During the Christmas holidays, members of the Hager family had three Mustangs corralled at their house in northern Rowan County.
Whey were all classic steeds Ð bright, shiny and ready to gallop at a moment’s notice.
But the Hagers didn’t have to worry about feeding ’em hay or oats. A little gas and oil served just fine.
The Mustangs aren’t of the four-legged variety, they’re all collectible automobiles produced by Ford Motor Co. in 1967.
The cars belong to Joe Hager and his children — 24-year-old Jamie and 22-year-old Josh.
“Mine’s the fastest of the three,” Josh said of his Mustang, a dark blue coupe powered by a 302-cubic-inch engine. “Dad’s is the luxury edition and Jamie’s catches the most attention because it’s a convertible.”
The story of how the three Hagers all came to drive Mustangs of the same vintage is an interesting one.
Joe was just 20 when he bought his car back in 1968. The vehicle, which features such accessories as air conditioning, power steering and brakes, had only had 7,400 miles on it at the time.
Over the years, Joe’s gone through a lot of changes. He’s married, graduated college and pharmaceutical school, and fathered a pair of children.
But the Mustang has remained the one constant in his life. It’s green with a black vinyl top and now has more than 233,000 miles on its odometer.
The car remains an every day driver for Joe, a pharmacist with CVS Pharmacy.
“I’d never redo it and park it just to keep it nice,” Joe said of his beloved Mustang. “You either drive it or park it and cover it up. To me, that’s the fun of having the car – seeing the reaction of the other people when you’re driving.”
About six years ago, Josh came home one day to find the Mustang that was to become his car sitting in the driveway.
The car was a junker, family members readily admit, and Joe had bought it primarily to swap its wheels with those on his own Mustang.
“It was really in pitiful shape,” Joe said of Josh’s Mustang. “You could look in the windows and see clear through to the ground. The floor pans were rusted completely through.”
Joe admitted he was unsure whether to fix the car or sell it, but made up his mind to keep it after his son perused the vehicle a couple of times.
“Oh, the work we’ve done to it,” Josh said, laughing as he spoke.
That maintenance has included new floor pans, a new interior, a new paint job and extensive motor work.
But Josh, who works and lives in Raleigh, said the labor has been well rewarded. He said he’s now as big a fan of muscle cars — the name given to vehicles with big-block motors that were produced in the late 1960s — as his father.
“If you get stopped at a red light beside another Mustang, you have to rev the motor,” Josh said. “That’s the muscle car greeting.”
Jamie’s Mustang is the last to be added to the Hager family’s fold.
The car was purchased via the Internet auction site E-bay just two years ago. Her car is maroon with a black convertible top.
It’s also the only Mustang in the family that doesn’t come with a V8 motor. Jamie’s is equipped with an economical six-cylinder engine.
“Christmas around here is a lot of car parts,” Jamie said of the gifts family members exchange as they strive to keep their Mustangs in topnotch shape.
Jamie, who graduated from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and who still lives in Greensboro, said she owned a Honda before getting her Mustang, but didn’t get the same thrill driving her import as she gets from her Ford.
“I grew up riding around in Dad’s Mustang,” she said. “Every time I saw one, I thought of him or my brother.”
Jamie and her father painted the car in the yard behind the family home one day last summer. She’s also installed a roll bar at the insistence of her mother, Bernice, and generally enjoys the attention she receives from driving a classic vehicle.
“Men will stop beside me at traffic lights and say, ‘How much you want for your car?’ ” Jamie said. “It’s a hoot.”
The three cars can be identified by the license plates they wear. Joe’s reads “Bummer,” Josh’s is “Bummer-2” and Jamie’s is “Bummer-3.”
Joe said when he first went to get a personalized plate, he sought either “Med Man” or “Rx Man” in tribute to his profession.
He said he was dismayed to learn that both those license plates had been taken.
“I said, ‘Man, what a bummer,’ ” Joe said, explaining the idea behind the current license plates.
Family members often wear tan short-sleeved shirts adorned with a miniature Mustang and the word, “Bummer.”
Bernice is the only Hager family member not to drive a Mustang, but don’t feel sorry for her. She’s got a classic car of her own – a 1979 Chevrolet Corvette.
Contact Steve Huffman at 704-797-4247 or shuffman@salisburypost.com
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