03-03-08: As a car enthusiast, it has to be admitted that I have lived a charmed life. Many cars have passed through our garages over the years. Mustangs are of course my favorite. It certainly isn’t because they are the best cars in the world. It’s more about the sentimental value for me that like many Mustang fanatics of the world, is hard to explain.
One of the best was my black 1994 SVT Cobra. It was the first SN-95 Mustang I had owned. I had driven quite a few of them since 1993, but never had one in my garage to keep. The Cobra came home one night at the hands of my loving wife who had surprised me with it on my birthday. How cool is that? She said she was going shopping and I didn't give it a second thought. I was thinking Wal-Mart or Target. Boy was I off target.
It was about four years old and had about 60,000 miles on the clock when she brought it home. The striking black Mustang had tinted windows all around and a brand new set of Goodyear Eagle GT F1 tires all around. Nice. It was a rare one with very few options. It had cloth Cobra seats and the base stereo system where most of them came equipped with leather interior and the Mach 460 sound system. It did have a slick dealer installed sliding glass sunroof however that opened up the dark interior with light.
The 1994 SVT Cobra had the upgraded 240hp version of the venerable 5.0 liter V8. It sported a GT-40 intake manifold and heads which opened up the breathing a bit. A free-flow exhaust also conspired to give the engine those extra ponies. The car had a really nice sound, especially when the engine was cold. Every morning when I would head off to work, I would hit it real good heading onto the main expressway which rewarded me nicely with a deep bantering growl.
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With 240hp it was quick but not as fast as the 300hp DOHC 4.6 Cobras that had trumped it after 1996. Acceleration to 60 mph was in the mid six-second range and top speed was around 135. While I never got any speeding tickets in the car, I did get two tickets within a week of each other for rolling through the same stop sign on a country road. My wife was not impressed.
I had owned and enjoyed the car for the better part of a year when it happened. I came out the front door of our home to head to work one morning to find the driveway empty. No car was parked there. In a silly-string attack of denial I looked up and down the street to see if I accidentally parked it at a neighbor’s house. Then I opened the garage to make sure it wasn’t there. Nope, just all the junk that prevented it from being parked there in the first place.
I walked back into the house and asked my wife if she knew where the car was. That question got a look that I hadn’t seen before, so the answer was obviously “no”. We both walked together back out to the driveway and she asked, “Did you park it at one of the neighbor’s?” Silly string again. We stood there for what seemed like 10 minutes in shock and coming to the realization that it really happened. The car was stolen.
My wife walked in the house to retrieve the cordless phone and returned with it. I grabbed the phone and dialed the local Sherriff while standing in the spot where the Cobra sat the night before. The sight must have been comical for neighbors seeing me looking around as if the car would appear out of the shrubs while talking on the phone. But just as I was getting connected with an officer to report the car stolen I saw a CHP (California Highway Patrol) cruiser coming down the street toward me.
He pulled up and rolled down his window. As I told the person on the phone to hold the CHP asked, “Have you had a car go missing?” After I hung up the phone with the Sherriff, the CHP officer proceeded to tell me that they had found my Cobra 50 miles away, stripped to the shell of all its life giving parts and pieces. He then took a report and informed me of what had happened.
It had been found at 3:00am, just three and a half hours after I had locked the car in my driveway. The car was professionally stripped of its engine, transmission, wheels, tires, complete interior, and Cobra specific body parts. There was no damage to the car whatsoever, a perfectly clean job by people who knew what they were doing. The hoses were neatly cut, the wiring harnesses cleanly unplugged, and the car had been rolled into a field wearing four mini-spares from other cars. The icing on the cake was that the crew had sprayed the entire remains of the car with motor oil to prevent the police from fingerprinting it. Smooth.
Later that day I went to the tow yard to see the raped hulk and retrieve what ever they might have left in the car. As I expected it was not pretty. My 1994 Mustang SVT Cobra had become a skeletal hull of its former self. They left the doors, but that was about it. Inside however I was shocked at what they did leave. On the carpet where the seats and console once lived were all of my personal effects including my garage door opener, prescription medicine, my CD’s and a pair of sunglasses. The lady at the tow yard said that it was a signature of the pros, that they don’t take any personal property that can link them to you if they are caught with it.
In the end it was a sad day. But we lucked out on the financial side, because our insurance company couldn’t come up with a value. So they asked us to provide three for-sale ads from similar cars out of the newspaper. In the spring of 1999, there were few 1994 Cobras for sale and the ones that were on the market were highly priced. The insurance company averaged the three and came up with $16,900, a full thousand more than we paid for the car a year before and even more than we owed on the loan. A week later we received a check for $2000 and that was that.
We later learned that the car was stolen by an organized crime ring operating in our area, in which a unit of was located down the street from my house. There had been this family, who’s home I passed by every day and every night coming and going. They always had cars being built and rebuilt in their garage and driveway. They of course were only one cell in the larger network in the Sacramento area. What these people did was steal and strip cars and store the parts. They would then buy the stripped shells at insurance auctions and put all the parts back on them, then sell the cars at various used car lots they operated in town.
One important lesson I learned was that you should never leave your garage door opener in the car if you park it outdoors. This one thing allows anyone instant access into your garage and even your house with a press of a button. Second, I learned that you keep your cars parked inside that garage wherever possible. Lastly, have good insurance.
