Page 206 - Wayne Carini's Guide to Affordable Classics

choice of police and highway patrol departments across America, but not for very many other buyers. Performance enthusiasts went for the hatch, while boulevard cruisers selected the ragtop. The T-Top option went away after 1988.
Ford also dispensed with the V6 option for the second phase of Fox body history. Buyers got either the base 90-horsepower four- cylinder or the 5.0-liter V8, now rated at 225 horsepower and 300 lb ft of torque. That’s how it went until 1993, when the 5.0-liter V8 lost a step and went down to 205 horsepower and 275 foot-pounds. Ford may have done that intentionally to highlight the return of the Cobra nameplate, which included a tuned-up version of the 5.0-liter engine with 230 horsepower.
The hatchback coupe was dropped after 1993, as the 1994 restyling softened the lines of the Fox body Mustang and gave the two-door coupe a rounded cabin to replace the notchback. The convertible was also restyled to bring the Mustang into the 1990s.
During the Fox body period, Ford produced about 2.6 million Mustangs for public sale. That makes this generation the second best-selling set of Mustangs in history, trailing only the legendary first generation. It’s also the longest-lasting generation, with 14 years of production. The Fox body arguably saw the Mustang’s nadir of performance, but the company also climbed back to proper Pony Car performance with this platform, and made an entire generation into Mustang fans.
THE DRIVE
Let’s start by getting real. Virtually no one has seen a base four- cylinder Mustang or even a six-cylinder on the road in 20 years
or more. Almost all of those went to the crusher long ago, along with the ill-fated early turbo cars. Maybe you can find one still running, but it will be a unicorn.
The two versions you can find and that you might actually want to buy are the 5.0-liter GT and LX 5.0 models, and potentially an SVO, though those have always been rare. Thumb through the for sale ads at any nationwide classic car sales site and you’ll find pages of GT and LX listings, about evenly divided between hatchbacks and convertibles.
Driving a Fox body Mustang today is definitely stepping back to a simpler time of lower horsepower and more exciting handling. The V8 provided plenty of torque down low, but tended to run out of breath at higher rpm, while the turbocharged SVO was a high-rev screamer designed to lure back some of the buyers lost to Japanese and European brands.
Mustang SVO
The Mustang SVO (named for the Ford Special Vehicle Operations dept.) was the choice of driving enthusiasts and autocrossers who couldn’t afford a BMW. Retailing at $15,596 in 1984, the SVO had a little less torque than the 5.0-liter Mustang, but the same horsepower. Of course, as with all turbo cars of the era, you had to work around some pretty horrendous turbo lag to get at that power.
A former Mustang SVO owner describes the SVO cornering technique as “all three pedals down about halfway as you were pointing the nose in towards the apex. Using the clutch and brakes together meant that throttle loaded up the turbo, so when you finally let off the brake and clutch, you were spooled up.”
Sold from 1984 to 1986, the Mustang SVO represented a significant departure for Ford. Fuel economy and emissions concerns led to use of an improved and turbocharged version of the 2.3-liter four-cylinder engine used in the Mustang II and Pinto.
204Wayne CariniAffordable Classics