Few will argue that the 1965 Mustang doesn’t deserve its place as one of the most popular American collector cars; after all, it has sheer numbers on its side. With almost 700,000 being built during that long first model year, there are still enough Mustangs around that you’ll always see at least one at your local car event. You wouldn’t know by looking at this one that it’s a little bit special; on the surface, it’s just a garden-variety coupe. (Indeed, there’s one almost exactly like it sitting in my garage that my grandpa bought for my mom back in 1968.) This Mustang was sold new to the current owner, who was 19-years-old when her dad “took her to the local Ford dealer to buy a popular and sporty Mustang.” With 74,330 miles on it today, it’s now being sold here on eBay in Missouri City, Texas. Its high bid of $10,100 has not yet met its “reasonable” reserve.

It is not, however, a Texas car. The eBay seller must be a dealer, broker, or friend of the owner, because it was shipped from Ohio to Texas to sell (the car has an Ohio title). The owner still has the original window sticker and sales paperwork, which shows that she and her dad crossed the Ohio River from Cincinnati into Kentucky and bought the car at Murphy Motors in Stanford, Kentucky, a 137-mile drive, so perhaps not quite as local as the eBay seller says. It was optioned as many Mustangs were, with the base V8, automatic, a radio, backup lights, and whitewall tires. I don’t have the window sticker for my Mustang, but I do have the original owner’s manual and know what day it was sold and to whom, and it is optioned almost exactly the same as this one. (Mine has door-edge guards, and I’m pretty sure that’s the only additional option.) The total price: $2765.52.

A note on depreciation for anyone interested: When my grandpa bought my Mustang in October of 1968, he became the fourth owner and paid $1,300 for it, so it had retained about 50 percent of its value. And boy, people bought cars more often back then than they do now…four owners in three years? Of course, the owner of our featured car hung onto it for 60 years, so there are always outliers.

The VIN on this car shows that it was built late in the production year (5F07C771225). This particular car is not listed in my 30-year-old copy of the Mustang Production Guide, Volume 1, but cars in its VIN range were scheduled to be built around June 25th, and considering that the title was issued July 24th, that is certainly about right. The engine is Ford’s C-Code 289, which produced 200 horsepower and 282 lb.-ft. of torque. With a C4 “Cruise-O-Matic” and a 2.80:1 axle ratio, it was not going to win many street races, but it had plenty of performance for almost any normal driving. As a $105.63 option, the two-barrel 289 was almost a no-brainer. The ad doesn’t mention what kind of work has been done to the car, but we can see that the valve covers and air cleaner have been repainted in their original gold (or close to it), and there’s a new fuel pump and oil filter for good measure. The engine compartment appears to have been fogged with a coat of black at some point (the painter hit the master cylinder lid).

This is the only place where this Mustang diverges from mine; the interior is “Palomino” (mine is white with black carpet and dash pad). The upholstery, dash pad, and door panels are all excellent; either they’ve been extremely well taken care of or the interior has been restored at some point. It looks a little too new to be original, and since Mustang parts are so easy to come by, I’ll vote for the latter.

Since this is an Ohio car (even if it is from southern Ohio), I would have liked to see some undercarriage pictures. I think the buyer has to expect that some rust repairs have been done, and based on the gaps at the valance panel, I’d imagine it’s had quarter panels (just a guess). It also has rocker panel moldings, which were not included on the window sticker, so they were probably added during a cosmetic restoration. The paint looks pretty nice, however, and if the seller could provide a picture or two of the underside, there’s really nothing obvious that would cause alarm or keep an interested party from bidding on the car.

I can tell you from 30 years and almost 90,000 miles behind the wheel of my family heirloom that the ’65 Mustang lives up to the hype. It’s not a muscle car, and it’s basically an economy compact underneath, but there’s something special about it. It’s perfectly usable in modern traffic. May the new owner be as happy with this example as the original owner almost certainly has been for 60 years.