Mutate Now

My latest obsession: muscle cars circa 1930-79

I’ve always been a tomboy, always will be. In high school, while most gals my age were obsessing over Seventeen Mag and picking out prom dresses, I was drooling over my neighbor’s GTO Judge and pulling parts out of my boyfriend’s Trans Am for rebuilding. My environmental awareness took root in college and I switched to diesels that I could modify to run on veggie oil and became a DIY tour bus mechanic. A decade later, I’m finally living out my teen fantasies of owning and restoring my very own muscle car – a 1973 Mercury Comet with Ford’s 5.0L 302 c.i. V8 engine. Everyone has different opinions on what makes one muscle car better than the other and everyone has their 1st loves as well as their daily drivers. I don’t think many people would place the Comet in their top 3 fave muscle cars, but I’m not most people. All I know is I LOVE this car!!! For me, personally, it’s perfect. Small enough for just me, big enough for double dating. Fast enough to get me in trouble, fast enough to get me out of trouble. And it may not look like a pageant queen right now, but someday it will be CANDY! With that in mind, I intend to enjoy/punish the body and engine until it dies. Then rebuild it from the frame up.

My friend Twelver came over on the 1st day I had the car at home and snapped some sweet “Before” pix: