Car Guy Magazine Car Guy Magazine issue 115 | Page 58

Mustang Pace Car To get enough pace cars for the festival, Ford tapped local Ford dealers to supply them. As a result, the actual cars used at the race ran the gamut of specifications, interior colors, and other features with the only thing tying them together being that they were all Wimbledon White. But the coupes are special, built consecutively and assigned special Pace Car White paint (code C, 1964 only) and fitted with special Pace Car graphics supplied by 3M. It included not only the familiar door markings, but also a blue stripe running down the center of the bodywork (remember this 56 CarGuyMagazine.com is before Shelby built his first GT350). The rest of the details were standard Mustang fare, including chrome bumpers, the “pony corral” front grille emblem, and familiar ‘260’ badges on the front fenders. This one has been fully restored to those original specifications with paint done about five years ago to a very high standard. It shows a few signs of use, but there’s no question that showing up in this car is going to cause a stir. While the festival convertibles had all kinds of different interior color combinations, all the pace car coupes were white buckets with blue carpets and dash, which is how this one has been restored. The combination is clean and elegant, perfect for a car that’s designed to attract attention. The materials used throughout were accurately reproduced and unlike so many other Mustang restorations, there are no significant modifications or deviations from stock. It’s even got reproduction blue floor mats! The shifter sticks out of the transmission tunnel, sans console, as when it was new and the lovely white steering wheel matches the dash exactly. All the gauges were restored and look fantastic and the factory AM radio