I love Mavericks and Comets. I grew up with a 1973 Comet GT that entered the yard…it showed up painted red and black, with a hit on the driver’s side behind the door that was mild enough to be ignored. It had a screamer of a 302 under the hood, and an automatic in place of it’s original manual transmission (the clutch pedal was left buried against the firewall.) It wound up painted monochrome black because it was cheap and the owner didn’t like red cars, and it had a toggle-switch start because someone had attacked the column with a cold chisel and maybe a ten-pound sledgehammer. It was the car I learned how to drive like an aggressive a-hole in. Name it, I learned how to do it in that car. Short of jumping it and skating it on two wheels, that Comet was the lesson in extra-curricular vehicle control that probably saved my ass more than a couple of times when I first learned how to drive on public streets…legally.

I wish I knew what happened to that car, but it’s been nearly twenty years since I saw any sign of it, so the likelihood of it still existing is pretty much shot. But this car is ripe for the picking. Bucket seats, V8, floor-shift automatic, and what promises to be a deep-geared rear end already sound like a blast. The question is if it runs and drives. It’s already got an earlier small front bumper on it, and a new grille setup, so the ugliness can be mitigated. And who knows, maybe a quick Comet wash will bring out some of the paint. We’d get to swap-meet hunting for a set of slot mags and would get the new trunk lid painted up and installed. If the unknown small Ford underhood runs, there would be minimal investment needed. Non-running, you might push to the limit of the Rough Start budget, but it should be feasible to get the car running and driving. Maybe not pretty, but moving well enough to go learn how to drive like you really mean it.

Craigslist Link: 1973 Mercury Comet