We all know that from time to time our significant others point out that we sure do spend a lot of time working on our Cougars. And it does seem that there is not always a lot to show for the time we invest.
So we could do other useful things, or not:
Wow, neat, but I think I’ll stick to the Cougar…
There’s a guy about 3 blocks from me that LIVES to play in demolition derbies; and his favorite derby cars for years have been the big 1980’s Ford/Mercury wagons - think “Family Truxter” from Natioanl Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.
He’d buy one from a junkyard, get the drivetrain running, put a small home-built ‘cage’ in it, mount a big “hoop” of pipe in between the radiator and the grille, primer everything and go derby-ing. He managed to keep one for 4-5 years; bringing it home, pulling the frame back out, making it semi-straight, welding in more pipe to hold together the weakened points, pounding out the dents in the doors and the quarters and spraybomb-ing new primer. The car would look “showroom new” - at least compared to the shape it was in when he’d drag it home.
Never saw him bring home the BIG trophies, but he’s stayed at it for the last 15 years; and I think he’s finally accomplished one thing… there are NO late-80’s Ford/Merc wagons to be found in junkyards over four counties in two states! He’s now campaigning a GM (Buick? Olds?) wagon. I wonder how many of those are laying around…