The Ford Mustang is the car that America loves…except those made between 1971 and 1978, it seems. The final form of the first generation Mustang got big to accept big engines at precisely the wrong moment in time, right at the junction between insurance companies gouging the loud and proud forms of the muscle cars, and the OPEC crisis, which suddenly made everything look inefficient and problematic…and made Toyotas and Datsuns suddenly look pretty damn good. The Mustang II…well, when Lee Iacocca wanted the Mustang to become the “little jewel” that the 1964 car strived to be, something got lost in translation. The V8 got dumped for a year, the performance downgraded to appearance packages, and most of them coming out looking…well, hell, crucify me for saying it, but the Mustang II Ghia reminds me of every two-door K-car with a padded roof that Lido cranked out during his Chrysler days. Same general shape, same general reaction from my heart, brain and gut.
To many Ford fans, the best Mustang from that time period was not called Mustang at all. It was called Maverick and truth be told, they have a point. It still utilized the Falcon chassis, it still had the same basic spread of engines from thrifty sixes to small-block V8s, and there were variants that could clean house on the unsuspecting when ordered right. And they were decent lookers, too, especially the early small-bumper cars with the Grabber appearance package, which this particular 1971 seems to have.
The off-white and green Washington plates went out sometime before 1988, which makes us wonder how long this four-lug automatic car has been down for. The story goes that the original six was yanked out in favor of a V8, then that was yanked out and it’s been sitting with nothing in the engine bay since. The Grabber hood, the dual sport mirrors and the black interior have us thinking V8 Maverick. A 302, a C4 automatic and you’re got it running. A five-lug swap is necessary, but we’d go out of our way to locate slot mags that are a little more 1970s spec to fill out the wheelwells. After that, the cleanup is on you, but we’d go for a restored look outside and inside while making it act and behave like one of those mythical Shelby Mavericks that theoretically existed in Mexico. $1,900 gets you a roller, ready to go.
