3 Generations, Countless Memories, and a Pony Car That Still Turns Heads
For most folks, family heirlooms take up very little space. A certificate on the wall, a teacup on a shelf, a rifle in a gun case.
But for one couple who recently moved to North East — a charming small town in Cecil County, Maryland — the only spot big enough for their prized possession is a garage.
Aaron Skipper now owns the 1965 Ford Mustang fastback his late grandfather John bought new and passed on to Aaron’s father John Jr., who told his only son his Rangoon Red beauty would someday be his. But it had to be garage-kept.
“We wanted a nice little property with a little land and a barn, and it had to have a garage,” Aaron Skipper said. “That was the stipulation. My dad’s like, ‘You can have the car, you know, but you gotta have a garage.’”
Skipper and his wife Sarah moved from Baltimore to North East in December 2020. They own a four-car garage that now houses his grandfather’s Mustang.
The pampered sports car’s pedigree and provenance are well-documented.
It is one of the first fastback 1965 Mustangs, Aaron Skipper said. “It was built September 21, 1964, and my grandfather bought it new in December of ‘64.” At that time there was no GT package, so John Skipper added period-correct GT options like the dual trumpet exhaust and the fog lamps — “options you could have gotten when the GT stuff started rolling out,” Aaron Skipper said.
The muscle car has the “classic look of speed even at rest,” declared one reviewer.
According to J.D. Power, the 1965 Mustang Fastback’s original average price was around $2,600. Today, depending on modifications and extras, the average retail price is upwards of $36,000, and high retail value is nearly $65,000.
Classic car insurer Hagerty notes, “The 1965 Mustang is the country’s most popular classic car among Hagerty clients, and that’s just one of many reasons why we named it the greatest car of the ’60s. Few cars stay so relevant after five decades.”
John Skipper bought the now-classic Mustang while he was stationed at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
“It had to be red because my grandmother had to have a red car, and it had to be an automatic because my grandmother couldn’t drive a stick,” Aaron Skipper said. He still has the original bill of sale and owner’s manual.
“My grandfather actually used to pull a boat with this,” Skipper said. A trailer hitch was available as a dealer option in 1965, and the back end sits a little lower because his grandfather bound the rear leaf springs tighter to pull the boat.
The car wasn’t always garage-kept. “I remember vacationing in Fayetteville when I was a little kid and sitting in the passenger seat or just climbing around the car and opening things up and looking around” as the car sat in the driveway,” Skipper said. “And even to this day, when you have some of the vents open, pine needles from Fayetteville will still flow out at you.”
“You have to get used to no power steering and no power brakes, but once you get moving, it’s wonderful,” he said. “It brings me back to when I used to drive it to high school, and at the time I had the original hubcaps, and you’d go around a corner and they’d fly off. I’d have to go talk to a farmer like, ‘I’m in your field trying to find my hubcap.’”
Before he died, John Skipper passed the Mustang on to John Jr. in the mid-1980s. “I remember him saying my grandfather said, ‘Yep, it’s your time,’ kind of like myself. (My dad) said, ‘Hey, it’s time to pass down the Mustang,’” Aaron Skipper said.
Still, John Jr. tinkered with the car before letting it go. “We had the garage … and every time I would call him he would be doing something else to it, just to get it ready for me,” Aaron Skipper said. “He put a new harmonic balancer on and a new fuel pump and had the transmission worked on.” Backordered parts during the pandemic slowed progress as well.
“So finally, we found the time and he trailered it up, and then we went to the MVA and got it all titled up,” Skipper said.
The Skippers have no children, so the Mustang will probably be sold years from now to fund their retirement. “I can’t take it with me, so let somebody else enjoy it and the history of the car.”
“It means more to us in our hearts than it does in dollar signs,” Sarah Skipper said.
“So now we have a garage that’ll hold four cars, and eventually (Sarah) wants an old Firebird convertible,” Aaron Skipper said. She used to own a 1967 Firebird 326 short block hardtop.
A car buff herself, Sarah Skipper wants to drive her Firebird to car shows and park next to the Mustang. “Oh, I love it,” she said.
“She’ll search out car shows before me,” Aaron Skipper said. “She’s like, ‘Oh, there’s a car show this weekend. Are we going to this car show?’” The Mustang was on display Sept. 20 at the 1,000-vehicle Ridgely Car Show in Caroline County.
It definitely turns heads when we ride through North East down the main drag,” Sarah Skipper said. “And the color’s very eye-catching, so very rarely do people miss it.”
“We get a lot of compliments,” Aaron Skipper said. “Just driving on the highway people pull up next to us and wave and (give us) thumbs up — you get a lot of that. You always get the Mustang wave. It’s neat to have a fun car that’s been in the family for this long. I enjoy it a lot.”
“It’s just cool to know my grandfather used to drive it around and to think of him,” Skipper said. “Hopefully, he’s looking down and giving me a thumbs up for the way I’ve taken care of it.”
(photo credit: Connie Connolly - Cecil Whig)
