tricky wiring where the steering column joins the underside of the dashboard.
But she’s done some of the more routine engine work herself, a legacy of her time spent on a 41-foot, twin-engine boat she and her late husband once owned. “He was a very tall man, and just couldn’t fit in the little engine compartment, so I got the job,” she says, showing off a shiny black mechanic’s tool cabinet she recently purchased, filled with the ephemera of the trade.
Connecting with her fellow members of the Hendersonville Antique Car Club, the hobby provides her with a social outlet. However, “I’m not really interested in winning trophies at shows or anything like that,” says Whitney, lovingly patting the ‘68’s fender. “It’s just the thrill of it.”
To learn more about the Hendersonville Antique Car Club, visit hendersonvilleantiquecarclub.org.
