If you don’t know me by now, it should be apparent that I’m going to look for the “freaks and geeks” at any given car show instead of what most people would be hunting for. My time at Holley’s Intergalactic Ford Fest was spent no differently. Since the show was taking on a bit of an LS Fest vibe, I took a similar line of thinking. Instead of hunting down non-GM LS cars, I’d hunt down anything that wasn’t a 1987-or-newer Ford Mustang and go from there. Not to be unkind to the Mustangs, but being an NMRA event as well, plus the proliferation of aero-nosed 5.0 cars, I was ready for anything. Give me a Mustang II. Give me an LTD. Give me…a Ford Courier?!

I’ve had some history with Couriers over the years. When my stepfather first entered my life, he had a lifted one in turd brown that I thought was Bigfoot, parked in my grandfather’s driveway. When I lived in Washington as a kid, our next-door neighbor had a little white one that she used to haul iris plants by the ton. My thoughts then: too small, too underpowered, nothing I was bothered with. They were a spartan, plain truck I wanted no part of. Now, fast forward twenty years and I was thrilled to see three in any condition, let alone what was on the property at Beech Bend. One was flat black and was hiding a turbocharged 2.3L four, one was red, bone-stock and had a pretty decent price tag in the swap meet, and then there was this matching red number, laid out on the lawn and staying with a stock-but-customized look. You noticed the pinstripes, you noticed the cut-out in the bed for the suspension, but you also noticed the otherwise standard interior, the stock steering wheel, the sweet dog-dish caps, and so on. It appeared to be a project-in-progress to a degree, but we’d take it as-is…both Chad and I agreed that it was good.