1988 Ford Mustang LX 4-cyl

My relationship with this 1988 Mustang LX was very tempermental and short lived. It was a red/salmon coloured car, depending on whether that panel had been repaired or replaced due to an accident with the previous owner. It was powered by a 2.4L inline-4 providing approximately 90hp, mated to a 4-speed automatic transmission. 2 weeks after I bought the car, the timing belt broke and I needed to replace it (thank goodness for non-interference head on this engine). 2 days after the timing belt was replaced, I finally discovered where the smell of fuel was coming from. I had a severe leak in the rusted out gas tank which needed to be replaced immediately.

The car did its job for a while, even if it was slow to turn over at times. However, at the two month point, the car mysteriously died. It was again towed into my mechanic's garage for a check. However, when they got their hands on it the next morning, it fired right up, and they couldn't find anything that would indicate a problem. After a day of searching, my mechanic finally decided to take it on one more test drive before handing the keys back to me.

Not 5 minutes later, the other mechanic in the shop received a cell phone call from the test drive. I naively asked if the engine had died. It was much worse. While everyone involved was ok, the car had just been in an collision. Apparently some crazy person decided to make a U-turn from the merge lane from an off-ramp right in front of my poor mechanic. It was too late for him to avoid the other vehicle and he slammed my mustang into the rear driver side wheel of the offending vehicle. The Mustang was a total loss.

The bad thing is that I had finally finished my car search and bought this car. Although troublesome at times, it got me most times from point A to point B. Now I have to start that search all over again, due to no fault of my own. However, good did come out of this in the end. Because I paid so little for this car, my insurance payout was actually higher than what I paid for the Mustang. And the timing was also perfect that the Mazda (my next car) was for sale by an acquaintance of my sister. So almost as soon as I was out of my rental vehicle, I was driving in the Mazda, which I was able to afford due to the insurance payout.