They say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Of course that was NEVER going to apply to me and my nerdy, car-clueless Father. He drove boxy Detroit stripper sedans. I drove VW’s and Peugeots. He’s a world-renowned neurologist– but totally impractical. I never finished high school– but rebuild cars. I grew-up in the time when political pundits pronounced our cultural chasm a “generation gap.” Except ours was more like the Grand Canyon. Or so I thought…
In 1978, the Old Man bought a bare-bones Zephyr. No, not the famous Lincoln Zephyr; a Mercury Zephyr. The two-door corporate cousin to the Ford Fairmount “sported” a frugal four cylinder engine mated to a four-speed stick, sitting on Ford’s “ride engineered” suspension package. We made fun of Dad’s nerd-mobile behind his back, with visions of cooler wheels floating in our heads.
In 1983, I bought a Thunderbird Turbo-Coupe. My ninth generation “Aero Bird” boasted a turbocharged 2.3-liter four-cylinder engine, a five-speed manual, a “Traction-Lok” limited-slip differential, a sporty interior and bigger wheels and tires than lesser iterations.
The next time I visited the folks, I borrowed Dad’s Zephyr for an errand. As soon as I sat down in the driver’s seat and closed the door, genetics’ painful reality crashed my consciousness. Esentially, I was sitting in the same car as my Turbo Coupe.
It was like that OMG moment when you first say something or make a gesture that totally channels one of your parents. The seat, steering wheel, pedals, dash and stick were all exactly in the same place. Even the Zephyr’s feeble 88hp Pinto engine was scarily familiar. Not only was it the same basic engine, but it felt and sounded like it too (at least until my T-bird’s turbo finally spooled up).
You can run, but you can’t hide from a Ford Fox-body, the most versatile, evergreen and successful platform ever conceived in Detroit.
If my Dad had been a cop, he would have been driving a black-and-white (Fox-body) LTD II sedan. Had he gone into private practice, he probably would have been behind the wheel of a Fox-body Lincoln MK VII LSC coupe. If he’d left my mother in a mid-life crisis, he would have ignored his incipient mortality in a Foxy red Mustang GT rag-top.
More improbably, if Dad had given up academia to become a coke dealer in downtown Baltimore, he would have been doing so out of a pimped-out (Fox-body) Continental Givenchy sedan with gold-plated grille and wire wheels.
If he’d been a little less self-conscious than this son, but equally car-crazed, he would have gotten past the mullet image of the Mustang and bought an SVO, the most technologically advanced, best-handling American car in 1984.
Finally, if Dad had been what I most would have liked him to be, the CEO of Ford, he would have been flinging a carefully prepped Fox-bodied LX 5.0 sedan around the race course at Bob Bondurant’s driving school. Just like CEO Donald Peterson, the daddy of the Fox platform.
Why the endless permutations of the same platform? In the seventies, Ford desperately needed a new compact platform. But in those lean years, The Blue Oval Boys didn’t have the big bucks they needed to develop all-new front wheel-drive powertrains. So rear wheel-drive it was.
For pistonheads, Ford’s “loss” was a blessing in disguise. Overseen by Peterson, utilizing computer-aided design (CAD) for the first time, Ford’s development team created a light but strong and eminently flexible platform. The modified strut front suspension left room for V8s. The rack and pinion steering was precise. And the four-link rear axle was a big step up from the leaf-spring Falcon chassis the Fox replaced.
In 1978, the clones Fairmont and Zephyr came first: boxy but light, a bit boring but tossable, honest and ruggedly simple– an American Volvo 240. But it was the next year’s new Mustang established the Fox’ legendary legacy.
Ford developed the Fox platform for over twenty-five unbroken years, right through the 2004 model year Mustangs. The Fox ‘Stang and its mechanical kin offer today’s enthusiasts a cornucopia of junk-yard parts interchangeability and after-market performance parts availability. An entire industry has grown-up around them; they’ve completely overshadowed their spiritual predecessors, the tri-five Chevys.
Foxes are nothing less than a reincarnation of Fords from the classic flathead era, when swapping Model T frame rails to ’39 taillights– and everything in between– ushered in the hot-rod era.
DNA trumps all. I’ve had to accept that in addition to our Foxes, I share some traits with my father. Turns out we both write, but the results are even more divergent than the $3600 econo-box Fox-based Fairmont and the world-class Foxy $32k Mark VII LSC. Dad’s 1250-page “Electroencephalography” sits on every neurologist’s bookshelf. My modest stories have all of 800 words. And no, the parts don’t interchange.
Hello!!
Somehow I dont share your enthusiasm for the Fox chassis. I had the ’79 Mustang Turbo TRX 3-Door Hatch.
Maybe it was the turbocharger that ate itself in the Smokey Mountains, giving credence to the name.
Or was it the special-sized Michelin TRX tires that were made of unobtanium?
That 2.3 was as rough as a cob, the same paint-shaker as the 2.3 in my mother’s ’74 Mustang II.
Could have been the clutch that would periodically stick, killing the synchros in the 4-speed which should have been a 5-speed.
A carbureted turbo engine that gave 17 mpg around town, but would go 30s on a long highway run.If you didnt have to work on the carb every month.
No headrests on the short seatbacks kept the long drives to a minimum anyway.
Sold the Mustang to buy a Maxima GL 5-speed as the family grew. Think 280Z in a 4-door sedan body. I had a chance to drove the Mustang 2 months after I sold it and could believe how primitive, noisy, coarse and generally crummy that car was by comparison.
But it sure was a looker when I bought it…
Hmmm the Xb is also a boxy simple 4 cylinder car. You probably find yourself becoming more and more like your father, just like I do.
Paul, writing to you is almost like having a conversation with the only (semi)-honest fellow who is debating about running for President.
You should write that damn book. Virtually every boomer to Gen X car nut would be interested in it.
As far as the Fox chassis… boy do I have stories. From my dad buying the last year Mark VII (market price on that one was 22k) and having it work flawlessly through the Manhattan commutes for over a decade (give or take a couple of suspension balloons, a/c compressors, and near episodes of road rage) to driving a 2004 Mustang off to my first auto auction in Pennsylvania… and getting pulled over three times.
One of the girls I had a crush on in high school had a dad who drove a Fairmount. I had a few unique experiences with that car as well but alas, those moments involved her younger and more promiscuous cousin whose name was Faith. She ended up teaching me a new religion ;)
I remember her cousin telling me, “Sarah told me that between you and me, you’re getting the better one.” Sarah got knocked up in high school and had a shotgun wedding with a man who was many, many years older. When Faith started hinting at marriage (at 17!), my 18 year old self decided to go on a permanent vacation. I broke up using some well chosen Frank Zappa lyrics and headed off to a sleepaway camp in upstate New York.
It was like that OMG moment when you first say something or make a gesture that totally channels one of your parents.
I had that exact same feeling when I got my 97 Yukon and sat in the driver’s seat the first time.
My Dad is a big chevy truck fan. He has always owned some variation of a Chevy light ruck. There were other assorted vehicles, most of them Chevy’s, but the truck was always there.
Poppa was a research engineer working on factory robots for Ford at the time and qualified for an “Executive lease car”, but like your Poppa, he was not much of a gearhead or thought much about cars at all, and I was permitted to fill out the order form for that year’s lease car.
I speced out a Mercury Zephyr with that famous Pinto 2.3l mated to a three-speed slush box. I was a young environmentally-minded hot head who believe all the propaganda that we were going to run out of oil, and hey, maybe I still am, but my current ride has 24 valves.
I flew home from college for Christmas to Detroit Metro, my parents let me drive for the trip home, and I can still remember driving it on that tight spiral off ramp from the Edsel Ford Freeway (OK, I-94, but that’s really the official name) on to northbound Telegraph Road. That 2.3l wound up nicely and gave out a muffled drag race roar, only the car didn’t seem to go anywhere while traffic was barreling down the lane I was merging into.
Momma drove it to Chicago and it broke down for some reason (OK, what else is new?) and told the tale of standing in line of a service counter at a Lincoln-Mercury dealer, meekly thinking of her petite self with that tiny Zephyr among all of these big grumpy guys who had to bring big Lincolns in for repairs, thinking of how she was going to have to explain that she wasn’t driving a big Lincoln because her environmentally-conscious son got her that car.
My wise-cracking younger brother chimes in “Yeah, you should have remarked that since Paul ordered the car, you are lucky that the car even has an engine!”
Like the first poster, I was, ahem, fortunate enough to own a ’79 Mustang Turbo. Good to hear that mine wasn’t the only one that laid down a smokescreen when the turbo spooled.
I also owned an ’89 Mustang GT 5.0 5spd in college. Got a great deal on that car, and sold it for only $500 less than I paid for it four years later. I took that car to 170k miles and the only major issue I had was a single overheating when the fan clutch failed on a 105 degree day in the CA central valley. It was dead reliable. To this day (almost 10 years after selling it) it’s the only car I’ve owned that my wife speaks of fondly. She learned to drive a manual in that car.
As an aside, I completely spun that car three times on public roads without hitting a single thing. That car taught me the virtues of car control and how to steer a car with the throttle.
My experiences with the Fox platform were less than savory. My grandfather’s last new car was the ’86 LTD, and since it was his first time buying as an empty nester, I think he was glad that Fords were downsizing with him (he previously owned a gargantuan ’76 Marquis, the last generation before it was ‘downsized’ to the Panther, but by ’86 the Marquis was further pared down to the Fox).
By the time I got my license, it was a 10-year old heap. This may be a surprise to some, but I lived for the days I got to drive my dad’s Volvo 240 (also a decade-old), because Grandpa’s Ford was utterly unnerving.
RWD? Could have fooled me. For a small car it had a terrible turning radius, parking lot maneuvers required enough foresight to navigate an aircraft carrier. I was told it was a V6, but it felt rougher and slower than most 4-bangers I’d driven— I was so disinterested by the car I wasn’t inclined to lift the hood and find out. The brake pedal was always mushy, so we didn’t notice that the master cylinder had cracked until the brakes were near-failure. Basically, it felt as though it were held together by dental floss.
Though it was a ticking time-bomb, I think Grandpa was planning a double funeral—for himself and the car—natural causes or accidental death notwithstanding. If it wasn’t for his car-salesman son-in-law who put him in a 7-year old ’90 Cutlass, it’d still be rusting in his garage.
The car left me with such a bad impression that I figured its design was a one-off, since the model was introduced in the mid-80s and quickly succeeded by the Taurus. I had no idea the Fox was such a widespread and versatile platform spanning two decades.
Mustangs and T-birds? No kidding!
Wow, two posters with the early carb-turbo 2.3. They were stinkers, no doubt. The later FI version was a big improvement, except for the NVH buzz.
Sherman Lin: all too true.
Years ago, my brother owned an ’85 Ford (Fox) LTD. Times were hard, he’d just broken up with his girlfriend, but he still had his outdoor sales job and his LTD and he was living day to day. One night he was in a customers home making his pitch when his parked car burst into flame and burned to the ground right at the curb outside. He was embarrassed, heart-broken and stranded all at once. The Fire Marshall said it wasn’t his fault. I felt so bad for him.
My favorite Fox platform memory: rounding up cattle in my grandmother’s ’85 Crown Vic in a Texas pasture (including a chase across a dried up pond). Now that’s fun.
It is a bit shocking how Ford went from efficient users are just a few platforms in the 1970s to the mis-mash it is today.
Sometimes being short on cash results in a much more focused and effective effort than does having lots of money flowing in. The Explorer, Navigator and F150 boom of the 1990s in many ways set Ford up for the nightmare it faces today.
Sometimes being short on cash results in a much more focused and effective effort than does having lots of money flowing in. The Explorer, Navigator and F150 boom of the 1990s in many ways set Ford up for the nightmare it faces today.
That there’s some truth. Mmmhmm. Necessity is the mother of invention. They’ve got enough necessity right now to really kick ’em in the pants. Question is, will they invent, or limp off into the sunset.
Somewhat related, and brought to the forefront of my mind by this editorial, is my latent and somewhat embarrassing desire to own a Lincoln Mark VII LSC built on that frame. I could not tell you why. Along with the ’89-90 Oldsmobile Ninety Eight Touring Sedan, it’s one of the few 1980s cars I’m remotely interested in. Odd, I know.
Too bad Ford can’t find that ingenuity today. Chrysler, too. I keep waiting for them to pull homeruns out of their, well, you know. Unfortunately, it seems they’re both willing to go quietly into that good night, trying (and failing) to be mini-Toyotas.
Nice job integrating you and your father with your respective Foxes! The only “problem” is that you never owned one with a 5.0 and SEFI induction. Oh, such a shame: that’s what made a Fox chassis more than a K-car commodity.
It had such amazing legs because it met the needs of:
1) Compact cars of the 1970s: Fairmont/Zephyr/Mustang.
2) Famous icons that needed downsizing/aerodynamicizing in the 1980s: Tbird, Cougar (coupe, 2dr sedan, 4dr sedan, wagon), Continental, Mark Series, LTD, Marquis, Granada.
3) The one and only Pony Car in the 1990s: Mustang, Mustang Cobra, Mustang Cobra R.
And I still think that Ford should have updated the Fox (a la C4-5-6 Corvette evolution) and never considered a de-contented Volvo platform for those undesirable sedans/CUVs. The Fox gives such an honest driving experience, something you can’t get in a globalized FWD chassis. Not to mention they wouldn’t take a bath updating a Ford, instead of getting killed trying to out “avalon” a Toyota Avalon.
I should probably recuse myself from any other discussion…as I did get my start as an automotive OCD/internet writer because of this chassis.
Thanks again, Paul. And thank you Ford: you may not last much longer, but your Foxes will live forever thanks to aftermarket support. :)
Hello Paul. Great story, as always. I just wanted to ask you one question: Which Peugeot(s) did (or do) you drive??
By the way I drive a 2004 307 Break. (of course I don’t live in the USA)
my take is more on the generation theme. My father drove Bugs for 30yrs. I drove them for nearly 20. I have since switched to 88 BMW 528es. My eldest son wants to get the exact same car.
In 1980 my parents, long-time Ford owners, bought a Fox-based Mustang: 3.3-liter inline-six, ONE-barrel carburetor, 3-speed auto, and standard-issue CRACK in the rear-seat side panels. Gutless wonder drove them straight into the hands of the Japanese. Damn engine kept stalling and every mechanic in the phone book couldn’t fix it… until just before we got rid of it. Go figure. Complained about the crack in the side panels, but all 2-door Mustangs of that vintage had it. It rained cats & dogs once and the windshield wipers died on Mom while on the freeway. Dad vowed never to buy Ford again… joining legions of other Americans over the decades. Good-looking car, but…
Paul Niedermeyer :
December 29th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
Wow, two posters with the early carb-turbo 2.3. They were stinkers, no doubt. The later FI version was a big improvement, except for the NVH buzz.
I had one too, except I had a 1979 Mercury Capri with the 2.3 turbo and the Michelin TRX tires.
Reminded a lot of the Vega ;)
I had a summer job at a Ford dealership in 1979 and one of my occasional assignments was to go do dealer trades. I still remember driving a 5.0 l Mustang Pace Car replica with TRX wheels & tires and a beast of a manual transmission for about 90 miles to make the sway. The graphics were absolutely horrible, but the driving was plenty fun.
What a great job for an 18 year old car loving kid that was!
You can see a photo of one here:
http://rides.webshots.com/photo/1309417627067709611qkMFnt
Donald Petersen deserves a lot of credit for what he did for Ford in his days there. The Fox platform was his baby, and he also realized that something completely new was needed to get Ford back into the game in the 80s when they were once again falling off the cliff. He pushed the Taurus out and made history with that car. Ford hasn’t had a really great President since he left.
The real key aspect of top management is making decisions, and the consequences of those decisions can sometimes go on forever. Ford’s buying binge during the Nasser years was clearly a big mistake in retrospect. Imagine if the CEO of Ford at the time had focused all the resources of the company on making the best products for the brand portfolio it already had instead of squandering money and people resources on Jaguar, Land Rover, the Mazda turn around, a line of junk yards in England! and Volvo. Imagine what they could have done by sticking all that energy into the brands they already had.
jthorner, truer words have yet to be spoken. Although I do think that Alex Trotman did an extremely good job as well. If it weren’t for the Ford BRATS and their spoiled little family, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Trotman would have put the business in a far different direction than Nasser.
Trotman was more of a champion of internal growth and understood that Ford’s management had to be streamlined for it to remain competitive. He also managed to keep very good relations with the suppliers and dealers. Two very important items that his successor never fully valued.
jems86: I drove 404’s back in the late 70’s, Here’s my story about them: https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/editorials/auto-biography-19-beverly-hills/
jthorner & stevenlang,
I plan to do a story about Ford’s “Camelot” era, focusing on Peterson’s enormous contribution in saving Ford from its near-death in 1980.
Hank :
My favorite Fox platform memory: rounding up cattle in my grandmother’s ‘85 Crown Vic in a Texas pasture (including a chase across a dried up pond). Now that’s fun.
Hank, if you mean the full-size Crown Vic/Grand Marquis/Town Cars you’re thinking of the Panther platform, which came out about the same time as the Fox platform in 1979, and is still alive, but barely kicking.
Yes, had one too. a 1979 Mustang Turbo, with the horrid 2.3. I also had a Callaway Turboed Scirocco, which as a “garage effort” totally blew away :pun intended: the factory effort.
The four speed was missing a true fourth gear. one two was very quick, three was a bit high, and fourth was an way-Overdrive. The key was to rev the tar out of the thing and get the car to overboost, with a buzzer mounted somewhere in the dashboard. You had to redline it to get a shot at being near any torque or boost for the third and fourth gears.
It hated hot weather and idling, a real problem in NYC traffic. The TRX tires were good for the time, and the suspension, for 1979, was OK until the car got loose. The carb was the problem, as the intake tract was “wet”, unlike today’s turbos, or my Callaway. Gas would pool, and you were done. There was no intercooler, of course, but the idea of running fuel/air through the plumbing was the true difficulty. I’m sure that the “draw through” design was a lot easier than trying to pressurize the carb, but plain and simple, it didn’t work.
When it ran well, you only wished someone had sprung for the five speed, or at least properly speced the ratios in the four speed.
We were glad to see it go back into lease land. This was another example of “I will never buy an American Car”, converting lifelong US car buyers, my parents.
A few years later, I had a decent highway run with an SVO Mustang, and was impressed highly, wondering how the same company could greenlight for production such a turd as was the ’79
I can’t believe how many people here owned the carb’d 2.3L turbo Foxes.
Try THIS:
Driving with the wife to the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee. A state away, I am driving the Mustang at 100–125 mph for 20 miles with a Porsche 944 and an unidentified Mercedes. Great fun!
Hit the hotel, take a tour of the Smokies. At one of the peaks, the engine coughs, and the equivalent of Hiroshima exits the tailpipe of the Mustang. Raw oil dripping from the exhaust all the way back to the hotel. My diagnosis–blown turbocharger seal.
I coat-hangered the wastegate open, and capped off the oil feed line using an a/c cap from the local hardware store. Wasnt too bad…until the manifold vacuum started pulling oil from the oil return line to the pan.
It took 24 quarts of oil to make it back to St Louis, and it was a white-knuckled ride the whole way as the turbo impeller would periodically scrape its housing, sending a loud “ZING!” throughout the interior.
3 days,$380 in parts, and 3 hours of carport time later, it was back on the road(I had to soak the cat converter for 2 days in carb cleaner from all the oil that went through it).
Those were the days when turbos were oil cooled only, no coolant running through it. Carbed and not injected.
Yes, a primitive 1st effort, but I swore right then and there NO MORE TURBO CARS for me.
A few years later, I was replacing turbos on Mazdas and Subarus, and those owners were just as bummed out as I was with my Mustang.
Then there was the failure-prone ignition module that left us stranded until it cooled off…
My only experience with a Fox platform car was very negative and sort of funny at the same time. Around 1998-99, my sister was looking for a cheap used car. I found an '85 Mercury Marquis (not the Grand Marquis) with-supposedly-69,000 miles for only $500. My sister wanted me to check it out. I called up the owner, who went on and on about what a great car it was and that she really didn't want to sell it, etc. My wife and I went to go look at it. Well, the car was a basketcase! The owner had this big smelly dog and had just tried to wash the dog smell out; the seats were still wet. It still stunk to high heaven, too. Someone had t-boned it at some point, so the driver's door was replaced with a different colored one that was sloppily painted burgundy in an unsuccessful attempt to match the rest of the car…the B-pillar was bent so the door had to be slammed shut! I drove it and noticed that the engine (3.8 liter V6) was making a lot of clattering noise. Going down the street, the car suddenly changed direction! I jerked the wheel and got the car going straight again, with the steering wheel about 30 degrees off center, when…it happened again in the opposite direction! The front end felt really sloppy and clunked going around corners. The ball joints, and possibly the whole front end, were completely shot. I brought it to a mechanic that I had made an appointment with to look at it, but I told him not to bother. I didn't need a mechanic to tell me the car was a POS! Remember the one engine warning light Ford vehicles of that era had (no seperate temperature and oil lights)? On the way back to the owners place, the engine light came on while idling at a stop sign. Great, no oil pressure! I said to my wife, "Geez, let's get this thing back ASAP. I don't want the engine to go before we get there!" I told the owner, "Sorry, not interested. Bye!" and we quickly left. That car either had 169,000 very hard miles or 69,000 very, very hard miles on it. That wasn't the last I saw of it, though. A short time later it turned up at a shop around the corner from my father-in-law's place, where it sat for a while, and then went away for good. The engine probably died. I called up my sister and told her I had good news and bad news: Bad news, the car's a POS. Good news, you're not buying it and didn't have to suffer checking it out! Man, that was an awful car!
Interesting that one of the Fox’s predecessors, the Falcon platform has by way of Grandfather’s axe development become Fords most advanced. Kind of strange that the current Mustang rides on a much less sophisticated set-up than the base model Falcon now does even though the ‘Stang is ostensibly newer.
I look forward to the story on Ford’s Camelot era. Also, I misspoke earlier. Petersen was the guy who bought Jaguar while Nasser was indeed the Nasser did the rest of the buying. I had forgotten about Trotman. He pushed the Ford 2000 plan which clearly had mixed results. The idea was to have “one Ford” worldwide and the single design for the Mondeo/Contour was one of the results. Interestingly enough, such a strategy is once again top priority at Ford under the new-new boss!
“…become Fords most advanced”…RWD
My Fox body adventure came in the form of a 1983 T-Bird with a 3.8 V6. That car taught me a lot about car repairs. It loved to break down far away from home and in remote backwoods locations.
It ran badly longer than many of my cars have ran at all. I sold it with 187,000 miles on the clock, it ran for 6 more years on that engine.
Never a more miserable car have I been privy to driving than those with the Fox body.
1979 Fox-bodied, 4 door, 4 cyl. Ford Fairmont, WHAT A POS!
This was the car that ended my families relationship with domestic automobiles. Not only was this car absolute junk but the entire ownership experience was a nightmare.
Lesson learned, when there is something wrong with just about every product a company sells DO NOT expect to get proper service because the company is incapable of doing so for over a million customers.
Our family had 2 Fox platforms (1981 Mustang, 1984 LTD II Wagon) and I don’t think the platform itself was the biggest problem – they all failed in different and unique ways…one engine, two trannies, a plethora of more minor but infuriating problems.
I look back at the platform itself somewhat fondly – it was fairly efficient packaging, lightweight, RWD – GM and Chrysler didn’t have anything like it.
In retrospect, I doubt it could meet anything close to today’s safety standards, though.
jthorner is on to something. Whereas the Ford of the 80’s re-used the Fox a dozen times (out-done only by Chrsyler’s recycling of the K), today’s Ford has way too many platforms.
Look at midsize cars. They have the S60 on the old Volvo platform. The Taurus on a cheapened/updated version of that platform. The S80 on the new Volvo platform. They have the Mondeo on its own platform. The Mazda6 on its own platform. The Fusion on a cheapened/updated version of the 6. Jaguar has the S-type on its own platform, that is a distant relative of the Mustang’s platform. Jaguar’s X-type rides the old Mondeo platform. And of course Aussie Ford has their own unique platform for the Falcon.
If Mulalley can simply get everyone at Ford on the same page platform-wise, he’ll be earning his lofty salary. If he can’t, Ford is toast.
Another great article, Paul.
It’s been exactly 20 years since my dad drove home in a brand new, monochromatic red 1988 Mercury Cougar XR-7 with a torquey 302 and beefy Goodyear Gatorback tires. I used to come up with any excuse to borrow that car, and when I did, I was king of the high school parking lot. What great memories!
jrlombard :
December 29th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Like the first poster, I was, ahem, fortunate enough to own a ‘79 Mustang Turbo. Good to hear that mine wasn’t the only one that laid down a smokescreen when the turbo spooled.
I also owned an ‘89 Mustang GT 5.0 5spd in college. Got a great deal on that car, and sold it for only $500 less than I paid for it four years later. I took that car to 170k miles and the only major issue I had was a single overheating when the fan clutch failed on a 105 degree day in the CA central valley. It was dead reliable. To this day (almost 10 years after selling it) it’s the only car I’ve owned that my wife speaks of fondly. She learned to drive a manual in that car.
As an aside, I completely spun that car three times on public roads without hitting a single thing. That car taught me the virtues of car control and how to steer a car with the throttle.
Wehn my wife and I first started dating she had a seriously wimpy 84 Mustang. By the time we were married, she had graduated to the 95 Cobra Mustang she still owns (with a 69 Porsche 911T in between). While I make fun of her love of Mustangs, I do love the look and sound of the Cobra. Occasionally, we will be going somewhere in town in our seperate cars, and we feel young and stupid pulling up to a red light. The sound and acceleration of that Cobra are still impressive, even though I know that empirically, they aren’t all that great by today’s standards.
At least among the Mustang crowd, the Fox body Mustangs are becoming very popular due to their relatively light weight, availability of performance parts, and the cost of 60’s Mustangs.
Thanks for the good read Paul! Brings back memories of my first car… a 1980 2-door Fairmont… handed down to me in the early 90’s from my parents. I am grateful to have learned how to drive in that car as it had decent RWD dynamics and decent handling… winter drifting was endless fun… ahhh the memories…
I’ve often wondered something about the Fox platform…I know it came out in 1978 (Fairmont/Zephyr), but don’t certain elements of it go back even further? For example, the 4 lug plain steel rims on a late ’70’s Fairmont or an early Fox based Mustang look like they came straight off from a Pinto. Does anyone know if there are a few Pinto based parts in that platform?
I wouldn’t doubt it. The 2.3L 4 was a Pinto carryover, and the 3.3L straight six dated back even further, to the early 60s.
big_gms: For example, the 4 lug plain steel rims on a late ’70’s Fairmont or an early Fox based Mustang look like they came straight off from a Pinto. Does anyone know if there are a few Pinto based parts in that platform?
The Pinto does share the same 4-lug bolt pattern for the wheels, but that’s about it. Maybe they shared steel wheels, but even the Fairmont’s dog dish hubcap was unique for ’78.
Aside from steel wheels, AM/FM stereos and non-customer facing items like engines, transmissions and power window motors, the Fairmont is damn near a clean sheet redesign.
Off the top of my head, the only other design more clean sheet is the 1986 Taurus. It even had new engines. That doesn’t happen very often at all…
Well, I don’t know if you’ll all see this…I’m 25. I bought my first car ~5 years ago at a delaware auto auction.
It was a 1988 Ford Thunderbird Turbo Coupe 5-speed. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was a hot car. The car came up to the block, and it’s price kept getting lower and lower…finally, someone bid on it at $100. I bid at $200 and that was it. I got it for $200…and $300 in taxes, tags, and auction fees!
I didn’t know how to drive stick. I learned….the clutch only last about 5-10k more miles. When I got it, it had a check engine light. When I put the car in neutral at speed, it would die sometimes…I’d either come to a stop and restart I spent about $150 finding out it was a $28 throttle position sensor. The suspension felt weak and clunked…me being an idiot, I replaced all the struts (macpherson front) and springs. All it needed was an $8 sway bar end link.
I drove the car hard for 28k miles. It was an amazing vehicle. With a $50 boost controller, I could unleash the full 18 PSI as early as 3000 rpms. I didn’t need tread on those rear tires.
I miss that car to this day. I sold it for $750.
In 1988, Ford built a turbocharged, intercooled 2.3 liter fuel injected four cylinder that put out 190 HP and 240 torque with a bulletproof engine, trans, limited slip differential, on 225/60/16 tires, with power everything interior, RWD, and it could get 30-32mpg highway and low 20’s suburban city.
I think those are considered pretty decent specs in today’s terms. The fox body has some beautiful cars thrown in with the crap.
Joe
And the beautiful part is, you can make the “crap” rather beautiful on the inside.
Here’s to my future ’81 Granada coupe with a turbo 5.0, 6-speed, Mustang/Mark VII interior and full Griggs suspension/brake package.
Back in 1985 I had wrecked my car (don’t ask) and my mother had come to visit me from out of town and take me to look at cars. So I had basically one day to buy a new car.
We went everywhere and anything I liked was too expensive as I had a very small budget. I really wanted something like a T-Bird, Regal or Accord. But it was hopeless on my money. We were almost to the point of looking at used cars when I saw a sign from the freeway at a Mercury dealership that said either $9995 or $10,995 I can’t remember which.
So we pulled in and the salesman said he had about 80 Mercury Marquis (Ford LTD II) on the lot and I could have any one on the lot for that price. No high pressure sales pitches or surprise charges added on unlike at the Honda dealership.
So I happily picked out a black one and drove it home that day. It was really a nice comfortable riding car. It looked good from the front and back but the side view was odd. It had 5 windows of various sizes and shapes.
I drove this car for almost 10 years with very few problems. And finally sold it for $300 to a friend. He told me over the holidays that he and his wife had put 300,000 miles on it when it finally died and had bought an Explorer.
I’ve got a soft spot for the fox body platform. My first car, a 1988 Ford Thunderbird with the 3.8L V6, was a fun car to drive. And they looked sharp. My fastest car was a modified 2001 Mustang GT, also having the “fox-4” platform. What is awesome about this platform, is the sheer ease at which parts interchange. Whenever I go to a car show, someone usually has a fox body Thunderbird, and they either have a worked 5.0 or a 351 lurking under the hood. If I could find a clean, affordable fox body Thunderbird, I’d buy it in a heartbeat.
I drove two Fox-body cars when I was a kid. The first one was a white 1980 Fairmont wagon. It was the first car I ever drove. It had a 200 cid six cylinder and a 3 speed automatic. I mostly drove it on very lightly traveled Forest Service gravel roads at 15 MPH when I was 11 or 12 and just learning how to drive, so I can’t comment too much on its performance. I remember our neighbor, a mechanic at the local Ford dealership, claiming that it “handled like a sports car.” It gave us a lot of trouble. Dad had to yank the engine out not long after we got it (used) and had problems getting the right parts and had to yank the engine apart again.
The other Fox body was my first car, a black 1980 Cougar XR7 with a maroon vinyl top and slanted opera windows. I got it on my 16th birthday. It was a much, much better car than the Fairmont. It was like a $900 car at the time. It had a 302, bored .030 over, 2bbl carburetor, and a 4 speed automatic overdrive transmission. Boy, did that car handle. I drove like a bat out of hell when I was 16 and if that car hadn’t handled as well as it did, I would have probably gotten myself killed in it. Great handling car. It rode well too. It wasn’t very quick, especially for a V8, which also kept me from getting into too much trouble. The transmission sucked. Hard. I eventually pulled it out and replaced it with a C4 (the first time I ever did a tranny swap.) It was much, much quicker with the C4 but it seemed like it was taching 3000 RPM at 55 MPH. It had a problem with overheating, but it was a 10 or 11 year old car at the time so it had a bunch of minor things wrong with it. We had to replace the door hinges, and the driver’s side door handle broke. And the transmission lockout switch got ruined during a session of hoonage so we had to put a pushbutton starter in it which lay on the floor and would shock you if you touched the wires while starting it. You could start it in drive. Once I took it on a straight stretch and topped it out. I have no idea how fast I was going because the speedometer only went to 85. This was when it still had the AOD in it, so I might have been going 120 or more. I also jumped it going over the local “thrill hill.” I heard the rear wheels spin when I left the ground. I miss that car. I would like to have one just like it with a fuel injected 5.0 out of a Fox Mustang and a 5 speed manual. I don’t see many Cougars like that these days. It was the XR7, which was much better looking than the regular Cougar (Granada clone.) It was also much better looking than the contemporary Thunderbird, because it didn’t have the ugly Thunderbird front end with the hidden headlights. Great car, especially for a 16 year old.
Fox cars are probably the most dependable cars that we have ever owned. Between myself, my wife and one son, we own 5 foxes and they are all dependable cars (one is hot rodded with a 306, so it is not a daily driver). My 1992 has between 300,00 and 400,00 miles on it with the original drivetrain (have replaced a few clutches – after all, I have taught twin sons and one daughter-in-law how to drive a stickshift, lol). It has been a fantastic car, we bought it used in 2000. It is a 2.3 liter 4 cylinder and gets between 28 and 30 miles to the gallon. My wife was driving it back and forth to work, an average of 200 miles per week, until her left knee started having problems with pushing the clutch in. I went back to driving it when we got her a 1991 convertible mustang with an automatic. She has been driving that car for almost a year now, same amount of miles per week with no major problems. Our one son drives an 88 fox most of the time to work, 40 miles one way. He works 5 days a week. All in all, you can’t beat a fox. Just do your usual maintenance on the car. That is the life of any car.