By Murray Green
Brenda and Brian Nordlund own a 1965 Ford Mustang.
“We found this car in a specialty car lot in west Edmonton and we took it for a drive on a Mother’s Day, Sunday evening. We peeked through the fence later to see it again. I kept teasing her that I was going to get a tinker toy. Naturally, her response was ya, ya, ya,” recalled Brian.
“We looked at a few cars on the lot, but I couldn’t get her past this car. At that time, I wasn’t working on Fridays, so I called the guy up on Monday and made an appointment to see the car on Friday morning and we wound up bringing it home,” explained Brian.
“All that I have done to it is change the power steering in the car. I also changed the differential, but cosmetically, it is the same as you see the car right now,” shared Brian.
“My thinking was if you want an old car to drive and you think your wife will hassle you for doing that, buy her one too,” laughed Brian. “All of a sudden she became a car person and I stopped being bugged about spending so much time on my car (1967 Dodge Coronet).”
Brenda’s Mustang has a 289 engine with two barrel carburetor and an automatic transmission.
“It might be the original engine, I haven’t had time to check that out yet. It runs like a Swiss watch. I have a few parts that I would like to toss on the engine, but she won’t let me do it because the car runs too good as it is,” added Brian.
“She doesn’t want me to turn it into a hot rod. The car is as original as it can be and she wants to keep it that way. It is her car, so I’m not going to tell her what to do with it,” he commented.
“My intention in the first place was to check out a 1970 or ’71 Dodge Dart that I saw in the same lot. I was trying to get her interested in that car, but she kept going back to the Mustang. I thought if I’m going to buy a car, I’ll get what she wants. I’m one of the original 12 members of the Alberta Mustang Owners Association that we started in 1978. I had 1969 and 1970 fastbacks back then. I am no longer with the club now, but now we can be again,” said Brian.
“She really enjoys the car. We go to several car shows like this and meet a lot of great people and have fun. To me, there is no down side because I have been a member of the hobby since I was a teenager,” he shared.
“The first year we bought it, we drove the car all the way down to Spokane, Washington, and back and never even added a quart of oil. On the way back, we stopped in Sicamous, BC, to inquire about renting a houseboat and we went out of the office.
Across the way was a couple getting off a Harley and he tears off his helmet and shouts, ‘Did you buy that car off a lot in Edmonton?’ and I said yes. He had seen the car on the lot in west Edmonton. It is a small world, but a long ways to walk it,” laughed Brian.
“You never know the people you meet along the way. We stopped going to car shows for a bit and it seemed like we took the cars out, washed them and then put them back in storage. We said to each other, we have to stop doing that. We need to enjoy the cars more and we are doing that now because we are retired,” Brian said.
FUN FACTS
This information is courtesy of Wikipedia. Since the Mustang was introduced four months before the usual start of the 1965 production year, the earliest Mustangs are widely referred to as the 1964 and a half model by enthusiasts.
Standard equipment for the early 1965 Mustangs included black front seat belts, a glove box light, and a padded dashboard. Production began on March 9, 1964. Mustang Serial number one was sold on April 14, 1964, at the George Parsons Ford dealership in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada.
The V8 models were identified with a badge on the front fender that spelled out the engine’s cubic inch displacement (260 or 289) over a wide V.
Several changes to the Mustang occurred at the start of the normal 1965 model year in August 1964, about four months after its introduction. These cars are known as late ‘65s. The engine lineup was changed from a 170 or 200 engine to a 260 or 289 engine with a two-barrel carburetor as the base V8.
