Junkyard Find: 1979 Ford Mustang "Indy 500 Pace Car Edition"
1979 was the first year for the Fox Platform Mustang, and Ford celebrated by grabbing the rights to show off their new machine at the 1979 Indianapolis 500. You could buy a street version of the Indy 500 Mustang pace car, and many did. Many others, a few years later, bought the galloping-horses-and-tape-stripes decal kit for their non-Pace Car Edition Mustangs. I’m pretty sure that this car— which I found in a California self-service yard— belongs in the latter group… but not completely sure.
This car was so much better than the Pinto-based Mustang that preceded it (not to mention the bloated early-70s monstrosities that preceded that car) that Jackie Stewart had no problems finding nice things to say about it.
The true pace car ’79s were all painted in “pewter,” which this suspiciously primer-looking paint might have been, 34 years ago.
You can see a bit of the crazy op art upholstery that was used in all the 1979 Pace Car Editions.
Pace Car Edition ’79 Mustangs came with a choice of the 302-cubic-inch V8 or the turbocharged 2300 “Pinto” engine. This here is the non-turbocharged Pinto engine. You decide— is this a garden-variety four-banger Fox Mustang, worth scrap value, or a genuine special edition pace car, worth twice scrap value?
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Hagerty and The Truth About Cars.
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^Original-appearing being a reference to the inside of the door and the engine bay, the rest is a horrendous respray including a very saddening masking job on the decals.
Hey, what junkyard did you find this in? I need a door from that car. Oh, and yes, I have one, and I'm fairly certain that's the real deal.