It’s Mustang Madness At McKenna’s
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Del.icio.usAmerica’s love affair with affordable performance has not waned since the Ford Mustang premiered in the mid 1960s. Now, 44 years later, the appreciation for the sporty and affordable pony car continues in Kailua this weekend with an entire day dedicated to the Mustang and all things Ford.
The 16th annual free Mustang Madness show is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday at Mike McKenna’s Windward Ford on Kailua Road. It benefits American Cancer Society and features crafts, food, car care products, clothing and more than 120 Ford products including, of course, the vaunted Mustang.
For Don Johnston, a board member of Aloha Mustang & Shelby Club of Hawaii, the car’s popularity is a no-brainer. Unlike the drove of competitors that have come and gone, he explained, the Mustang meets every driving need.
“It’s a sports car that’s also a family car. One of the reasons it has survived so well is that unlike many other of the so-called pony cars, it is so versatile,” said the owner of a 1966 Shelby GT-350. (Johnston’s wife, Carol, owns two vintage models, a ‘65 GT convertible and a ‘68 hard top.)
“It can be your daily grocery getter or your smoke-the-tires, or everything between. It has always been that type of car. Even in the 1990s the production Ford Mustang outsold the Camaro, the Corvette and the Firebird, all at the same time. And it did that for 12 years.”
The AMSCH began in 1979 and claims more than 100 members who will show off their pride in Detroit steel Sunday with Mustangs dating from the very beginning to classic T-birds, big-engined road screamers boasting the famed Boss 429, Model T’s, A.C. Cobras, Panteras, early Ford-powered hot rods and much more.
“We have everything from daily drivers to race cars. The idea is ‘pride in your ride.’ It’s those people who have their six-cylinder, 3-year-old Mustang who have the same pride as someone who has a 40-year-old muscle Mustang to the person who has one of the new supercharged ones.”
Johnston’s love affair with the American icon began years ago when he saw them tooling around the streets of Honolulu. Decades later, the thrill has not subsided. “It started in high school,“he said. “I saw these Shelby Mustangs and Cobras as well as the Mustangs coming out, and they didn’t look like anything I had seen. Everything else looked kind of matronly. We had Falcons, and we had Lancers, and we had much more simple styling. Here we have much more aggressive and sporty styling that caught everyone’s attention - including mine.”
For details, call 293-2685.
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