jack_mustang

Seems like every year or two we hear about a story like this. The year was 1974, Lojack and The Club hadn’t been invented yet. Jack Klunder was a high-school kid in the San Fernando Valley who had driven his 1966 Mustang to a local school to play some b-ball. When he returned to the parking lot, his $800 investment was gone. Back then a 1966 Mustang was unlikely to have been viewed as any sort of future collector car, after all, it was only eight years old. So, most likely, Jack and his dad quickly got over the loss and Jack found some other used vehicle to get himself around the LA suburbs.

Fast forward a few decades. Jack has a family, he’s developed an affinity for Mustangs, he’s even bought and fixed up a couple for his daughters. One day while he is off to work his wife gets a phone call. It’s a CHP officer with the news that they located the stolen Mustang. Heck, it is such an unexpected call that Jack’s wife initially thinks the officer is talking about on of their daughters’ Mustang. A woman who had unknowingly acquired the stolen vehicle some time ago was trying to sell it. The prospective buyer ran a VIN check and was cued in that it may be stolen. Somehow this alerted the CHP. Clearly this was a case solved by administrative safeguards, as officers hadn’t been actively working on the case of a stolen Mustang for 35 years – which is a good thing for us taxpayers.

I used to think such stories were cheesy, but lately I am intrigued by them. If you think about it, had Jack owned practically any other type of car, there would be virtually no chance of that vehicles existence thirty, even ten, years later. However, because this was a classic Mustang, perhaps even the thieves knew it was worth keeping intact. Furthermore, had it been any other car, Jack probably wouldn’t have developed a passion for them over the course of his life. So kudos to Jack and his family for getting a bit of his past back as a present from the CHP.