Friday, July 4, 2008

A Gift to A Friend



It's interesting how people are drawn together. The Mustang community is HUGE!! I was never aware of the magnitude of it until I became a part of it. I now have friends from all over the country, from all walks of life, who have this one commom interst. Mustangs.



Now if the Mustang community is huge, the SVO community is small. With less than 10,000 cars ever built, and the estimated survivors thought to be in the 4-5000 range, the opportunity to build a community seems small. Actually the opposite is tue. Maybe it's the small numbers, maybe it because the SVO is an underdog.....who knows? Either way, SVO owners are a tight knit group. I've made many friends since I got involved with the SVO, some I speak to occasionally, some I speak to everyday. Many of them I've never met, but we're friends because of our common interest, the SVO.



Anyways, I want to relate the story of a cool event that happened recently which highlights this viewpoint. It's the story of my friend Mike Burson who is also known as 85ttops on http://www.svoca.com/



I met Mike about three years ago when I went to the glass shop where he worked because I was looking for some window sealer for my 84 SVO. I new the factory stuff was called butyl so I asked for that. Mike told me not to use that and to use the newer urethane sealants. I told him I wanted to keep it original so give me the butyl. Mike wanted to have a look at my car so we went out the front and I showed it to him. He said, "the front end looks funny" I said "it's an SVO it came that way" I then proceeded to give him a bit of a history lesson.



Turns out Mike was a total Mustang nut. At the time I think he had five ot them in various states of repair. His pride and joy was his 82 t-top car which had an inline 6cyl and automatic with a red interior. We became good friends and hung out a lot working on our cars at his place through the summer.



Unfortunately, his 82 t-top was totalled by a driver who ran a stop sign not long after this. Mike was pretty devestated so I made a few calls to some friends in L.A. who have large collections of SVO and Turbo 4's, PatinL.A. & Eyelawdoc, to see if they had a car they might be willing to sell to Mike for the price he would get from his insurance payout. Sure enough, Pat and 'doc had a car to match the price and so a deal was done. This is how Mike came to own his famous "Burnt 84". We call it this beacuse it's an 84 SVO that was orignally silver but that recieved a cheap black paintjob which over time has come to look like someone hit it with a flamethrower!!! Mike is on the left in the phot at the top of this entry.



So the work contiuned, 8.8 rear end in his, fuel pump in mine, repairs to mine when I t-boned a Camry, interior work on his, new clutch and a bunch of other stuff in mine.......you get the idea. Bear in mind that all this work was done at Mike's house because I lived in apartment at the time.



Time led us to move away, me to Portland, OR to work in the film business and him to Bullhead City, AZ. We speak on the phone regularly and got to hang out at the Fabulous Ford's Forever show at Knott's Berryfarm this year but I always miss swinging wrenches with him and sharing our love for our cars.



I know he love's his SVO but I also know he's also wanted another t-top car. Suffice to say he was a little bummed when he heard I was buying the car that is actually the subject of this blog. So, when not a week later, another, t-top SVO turned up, something had to be done. It was first posted by a couple of members on the board that they'd seen a rough 85 t-top SVO sitting on the side of the road in Big Bear, CA. The first person to respopnd was Mike and I could picture him sitting at his computer drooling.



Over the course of the follwing few days there was a flurry of e-mails between svoca members from the west coast and beyond. The decision was made that we should buy the car and give it to Mike. A group of us all made doations and a few others made the extra effort to go and broker the deal with the owner and tow the car for Mike. The car is now in Mike's possesion in Arizona and in the conversation's I've had with him since, the words excited or stoked don't really convey the emotions. For my own part, I was just glad to be a part of doing a good thing for a good friend. Anyone else involved, please feel free to add a comment if you like.

For me it's an example of how a community can grow from a shared common interest. A close knit community of friends who go above and beyond the call for each other.