For decades the Fox-body Mustang has served as a cornerstone of our scene. Go to any motorsports event and you’re just about guaranteed to see these ubiquitous Fords. The general public, from groders to street racers, has been equally smitten.
Hate to break it to some of you, but those Mustangs date back further than you may think. When the Fox-body Mustang made its debut for the 1979 model year, we lived in a different era: The U.S. and China had just opened diplomatic relations, the Space Shuttle hadn’t yet escaped our atmosphere, and “The Dukes of Hazzard” was the hottest thing on TV. On the sports car front, you could still buy a brand-new MGB or Triumph Spitfire.
While the later half of the ’70s wasn’t exactly kind to performance cars, that new-for-1979 Mustang showed enthusiasts that performance wasn’t dead. Performance might have been taking a breather, but it wasn’t down for the count.
The Mustang’s top engine that year was a 302-cubic-inch V8 making 140 horsepower. Looking for the high-tech alternative? A 132-horsepower, 2.3-liter turbo four could also be fitted. (Remember, this is from a time well before the factories were unleashing 707-horsepower Hellcats and 580-horsepower Camaros.)
Shoppers could also choose from three body styles: convertible, two-door coupe and three-door hatch, the latter with optional, super-snazzy T-tops. Performance numbers would improve as the Mustang entered the ’80s: better heads, an improved camshaft and fuel injection gave the Mustang’s V8 engine 210 horsepower by 1985. Ford offered the optional Mustang SVO for the 1984-’86 model years, with its turbo 2.3-liter four eventually producing 205 horsepower in stock trim.
The Mustang got a big facelift for the 1987 model year: smoother nose and, on the GT models, totally cool side skirts featuring fake brake scoops. The big news could be found under the hood: Even better cylinder heads and pistons bumped the V8, now known as the 5.0, to 225 horsepower.
Where Ford limited the GT package to the convertible and hatchback body, the 5.0 engine and five-speed box could also be fit into any of the downmarket LX models, including the unassuming notchback. Suddenly we had a sleeper–pretty much the same recipe favored by countless highway patrol departments. Aside from the rare, high-output Cobra and Cobra R models sold during the final year of production, the Mustang carried on relatively unchanged through the end of the 1993 model year.
Thanks to the performance offered at a very fair price, Ford sold a metric ton of these Mustangs. While the supply once seemed unending, prices have been ticking upward. Hagerty, in fact, shows an $18,000 value for a Vanilla Ice-approved 1987 Mustang GT convertible, a 50-percent increase since the fall of 2012. At the other end of the spectrum, craigslist still contains a supply of project starters for less than a grand.
