Final Parking Space: 1984 Ford Mustang GT Convertible

Six decades after the introduction of the Mustang, Ford’s iconic pony car is now in its seventh generation. Earlier this year, we looked at an export-market second-generation Mustang in a Colorado car graveyard, and now here’s one of its third-generation successors in a different Denver-area facility.

This car is a member of the incredibly successful Ford Fox-body family, which debuted with the Ford Fairmont/Mercury Zephyr for the 1978 model year and stayed in production through the 1993 Mustang (or the 2004 Mustang, if you consider the Fox-derived SN95 platform to be a true Fox-body).

The 1979–1993 Mustang hits the sweet spot in which “old enough to be cool” overlaps with “cheap enough to build a race car out of.” I see plenty of these cars during my junkyard travels, although discarded examples of the 1974–1978 Mustang II and 1994–2004 SN95 Mustangs tend to be easier to find than reasonably intact Fox-body Mustangs nowadays.

Convertible Fox Mustangs are tough to find in places like this, since the appeal of rollin’ like Vanilla Ice in your 5.0 ragtop remains powerful to this day.

Yes, this car is a genuine, numbers-matching Mustang GT convertible with a 5.0-liter V-8 under its hood.

This Windsor-family pushrod engine was known as the 302 for many years, first appearing in production cars for the 1968 model year and powering new U.S.-market SUVs into our current century.

If original, this one is a throttle-body-injected version rated at 165 horsepower and 245 lb-ft. That was decent power for the first year after the end of the Malaise Era.

If you bought your 1984 Mustang GT with the base five-speed manual, you got a 175-horse 5.0 with an old-fashioned four-barrel carburetor. This car has the optional four-speed automatic.

Let’s take a look at the build tag, shall we? This car was born at the River Rouge complex in Dearborn and sold out of the Denver sales office. The paint is Light Canyon Red.

In fact, this car came off the assembly line right about the time I was graduating from high school in the East Bay. A new Mustang was about as far out of my financial reach as an intergalactic starship at that time, though I did own a 1969 Toyota Corona and a 1958 Volkswagen Beetle at that time (total purchase price for the two: $100, or about $309 in 2024 dollars).

This missing star-shaped dealer badge most likely came from Courtesy Ford in Denver, just a few miles from this Mustang’s final parking space.

There was a full set of “wire wheel” hubcaps inside.

If you wanted a factory hood scoop in a new 1984 Mustang, you had to buy the SVO. This car has received an aftermarket scoop transplant.

It appears to be two hoods glued together, in fact.

The interior must have been in pretty good shape, because junkyard shoppers bought nearly all of it.

I’m a little surprised that a rust-free and reasonably straight early Fox Mustang convertible with factory V8 ended up in a place like this, but you never know what you’ll find in the junkyard.

Such a romantic car.