Real Life; Hot Rods: Vintage Mustang Concept Car Spotted

A couple years ago I had the wife’s G35 in for repairs after she filled her deer tag for the season.

I was talking to the shop owner and he told me he had an old concept car in the the shop. When we went back I saw this beauty.

Apparently the car had broken down while on a joy ride and when the owner left it to get help, the car was vandalized so needed some paint repairs. While it was in the shop they were doing some other repairs including some wiring in the cabin and replacing the hydraulic rear suspension with stock Mustang components.

This car looks like Ford’s 1992 Mustang Mach 3 Concept but close observation and a little research show that it is in fact a copy; a very good copy. This car captures the “look” of the Ford concept well while remaining a practical car. If you look at pictures of the Ford show cars (there were actually two built) you will see that the windscreen is much lower and has a Kaiser-esque heart shape to it where our featured car has a stock Mustang windshield.

Ford built two Mach 3 concept cars, one red and one green. The red one was destroyed in a shipping accident. The green one sold at a Christie’s Auction in 2002 for $491,500.

You know those giant gumball machines in grocery stores with the long spiral slide that your kid always has to put a quarter in? The guy who built this replica Mach 3 is Dave Haymond, the same guy who designed those gumball machines. And he built it in his garage over a ten year period. There was talk at one time of building more of these or offering some sort of kit to build them but I can’t find any info on whether that ever happened. The original car that Mr. Haymond put together at one point was auctioned for something like $38,000. A far cry from the value of the Ford built concept car but cheap enough you could drive a recognizable icon on the road without turning your hair white worrying about its value.