Factory Find

Sometimes you search for years to find the right car, and sometimes the right car finds you. That’s how it worked for Joe and Linda Beutler. In May 1999, while visiting the K.A.R. Mustang showroom in Columbus, Ohio, they saw this spotless ’89 GT convertible.

Great, they thought, but they weren’t in the market to buy. “We had no intention of purchasing another Mustang,” Joe says. “We were restoring a ’65 at the time.”

But you know how good deals are — they don’t always pop up at convenient times. They work their own schedule.

So here was this immaculate ’89 GT convertible, barely broken in and just 10 years old.

“The more we looked around, the more the car looked at us and gave us a wink,” Joe says. Every guy knows that once you get the wink, it’s downhill from there.

“Before we knew it, the paperwork was drawn up and the car followed us home.” Hey, it followed them home. What are you gonna do?

Joe and Linda gave the very cherry Mustang a good looking over and saw that it was well equipped, with a five-speed trans; power windows; brakes; steering; top, premium sound system; tilt column; and white leather buckets. Not bad. The exterior carries the factory coat of Oxford White, 100 percent original.

Looking at the car, it’s obvious that it’s had the best possible treatment. The vinyl-covered steering wheel has no wear areas; the cheap factory carpet is still fresh and stain-free; and the seats are neither sagging nor scuffed. It has also been spared from the corrosive Ohio winters and wrench-happy hot-rodders. It’s just about as original as a Mustang can get, right down to the OEM Gatorback P225/60VR15 rubber. When they bought it, it had only 2,500 miles on it.

So what do you do with a time capsule? If you drive it, you devalue it and erode its originality with every mile. You also risk catastrophe from chatty cell-phone abusers, texting teens, fleeing car thieves, rolling meth labs, giant trucks, and the odd drunk.

The Beutlers found it irresistible and did a bit of pleasant-weather driving, top down, 5.0 under the hood, grabbing gears — life was good. But it nearly came to an end during a weekend pleasure cruise.

“We drove it for a little while, until one Sunday afternoon a young girl almost rear-ended us,” Joe says.

That was the end of the ’89’s road work.

“The car was immediately brought home and put in the box,” Joe says.

Thereafter, it led a pampered life of careful preservation. In 2001, it found a new purpose.
“Our son, Dan, who is also a Mustang owner, suggested taking the car to an MCA show in Franklin, Tennessee,” Joe says. That opened up a whole new avenue of fun. A friend coached them on how to prep the car. They followed his advice closely: detail cleaning the car, top to bottom, inside and out, and under the hood. Rolling into its place on the show field, the ’89 was in top form. It “wowed” the judges, and when the weekend was over, the low-mile convertible had won Gold its first time out.

It was a good experience for Joe and Linda, who have now become regulars at Mustang shows, and the ’89 that gave ’em a wink and followed them home has racked up a lot more gold.

“Now, 10 years later, the car has 28 Golds and one Platinum, and it received its third medallion at Waldorf, Maryland, last September,” Linda says proudly. “It’s fully documented with the original window sticker, drive-away tag, and a whole notebook of paperwork.”

She says that people are usually surprised to find it has so few miles. She’s even had a few offers to sell, but so far it’s not for sale. For her, the fun of the shows is travel.

“I like going to the shows, meeting new people, seeing new places,” she says. “It has opened a whole new world to me. It’s something that our son, Dan, and I get to do together.”

Take a look around, and it seems like every Mustang built from 1979 to the end of the run in 1993 has been chopped up, patched together, repainted, patched some more, and thrashed within an inch of its life. But that impression is just an illusion based on the battle-scarred beaters we encounter on the street and in parking lots. There really are fine Fox Mustangs left. They’re just not in everyday circulation. They’re carefully tucked away, preserving the history of the breed, preserving the factory find.