One of the things I enjoy about Facebook, besides the ability to stay in touch with people I’ve met around the world, is it’s memories / anniversary reminders. Today’s comes from almost 20 years ago… back in my Ford Crown Victoria days, when I used to buy old cop cars at auction. This particular 1999 Police Interceptor model I modified a little, with a lot of help from my friend Pat who mounted an Allen supercharger on it in my driveway.
At one point I got invited to participate in a little drag racing shootout by Muscle Mustangs & Fast Fords magazine and in turn invited a few other friends along to participate with their Crown Vic’s and Mercury Marauder’s.
It’s a bit funny and very nostalgic thinking back to those days. I was still a broke ass college student that used the proceeds of my very first full time job to shell out a few grand on Magnaflow exhaust and the supercharger. I remember the agony it caused when I blew up the overdrive band on the original automatic transmission. Replaced it only to blow it up again being foolish on the highway on the way to the drag strip. Ironic I spent another grand on my camera gear from Canon, the body and lens that I hardly ever used and in fact left at my cousin’s house in France and never picked up since. Now I’m shooting far crappier pictures for my blog with a cheap hundred dollar phone camera. But those were the days!
The MM&FF connection grew out of my side hobby building an SVT registry for the Ford Special Vehicle Team product owners like the Mustang Cobra, Contour, Focus, and the F150 Lightning. The only thing I owned from that line up were 1:18 scale models of the Terminator Cobra and the 2000 Cobra R which I still have in my collection.
I remember trying to organize some local events for the SVT owners but they included anything and everything Blue Oval that would show up. (otherwise I would have excluded myself from the meets with my CVPI). The hobby bloomed further with my trip to Australia and their version of the SVT crowd down under: FPV. Sadly I didn’t buy any FPV models to bring back to my collection back home. But it was some of the best time of my life spent hanging out with owners in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and even Perth.
I really miss those days! Good memories…