[Ford Man]

I often get laughs and strange looks from other motorist too when they see me driving my old '88 Ford Escort Pony which is now in pretty rough condition after being driven on dusty/muddy construction sites for the first 12 years and over 300K miles of it's life. It has 518,700 miles and is butt ugly, but it's paid for still runs good and gets 40-45 MPG. My son tells me he's going to bury me in the Escort so I'll look natural. I just let people laugh and ignore them. No matter how it looks I plan to see just how many miles I can eventually put on it before a major component such as the engine or transmission give way. If they don't like the way it looks they can look the other way. I have 5 other cars that look better, but for most of my everyday driving it's the '88 Pony I usually drive, because it gets the best gas mileage of anything I own. My grill block is a piece of plexiglass over the outside of the grill which also helps the car warm up much faster in the winter. Seeing how long/many miles I can make a car last is about as important to me as fuel efficiency and this is the first car I've ever had to make 500K miles so I'm not going to stop driving it simply because someone else doesn't like the looks of it, unless of course they dislike it so much they want to buy me a new car that will get the gas mileage this one does.