Barn Finds, one-owner cars, and original finds are all the craze nowadays. People will pay thousands more for dirt and patina that is just going to be washed away and sanded off. Even with these known facts, we have to admit we are a sucker for a cool original project car.
This 1979 Ford Mustang Indy Pace Car that recently sold on eBay fits at least two, if not all of those trendy categories. The seller said that he bought it from the original owners back in 2016 with what they claimed was just 18,000 miles on it — a fact however that even he questions. The car was said to run and drive at the time, but is still in need of some major attention these days.
Purchased back then for the price of $4,000 dollars, the seller was well on his way to living out his restoration dreams.Fast forward to 2017 and the car made its way to eBay for sale again. The seller admitted that he didn’t have time to restore it and would rather spend his time washing and waxing something already finished.
The seller said that the car came with an extra engine that he had $3,000 dollars in, putting his total investment to $7,000 dollars. He didn’t make that back, however. When all was said and done, the last bid came in at $1,550 dollars at which the car sold. Leaving us to ask the question, was this a steal? The car seemingly needs a total restoration, but all the key parts and pieces are there.
As cool as they are, these Pace Car seats are in pretty rough shape! The new owner could easily spend the initial cost of the car in restoring these seats to show room condition.
With just under 15,000 1979 Pace Cars were built, and less than 6,000 those were turbo four-cylinders, it is definitely one of the more rare Foxes out there. After looking over all the photos, even knowing the thousands of dollars to be spent to restore this one, we would still have had a hard time not throwing a bid or two to score this one for around $1,500.
If you want to see more of what you missed out on, you can check out the original listing and decide for yourself if this was a steal by clicking here.
The seller stated that when he had this engine built 18 years ago it was ready to make 400 horsepower. We would definitely want to pop the valve covers and oil pan off of this one before we took that horsepower number to the bank, however.