726 N. Gramercy Place in 2007, about 25 years after I moved into one of its studio apartments.
By November of 1972, student life on the fringes of West Los Angeles was going reasonably well. I had left Mrs. Ray’s boarding house at 411 South Norton, moving to a studio apartment at 726 N. Gramercy Place, just west of the intersection of N. Western Boulevard and Melrose Avenue, not too far from Paramount Studios and, ironically, the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, just west of L.A.’s Koreatown and Wilshire Center neighborhoods.
Without Mrs. Ray’s ministrations, or the occasional pleasant interactions with her first-floor elderly lady boarders, or even the frequent interactions with my fellow Art Center students on the second floor (hunched over our drafting tables in the midst of yet another “all-nighter” design assignment), I was now well and truly on my own.
Although I admitted to myself sometime later that I did miss some aspects of my boarding-house days, it felt good to be fully on my own for the first time. I was usually able to find a nearby parking space for the Mustang on Gramercy (the apartment house, like many others dating from the mid-1920s, had no dedicated parking of its own). Miraculously, my pony car never suffered any random dents or dings from being left on the street overnight.
Nearly a century old in 2022, the building had assumed a new, not necessarily improved, aspect.
In another irony, the Mustang’s first minor damage on my watch occurred while it was left unattended in Art Center’s parking lot, creasing the bright trim strip on the leading edge of the hood after someone backed into it at (very) low speed. When I picked up the replacement piece at a local Ford dealer, the parts guy chuckled and said “Yeah, we keep these in stock all the time.”
The replacement hood trim molding cost about $6 in 1971. It’s anywhere from $30 to $100 today.
On one particular November weekend day, I was driving west on Melrose Avenue, likely heading to the grocery store or running some other errand. Unusually, the traffic flow seemed much slower than usual. I had just come to a stop when, seconds later, I heard the sickening sound of crumpling sheet metal and was jarred forward slightly in the driver’s bucket seat. Luckily, I had been wearing the lap belt (but not the clumsy, separate shoulder belt, mea culpa) and fortunately did not involuntarily test the Mustang’s collapsible steering column.
After switching on the four-way flashers and collecting my wits, I opened the driver’s door and exited to view the damage. In yet another irony, the offending vehicle was another ’69 Mustang, and its hood and front bumper succeeded in significantly re-arranging the sheet metal of my car.
Ouch. In retrospect, I’m glad the traffic was crawling that day. A higher-speed impact would likely have resulted in a total loss.
While the other (extremely apologetic) driver and I were exchanging our license and insurance information, a well-tanned middle-aged street person (presumably un-housed, as he had been relaxing on a nearby bus-stop bench) walked up to us a bit unsteadily and pronounced “I’m a lawyer, and I saw the whole thing.” Resisting the temptation to ask him for his bar exam credentials, I fixed him with my best stare and let him know that the police would soon be on the scene (which was true). Hearing that, he ambled off and left me to ponder how a low-speed hit could have resulted in so much damage.
Another view of the Mustang’s newly-redesigned rear end. The “N” plate was purchased from Vilem B. Haan, a well-known L.A. sports-car accessory retailer. Allstate refused to replace it, as they considered it an accessory.
I dutifully obtained three repair estimates for the Mustang, one from Beverly Hills Ford ($636.42), one from an independent body shop ($799.96), and the third from Beverly Hills Lincoln-Mercury ($896.43), which added a replacement fuel tank and a few other items not included on the other two estimates. (The repair time estimates from the three shops ranged from 47 to 60 hours.) The L-M body shop estimator also volunteered that “the whole right side of your car behind the door is body filler,” adding “If she’d hit you any harder, both doors would have been misaligned, probably resulting in the car being totaled”. Needless to say, the folks at Fletcher L-M in Summit, NJ, where I’d bought the ’69 Sportsroof used, had not disclosed any previous accident damage to me when I bought the Mustang. Perhaps the Mustang’s previous owner didn’t mention it to them either.
Memory tells me that Allstate approved the independent shop’s repair estimate, as well as covering the cost of a rental car (a white, late-model Dodge Dart four-door) while the Mustang was being fixed. As I was then less than a year away from my Art Center graduation, it was clear that if there were no junior design jobs to be offered by the beleaguered Big Three automakers, I would need something a bit bigger than the Mustang to haul my worldly goods back home to N.J.
Ah the adventures of youth. ’69 is probably my favorite year of Mustang, probably because I was driving one, a ’69 convert in Champagne Gold, when I met my wife while taking a course at USF in Tampa Florida Jan of 1970. To this day I don’t know if it was me or the car, but Mustang Magic did the trick! It’s evident in the pics here how flimsy the bumpers and crash protection was, but even with just a 302 they went with alacrity and drove pretty well for a “sporty” (not sports) car. As they say: good times!
Everyone in our neighborhood “lusted after” out neighbor’s “69”. Before “1971” ended, they traded it for a “bright yellow, Mach I”. (1970 model)
OWCHHHH! Sorry to see this, not good when one’s “BABY” is damaged! Concerning damage in our old ACCD parking lot: I remember one first semester Monday morn looking out from Ted Youngkins’ classroom in the Annex and watching a Interior Design clown..err…student use the side of my ’56 Chevy as his Mustang door stopper 3x over the course of the morning! Said individual and I had a intimate “discussion” about that later in the old shop class room.
Glad your Mustang was NOT totaled as All State wanted to do to my ’56 Chevy 150 after I was rear ended on La Brea while going home to Hawthorne after class one day. After some lengthy “DI$$CU$$ION” the All State agent and I agreed to repairs, and my ’56 was NOT totaled. Shortly thereafter I switched insurance Companies.
The attached pic shows the old girl as our power unit for moving back home to Wisconsin after graduation from ACCD during the height of gas crisis 1, and on to my first job as a Industrial Designer in early 1974. DFO
Dennis,
In retrospect, I probably should have done the same thing- rented a box trailer from U-Haul and driven back to NJ, but I decided on a different solution. More on that next week…
OUCH ~ I hate it when that happens .
Glad you weren’t hurt .
I can’t imagine anyone making that lovely building look so bad .
-Nate
Nate,
It’s possible that the facade changes might have been part of an earthquake-safety retrofit, I’m not sure. Not an improvement visually, though!
It was this kind of accident that brought about the 5 mph bumpers that we all love to hate on here at CC. Yeah, how did that work out? Today’s cars are even more expensive to repair in such collisions. But, on the upside, we are all much safer nowadays.
Was she cute? Maybe you could’ve taken your two damaged ‘69 Mustangs and made one good one! 😉
What a story to tell the grand kids!
All kidding aside, this, and the ‘67-68 Mustangs are my favorites. They were clearly the inspiration for my own 2007 Retro Mustang.
You make me think that in all of my years, I have never been the front car in a rear-ender accident. My first accident of that kind was when I was in high school and I was the idiot in the second car that hit the first one. Fortunately, all the damage was to the front of my own car, which I fixed by replacing a hood and grille. Damage like yours was not so easily repaired.
That problem of pre-existing body damage on a used car bought from a dealer can be a sticky problem. Someone I know was in that exact situation a few years ago, and the insurance company refused to pay for the previously damaged and repaired car, arguing that it was the selling dealer’s problem. I disagreed, and urged the owner to push back on the insurer, but he would not.
Nathan, Do you remember Mac teaching surface development, and how to lay out the drawings? Like a dummy I chose to do the left rear quarter of a ’67 Mustang….not the simplest panel to do back then! I may have been influenced by a student friend’s ’67 Mustang that I helped him find and purchase. He was English and completely in love with the look of the ’67 Mustang fastback.
OTOH, what Mac didn’t know about proper surface development, unlike many of toDAZE “designers” using CAID software, wasn’t worth knowing. Mac was a Industrial Design treasure for ACCD and generations of eager students. 🙂 DFO
Small world — When my younger son started attending the University of Southern California in the fall of 2005, he rented an apartment at 108 South Gramercy Place. Here’s the building as it appeared in 2022 from Google Street View.
Back in 1977 bought my second mustang,, same model & year as this article,,, 69 FB with straight 250,, 3 speed. Back then there were hardly no catalogs,, the three counter part guys at local Ford dealer, we were on first name bases,,,, the front hood lip molding was one of the parts I replaced,,, all 3 started to give me their parts discount,,,