For the past few years, I’ve promised Austin Griggs, the man behind Ratty Muscle Cars, that I would bring a car to his race that met the qualifications to run. For the past few years, I’ve shown up and shot several galleries of photos and provided plenty of coverage…but each and every time, when I’m getting ready to leave, I put my gear up, put the bag back in the Angry Grandpa Chrysler, and I roll out. Not this year. If I was going to go to his 2nd annual Mopar vs. Brand X race this year, I told myself, it would be in a car worthy of appearing at a Ratty Muscle Cars race. But what would I take?

With the original car, the Imperial, long gone, I had narrowed the selection down to three: the Dirty Cougar, the Rough Start Fox, and the Great Pumpkin Mustang, in that order. The 1987 Cougar was in good running condition, with Chris Conn building the car into something rowdy during his ownership. It’d be nothing to commute that car down, drive around the Bankhead National Forest on a 40-mile cruise, and make a lap or two down Jake’s Dragstrip. But fate intervened when the Cougar wound up stuffed underneath a Chevy S-10. The red 1989 Mustang was the car I really wanted to have done for this…302, five-speed and the perfect break-in trip? Yes, please! The problems surrounding that car involve the fuel system from the firewall forward (we have to engineer everything in order to use the original 4-cylinder line locations) and the transmission, which as of writing refuses to play nicely during installation. Even if it did, there’s still some very questionable main wiring that could be problematic for engine operations that needs to be addressed.

That left the Great Pumpkin. The 4.2L is weak-sauce on it’s best day, the roof skin is threatening to rip itself off any day now, and we didn’t have 100 miles on the new five-lug suspension swap. If we have to be really technical, the swap isn’t complete yet: the sway bar still needs to be bolted on up front and I need to order in the adjustable camber plates that the SN-95 swap requires, but we had the car aligned, the brakes bled out enough to be useable, and had been driving the car around Bowling Green ever since we ditched the Cobra R wheels you saw in the last update for a set of 2005-ish Mustang GT wheels that we scored for a couple hundred bucks. I wasn’t completely confident, and Haley echoed that by upgrading our AAA coverage so that I could be towed home so long as I was within 180 miles of the driveway.

There are few times in life where I’m happy to wake up at three-something in the morning, but at 4 a.m. the whole neighborhood knew that I was going on a trip. Happily, the only other people who seemed to stir were Haley and my next-door neighbor Jake, who was preparing for the first day of deer-hunting season and was heading out in the hopes of bringing home some fresh venison. The theme of the morning was “trepidation”. I knew that the car would drive well enough at speeds up to 60 miles per hour. What I didn’t know and was concerned about was how the car would do on a three-hour Interstate drive that included a couple of substantial uphill sections. So once I reached the town of Franklin, I turned onto Interstate 65 South, turned on the speedometer app on my phone (we know the speedometer is off with the new gearset and tire combination) and went for it. In short order the car delivered it’s terms: at about 65 miles per hour, everything would be fine. Push further, and the temperature gauge started to climb upwards quickly. Finding the Mustang’s terms agreeable (and finding that 65 MPH was 77 MPH indicated) I buckled down for the cruise, which was uneventful save for the first fuel stop, when the starter relay stuck and I had to beat on it with a can of glass cleaner.

I had given myself four hours to get down to Moulton, Alabama. I didn’t need to…I was at Jake’s Dragstrip no later than 7:30 in the morning, and had beat everybody but one of the track staffers there. But it didn’t take long for the cars to start rolling in, with Austin being the first, towing his calling-card Dodge Coronet in for the event from his home in South Carolina. In true Ratty Muscle Cars style, once he had the truck and trailer where he wanted, he went under the hood to yank one of the Ram’s batteries out for the Coronet…then proceeded to yeet himself about seven feet back while screaming obscenities, now fully awake. “Curiosity killed the cat” couldn’t have been more appropriate:“Surprise Copperhead” is not a good thing. A surprised, and pissed-off baby copperhead is a bad day if you aren’t careful. Austin wasn’t having any of this and was looking for the nearest implement to kill it with. I’m more of a live-and-let-live type, so with help from some of the other racers trickling in, we got the snake out of the truck, onto the ground, and into a discarded windshield wiper package where it could crawl into and hide. I then took serpent to the far end of the track’s woodline, opened the package and left the little one near a sunbeam and some leaves to hide in. My good deed for the day must’ve been rewarded, because the remainder of the day could not have been better. The weather was freaking gorgeous…sunny T-shirt weather in the middle of November. Excellent road conditions. The perfect tree-lined look when we cruised the forest. And beautiful sunset racing. You could not have asked for anything more. I spent the better part of the afternoon hanging around Dylan McCool and his copper-colored Chrysler Cordoba, a 400-powered luxo-sled that sounded a lot rowdier than any ‘Doba should have the right to. I even got a chance to lay into it, and the Cordoba spun quick before digging in properly. Unfortunately, the car’s street manners didn’t translate on the track, and a header gasket was wasted on his first pass leaving the ‘Doba sounding like Christine in her “just found” stage, but there is a lot of potential there and with a bit of tuning, that car should be beastly. Seeing what he’s done with less, It should go well.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay all night, and after running a 12.3 1/8th mile, I wasn’t keen to keep racing, so as the sun disappeared below the horizon I bid my farewell and headed north, hoping to beat a weather system that was coming into the region. I missed Nashville traffic, I didn’t see any temperature spikes or feel anything worrysome. In fact, the only thing that failed the whole trip was the head unit, which committed suicide in a cloud of choking burnt electronics smoke shortly after leaving Decatur, Alabama. I rolled into the driveway somewhere near ten at night, with over 450 miles on the clock, having burned through about 28 gallons of gasoline. Jake had just gotten home too, having scored a ten-point buck with good size on him.

More will be coming soon regarding the Mopar vs. Brand X race later this week. But as I’m typing this, I’m celebrating the win: this wasn’t a shakedown, this was a trial-by-fire for a full suspension rebuild on this car. I didn’t trust anything to work out…the engine is tired, the brakes are still super-spongy and barely there even after professional bleeding, and the suspension I did myself…enough said there. It worked flawlessly. 2020 has been a shitshow of epic proportions, but Saturday was a day full of win, smoked stereo and all. The Mustang lives. It needs overdrive in a bad way and I need to save up for something from Wilwood or Baer or Brembo or somewhere, but it lives.