I blog Mustang

Say what?! Jalopnik said it best with their title to go with this story: “Mustang church puts the fun back in to fundamentalism“. Brilliant.

The initial story was reported by Tom Strongman about the 74 year old Charles Ales who built the Mustang Church of America and Museum on his property.

“This is “the only church in the world dedicated to the Mustang car and Jesus Christ,” Ales said. “I’m going to preach goodness. Treat other people like you want to be treated, make this a better planet and make this place a better world than when you found it.”

The church will not be complete and ready for dedication until late this summer or early fall when parking and landscaping are in place. Ales has commissioned an 8-by-10 foot mural to be mounted behind the altar showing Jesus Christ behind the wheel of a 1966 Mustang.”

The Museum/Church has a collection of about 8 Mustangs, both old and new. Last but not least, when asked about blessing other muscle cars as well, Ales replied “I bless only Fords”. Talk about a true Ford/Mustang evangelist.

Only in America.

I once wrote about a photographer who took some brilliant classic car pictures… and on occasion he - Djivy - takes some Mustang pictures as well and they almost always make it to my desktop as nice background. Also looking for the right Mustang background, other than what you can find on the more regular Mustang sources, check out these below:

Both photos were taken at the Antwerp Classic Salon, which I visit as well every year but it looks like there’s still room for improvement for me ;) Here are my sets of the Antwerp Classic Salon and the Ghent Classic Salon. Let me know what you think and definitely let me know if you can point me to other great Mustang photographers.

My buddy Cameron of the 67 Mustang blog did a great find recently of an early Mustang prototype designed by the famous Italian car designer Bertone. The reason for this design was apparently because the immediate success of the early Mustang in the US wasn’t followed in Europe. Therefore a more European design seemed appropriate and Bertone was contacted for it. Ford liked the design very much and showed it on the New York Motor Show but it never got into production. Neither does anyone know the whereabouts of the Bertone Mustang either. More details on the story here.

My take? It looks like a very nice and modern design especially considering when it was created, but apart from the Mustang logo it doesn’t look like a Mustang to me at all. Still nice design Bertone.

I’m really a classic Mustang guy, you know the ‘65 to ‘69 models, those are just fantastic. After that I always found it went downhill, with an absolute low with especially the 3rd and 4th generation of Mustangs. Luckily, Ford realized that (it just took some time) and the 5th generation Mustang is again a car worth the Mustang label. Something I said before and which we all know anyway I guess.

Still, it’s the classic Mustang that I’ve started this blog for, that’s the one I want. Thinking of myself driving a Bullitt-like Mustang one day, makes my day ;) The Mustang Bullitt at the other hand is also a great example of Ford recognizing it’s Mustang roots again and doing something great with it.

Yesterday I saw this video on the Mustang Bullitt and like I mentioned a little in my earlier post I got to admit that again Ford managed to build a mean machine here. But not only that, what amazed me most while watching was the fact that they tuned the exhaust for instance to mimic the sound in the original Bullitt movie. It’s a small thing, but I found it way too cool.

And all of this for $31.000 (and up of course) that’s not bad at all. Although we probably can’t get it in Europe, that’s only little more than €21.000 today! Well, my birthday is coming up, so if you haven’t figured out yet what you will send me, this Mustang Bullitt sounds like a good idea :)

A friend (and fellow car enthusiast) sent me a link to an article in the online magazine Winding Road. The article was a review of the new Ford Mustang Bullitt, on sale now at your Ford dealer (in the US that is).

As a result I have to email him back ‘thanks but not thanks’. It’s a great article about a great car and now it just looks like I don’t only have to get myself the classic Bullitt Mustang, but also the new one. Like if my problems weren’t big enough already to get just one Mustang :)

The good part about it is that this free online Winding Road magazine is pretty nice and something other car enthusiast will definitely agree on. So if you hadn’t heard about it yet, take a look now.

Now I bet that’s a model you haven’t heard of yet, but it’s real. Take a look at this 1967 Ford Mustang Trike that’s up for ‘grabs’ on Ebay. I’d rather people don’t cut classic Mustangs in two, but must the creator at least had a pretty original reason to do so.

More images at Mustangblog.com

… it’ll be in the US, and not in Europe. At least that’s for sure. Last weekend I went to Flanders Collection Car 2008, the classic car show in Flanders Expo (Ghent - that’s in Belgium), and there were a few Mustangs for sale. There were only few Mustangs there unfortunately, and they were expensive. This one for instance was a nice convertible, pretty much all original, and was on sale for €34.000 now that’s almost $51.000! Think about the Mustang you can get in the US for that, transportation costs included.

That said, they’re not all as expensive as this one. Looking at my favorite importer for classic cars in Belgium, it still seems most Mustangs average a cost of €15.000 - €17.500. I couldn’t help noticing how much of them are ’sold’ already though, Mustang getting even more popular now?

Anyway, in 4 weeks now, it’s time for the Antwerp Classic Salon which I’ll got to as well. It’s better then the exhibition in Ghent and usually has quite a few Mustangs on display (as well as other great US and European classics of course). Let me know if you’ll be there as well, maybe we could do a photowalk?

More photos (but not a lot) on my Flickr account.

They say that hanging out with the right people is always a good place to start to get what you want. Now since we all know that what I want is that good old vintage Mustang, I’ve decided to hang out in the Mustang neighborhood. I’m not sure if this is the right strategy in a hood like this, but we’ll see.

It was Marc Bresseel, a colleague of mine, who made me aware of the Ebay Neighborhoods project when he was talking about shopping and social navigation. It seems like the perfect integration indeed between selling a product and building a community around it. Now I probably won’t be that active as a member in this case, as buying one is not an option (as I told you long time ago). And I’m not going to be buying just some random parts to be part of the Neighborhood either :)

But as a Mustang fan, you still might want to check it out if you haven’t done so already. Mustang forums, reviews, images, … and of course auctions all on one page. Nice work from Ebay, check it out.

I can hardly believe it myself, but it’s indeed already one year ago that I started this new blog. As I said in the introduction a year ago “this blog is a combination of some of my interests & passions”. This is the place where I mix my interests in new media, marketing and technology with the passion of that fascinating car, the ‘65-’67 Ford Mustang.

Even more difficult to believe are some of the results. The growth in traffic to this blog has been totally different from my other blog (’Cross The Breeze) and a lot faster. The interaction is different, the audience is different, … which makes it all the more interesting. Nice to know fact (at least for me) is that last year’s effort brought me on the n°4 spot on StangNet, which is basically the online community for Mustang enthusiast. And yes, I’m quite a bit proud of that.

In the meantime, this blog was about a quest to get myself a classic Mustang one day and since I haven’t succeeded yet, the quest will have to continue. So far I’ve looked into 15 ways to get my hands on one, and no I didn’t find a barn yet in Portugal, nor was I able to perform like one once did with a little red paperclip. I did get some advertising offers, but since most were about requests to post review of other websites without clear links to Mustangs or other, I didn’t accept them… although I’m always open for healthy offerings ;)

Anyway, thanks to all readers for visiting this blog and hopefully you’ll be coming back some more in the future. And if there’s anything you’d like to see more or less this year, feel free to tell me in the comments. Happy new Mustang year y’all.

Take a look at this Mustang drawing made by the Drawing Studio, 13 hours of drawing shown in one minute. Pretty cool stuff.

Check out the video here.

[Via Maarten Schenk]