not *so* bad from twenty feet away
In 2020, we fled Queens for the shore after two months of lockdown in our two-bedroom apartment, and my mornings were consumed with entertaining walks with my two-and-a-half year old. Sometimes we saw historic landmarks from various vantages.
Lucy the Elephant and a two year old, June 2020.
I have always wondered about this Victorian-era boutique hotel’s rear window placement.
And we saw the lies of local developers.
Read the sign. Read it. It says “New Construction”. I remember walking past this house with my grandfather, seeing the weird tall dormer getting added – must have been 1980. Note the bendy framing.
On one of those walks, I found a truly broken horse. Parked next to the office of the Gulf service station two blocks from the Margate house – where I replaced a cast wheel on my old Subaru six years ago – here was this 1971 white Mustang, with god knows what under the hood. I remember, as a twelve year old, reading a biography of Lee Iaccoca that my mother had passed down from her MBA classes – so, published in 1986? – that described the public and market response to these bloated, ungainly coupes. And I recalled the passages I had read thirty-three years before as I beheld the beached whale in all its rotting mass, with my sleeping son in his all-terrain yuppie stroller.
Looming front quarter view, my back to the fence.
Because of the context – all that horrible pandemic context, eight weeks of sirens through my bedsprings context – My consciousness was primed – unlike the rotting sheet metal of the hulk – to see death and wreck and wrack and decay all around. And here it was.
I thought of all the people I knew with bad oral hygiene.
The gas station attendant told me it belonged, like the boat next to it, to the wife of the absentee owner of the garage, and that it had been rolled and dumped into position twenty years before. So this is twenty years of salt spray and rain and snow and sea air and inattention.
An ugly car.
There were other cars I saw in Margate that first pandemic spring and summer, but this was without a single doubt the junkiest.
You could smell the dumpf.
(Margate, New Jersey, June 2020.)
That is weirdly fascinating how that Mustang, particularly the hood, is rusting. The interior picture does a terrific job of conveying the stench that undoubtedly permeates this poor car.
When the house is put back on the ground, with new siding, new foundation, and new interior, that would be new construction, would it not? That said, the “Do Not Enter” sign in front of the house does seem to capture the general aura of the place.
It looks like salty water first ate through the metal around the scoops, then ran down under the inside of the hood and got caught by the lip where did its thing. I had a neighbor for years who had a 1970 Chevrolet impala convertible under a tarp next to my house. He “planned to restore it.” The tarp gradually receded towards the ground as the car rusted out under it. It must’ve been a tough day when he finally realized he had to let go of the dream. Thai looks like the same scenario.
(responding to the house comment). Ah, the sweet mystery of life and Margate real estate. So, full disclosure, the reconstructed house was sold last year for two million. Let me explain a little why whoever bought it was stupid.
If you look at the federal flood maps, this particular house is in a swale, with maximum elevation of seven feet above sea level on unserer Absecon Sandbar, Hurricane Sandy stuffed four feet of sand in the first floor. The reason the house – originally a one and a half story salt-box Cape Cod – was lifted was because there was a grant program for house lifts for holders of federal flood insurance, but the original homeowners couldn’t swing the total cost of construction and sold it for nine hundred in 2019, to an Israeli developer whom I am very, very familiar, who fronted the renovation expenses and sold it on. The footprint of the original house was valuable because it sat on sixty percent of the 52′ * 60′ lot and complete demolition would have reduced the footprint to forty-five percent along with greater property line setbacks – ergo the lift. with all the original balloon-framing from 1956.
I know that Israeli developer’s work, and I wouldn’t sleep well in that house.
So why are the buyers stupid since it got lifted?
“The bendy framing” are just temporary 2x4s to support the area of the overhang where the new framing wll go.
It’s not “balloon framing”. No one has done genuine balloon framing for about a hundred years or so; it’s just typical wood “platform framing”. They way 99+% of all American houses and most apartments up to 5 floors are framed.
Balloon framing is an archaic system where the single long wall studs ran up two (or three) floors, and the floors were then hung from the studs, with ledgers nailed on.
I understand that wood framing might subjectively seem inferior to someone coming from another part of the world where masonry is used primarily, but that does not make it inferior. In terms of embedded CO2 and insulation, wood framing is much more environmentally friendly. With new engineered wood products, they are now building 18+ story buildings in Scandinavian countries.
When we rebuilt twelve blocks away (our foundation starts thirteen feet above MSL), our framing – of a similar vintage was not reusable. I’ve walked in houses Ari has done – they shake. I grew up in a wooden house which did not shake, and our rebuilt house does not shake.
I can’t comment why your framing was not reusable, without knowing just why. If the rebuild was extensive enough, there may have been several reasons why that was the case.
But that does not in any way mean that the original wood framing from the 1950s was deficient for what it was designed to do at the time. If the demands changed considerably, then that’s different.
There are of course untold millions of wood framed houses in the US that go back over a hundred years or more that are just fine. I own a number of them. As long as the framing doesn’t get wet and rot or is damaged otherwise, it has essentially an indefinite lifespan. There a 600+ year old wood structures in Japan, Russia and Scandinavia.
There were two reasons why. First the vertical members were not spaced close enough together to support the extra story and a half that was added while half the framing on the ocean front of the house had rot from 50 years of water intrusion and the strong winds. The old house was not built that well. The one wall that had been deemed in good enough condition to be braced and retained fell over when an electric pole fell on it during the initial stages of reframing the house. There’s plenty of wood in the new house.
I have sympathy for the enthusiast struggling to hold back the inevitable onslaught of decay and entropy on their projects, but twenty years without a stitch of progress isn’t worthy of sympathy. Twenty years ago someone else could have saved this. Owners are free to do what they want with their possessions, but hoarding and destroying a classic is painful to see.
I’m sure that boat beside it is in the same shape. Structural wood rot in fiberglass boats is analogous to automotive rust, but worse because it’s usually hidden. Old boats sitting on a trailer or cradle are usually beyond saving. Unlike rusty cars of course there’s no residual value in scrap fiberglass, except perhaps to sink it as a home for aquatic wildlife.
There is very little value in a 1972 Mustang. If it was sold under another name, it would have been scrapped 40 years ago.
I can guarantee there is no floor in the trunk of that car. It was probably already gone when it was parked.
If that elephant used to be a hotel, I wonder who got to stay in the “A**hole Suite”.
Despite these 71-73s not being the most well loved Mustangs, the whole of the ponycar market was in decline by then, yet they still handily outsold the Camaro, Firebird, Challenger, Barracuda, Javelin and Cougar, and the Mustang certainly wasn’t the most bloated of those peers.
Salty air does that to cars that one is reminiscent of cars I remember decades ago before the authorities became anal about rust and before cars were painted properly during assembly, but at least nobody is driving that Mustang in traffic like that, unlike some of the rust buckets that were bogged up over here.
I have a hunch that if someone even tried to move it the suspension would collapse, I’m betting the brakes are locked up and the engine is locked up as well
That’s one eaten away Mustang. Seems like I vaguely recall Ford having a quiet recall campaign for those early seventies’ Mustangs to replace prematurely rusting sheetmetal. This was one of the few times that one of the other Big 3 had worse body integrity than good ‘ole Chrysler, which is really saying something considering their early seventies’ cars (particularly the E-body).
Wow, that’s some rust. I think the 57 Plymouth that spent 50 years marinating in a soggy crypt came out in better condition than this.
Ford went for big car styling that year and was successful. The Mustang looks bigger than it is. It is actually a bit smaller than a Smokey and the Bandit Trans Am. About seven inches shorter with an inch longer wheelbase and an inch wider. Weight was comparable at around 3,500 lbs. Styling is subjective.
That seaside environment would be really rough on an unprotected car. I guess the owners needed the space where the boat and car were stored, moved them, and then forgot about them. It would have been better to have sold the car back then.
There was a ’64 Lincoln convertible parked behind a warehouse near the freeway fence that I drove by every day. It was covered by a tarp, and looked to be in fair shape. Over the years the tarp deteriorated and fell off. Then the top weathered away into tattters and the interior was exposed to the elements. The interior deteriorated completely and the car became a total piece of junk. It took about fifteen years until the car was hauled away as scrap.
Ugh. I hate these offensively ugly Mustangs, rust or no rust. I’ll be over here focusing on that elephant instead!
Her name is Lucy, and it’s free to go in the gift shop. Her tin skin is getting replaced this year.
At some point I will post pictures of Lillian Russell’s house. Lillian Russell and Diamond Jim Brady were an item, and famous cotrencherpeople.
Bunkie Knudsen went to Ford for a spell after GM/Pontiac. He added ‘beaks’ to grilles and upsized the Mustang to compete with GM’s 1968 112″ wb A bodies.
All the hand wringing is old and outdated, 50 years ago, big deal? Many people enjoy them now, not “make or break products” for new car market or stock holders today. Move along,.,.
Exactly, the level of whining and outrage over 71-73s deviating from the traditional Mustang look for a mere three years is just tiresome. You get a ugly design from a manufacturer today you have to put up with it for 8-10 years one way or another as other models in the lineup adopt elements of it for “brand synergy”.
If it were limited to claims of “brand synergy” it’d be tolerable. Instead we get to slog through sewers aflush with the likes of “brand DNA”.
Good designs transcend their era. Why a very humble car like the Omni GLHS (for example), remains well regarded. Yes, this era Mustang is probably best forgotten, as you imply.
It’s not likely to stop—not even with any amount of hand-metawringing. You know’t they say: beauty is skin-deep, but ugly goes clean down to the bone!
This would be the perfect car for The Marlboro Man.
Both died of cancer?
A quick/funny story of my first Lucy experience…. I was probably in my tweens IIRC and was dealing with a new found fear of heights due to a cliff jumping mishap that occurred a summer prior to my visit to Lucy. There is a picture of me crouched down on Lucy’s deck unable to stand as I kept getting dizzy and dealing with a panic/fear of being up so high (to me at least) At time standing on a chair triggered the same reaction. My mom and little brother couldn’t stop laughing and I was giggling too but the fear was real. As I waddled around the deck in a crouch, I vowed revenge on that stupid elephant and a few years later on another shore trip I submitted that beast like Hannibal.
I’m forty six and I have never been inside Lucy.
That is a pretty rusty Mustang especially the way the hood is receding. I have seen one vehicle, parked on the street, that was way worse than that. Parked on Balboa between 21st and 23rd Avenues in the Richmond District of San Francisco back in the mid 90s. Some might realize where that is and what kind of weather is driven down that street via the Pacific Ocean fog. It was a mid 70s truck that had more holes all over it’s body than Swiss cheese. I could honestly shoot it in the side with a 22 and the bullet would exit the other side without hitting any metal. I believe it eventually collapsed in place.
This entire thing was fascinating. Loved the brief walking tour of Margate, and also the brief history of how the Mustang and boat came to land here. I don’t see dents – just gobs of rot. Right around the turn of the millennium, this Sportsroof was probably a decent looking machine. Nowhere to store it (or the boat), it just sat here in the open, salty, Atlantic air and slowly just slipped away. From something to basically nothing. Use it or lose it.
I like the ’71 thru ’73 Mustangs. Sorry to see this one in such bad shape. Only a handful of parts that could be salvaged.