When the Lubbock Mustang Club convenes its 30th anniversary car show at 10 a.m. Saturday on the Lubbock campus of Wayland Baptist University, the members will bring some of the history of the automobile with them.
Not every one of the cars in the show will be a Ford. Laura Hamlett, vice president of the club, has a Corvair convertible that represents one of General Motors’ bold innovations that lasted only a few years in the mid-1960s.
The Corvair has a six-cylinder, air-cooled engine mounted at the back. It may be that the Chevrolet Division hoped the added weight over the rear-wheel drive would give traction in snow and muddy roads. Besides, it was a really neat-looking small car, and now is virtually in a class by itself.
Hamlett and her husband, Jim, do have an interest in the Mustang, though, and when they joined the club six years ago, Jim bought a 1970 Mustang coupe.
Jeff Krueger, who may be the most devoted collector of classic automobiles in the club, still has the 1977 Volkswagen beetle that he purchased as his first car.
“My second car was a Mustang,” he said.
Now, he owns nine Mustangs, including one that is rarest by color — pink. It is only occasionally taken slowly and painstakingly out of a closed-in truck under a clear sky for a photograph, and not at all if rain is a possibility.
The club isn’t particular about the brand or model of cars that are invited into the annual show.
“Our car show is open to anything, Krueger said. “We’ve had dragsters, we’ve had 1912 Model T Fords — it’s open to just about anything. We usually see about 200 cars. This is the oldest car show that is still in existence in basically the Panhandle. To the general public, it’s free. For entering cars, it’s $25 before, and $30 the day of the show.”
John Robison, president, said he became interested in the car club in the mid-1990s when he bought a 1965 blue Mustang. “It was like the one that I owned in the late 70s. That seems to be a common event with Mustang drivers. Many of us owned one in high school or college, then wanted one again later in life.”
Robison knows why he joined the club: “I figured that it would be a good way to meet folks, drive and display my car and have some fun along the way. As a ‘shade tree’ mechanic I also wanted to get to understand the car better and know where and how to get parts.”
He added, “I currently own a 1971 Mach 1, and my son and I are gradually restoring it. We take it to a few shows and car displays, and he will likely own a Mustang from now on.”
Krueger has researched the history of the sports car phenomenon that was introduced April 14, 1965. “We’ve had a Mustang around for almost 50 years now,” he said. They sold a million Mustangs between 1965 and 1966, and set a sales record for types.”
He said, “They were actually running out of motors — they had more demand than they had cars. Everybody wanted a 289 V-8, and they started making promotions of six-cylinder Mustangs with special air breathers to make them look fancy, because that’s all they had. They didn’t have enough big motors to put in the cars.”
He said Lee Iacocca is considered the father of the Mustang, and he took Ford in a new direction with the sports car.
“The Edsel was a flop back in the late 1950s, and Ford was pretty gun-shy about bringing anything out that was a little different and crazy at those times. Mr. Iacocca basically convinced them that they needed this neat little car that looked fancy but still had a back seat in it, so it could take care of a different generation of clientele.
According to Krueger, the Mustang remains popular and continues in production. “It is still the number one best selling muscle car out there — outsells everybody else by at least 30 percent, still to this day.”
There’s greater variety than when it came out in 1965. “You can still get a coupe and a convertible, all kinds of versions from V-6 all the way up to ... you can actually get a Shelby Mustang now that has over a thousand horsepower and is street legal. It’s a street car and a race car — the Mustang is now a NASCAR. It has a wide variety of flavors.”
According to Krueger, the old ones are sometimes more expensive than a new one, especially in the high-powered Shelby versions. “There’s big stuff out there if you want to pay the dollars.”
He thinks one of the reasons the Mustang was such a success is that it was relatively inexpensive at the beginning.
“The base price in 1965 was $2,400 for the smaller version. They did something different — nobody had ever seen a car that had a long nose and a short deck in a four-seater. It had a shifter on the floor and bucket seats, so it looked sporty but was really not that much more expensive. You could buy it in a 3-speed, a 4-speed, as well as an automatic at that time.”
He added, “This year’s model in a six-cylinder version is like $34,000, and you can spend up to $80,000 on a Shelby.”
According to Krueger, the Lubbock Mustang Club has about 125 members. “It’s more a family club than anything else. The youngest club member is my youngest daughter, who is 6. And we also have guys in their 70s.
Hamlett said, “We enjoy the club meetings, the camaraderie of the members, and having a piece of history to drive around. It’s a natural conversation starter to meet new people when you drive a classic car.”
Krueger sums up the club this way:
“Basically, they just get together for the love of their car.”
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