Photo: OnScene TV | YouTube
Ford Mustangs are a special breed. They are obviously hard to tame; they swerve like there's no tomorrow and hit some light pole or, worse, crash into a crowd. But sometimes, just sometimes, they end up in the water. That happened with this Mustang in San Diego, California.
This Ford Mustang was fished out of the waters of San Diego Bay. The car had a handicap license plate, a dent in the roof, and all the wrong things on board. The San Diego Police Department found several open cans of alcohol inside. The driver was nowhere to be seen when emergency crews arrived on scene.
San Diego City Lifeguards checked the water in the area and found nothing. But then, the car owners casually approached the scene of the accident as if nothing had ever happened, just as a tow truck was pulling the car from the water.
They said they had no idea how their car ended up in the water. They were walking along the beach when they saw the rescue mission and recognized their car. Of course…
The Mustang looks completely ruined after spending time in the salt water of the Pacific Ocean. There doesn't appear to be any major body damage, other than a dent in the roof. But that kind of soaking can't be good for a pony car or any other car. The passenger window was wide open when the tow truck pulled it out of the water. That's probably how the driver was able to escape.
And they had every reason to flee the scene. Police found several open cans of White Claw, a 5 percent alcohol hard seltzer. Paddleboard San Diego’s Instagram account also uploaded a video to social media, showing poor Mustang swimming with fish. Literally!
Mustang Drivers Bringing Stereotypes Alive
As much as we hate stereotypes, the scenario involving Ford Mustangs is always simple. The driver overestimates his driving ability, puts a heavy foot on the accelerator, the rear end of the rear-wheel drive Mustang snaps, the driver loses control, and that's it. Things go haywire in an instant.
It's no wonder that organizers of the Coffee and Cars event have decided to permanently ban all Ford Mustangs, Chevrolet Camaros, and Dodge Chargers and Challengers in an effort to avoid accidents when drivers come out to impress the cheering crowd.
Of course, it's not the car that's to blame, but that particular component that sits between the seat and the steering wheel. And not all Mustang drivers are the same. But there's no point in making up stories about people who drive Mustangs all their lives and never get into an accident. We bet that most of them are just like that.
But the stories that intrigue us are the ones about drivers crashing. And we’ve seen plenty of those over the years. Take this Mustang, for example, that ended up hanging on the wall of a house on Shelby Street in Indianapolis, halfway up the structure. It wasn’t even a Shelby Cobra, but a Mustang GT with a V8, which proved too much for the driver.
The driver lost control on a curve, the car blew up and crashed into the building, hitting the B-pillar and leaving the rear end in the air.
Mustangs seem to have an affinity for awkward positions. For example, one was left leaning vertically against a utility pole, all four wheels in the air, sitting on its tail.
Here's how the Tallahassee Police Department found the car when they arrived on scene. Authorities revealed that the driver was driving under the influence of drugs. The roads are probably shaped differently in that case.
Last June, we reported on an entire car club being destroyed: A total of eight cars, said to be racing on a Georgia highway, collided with each other. Two Mustangs were involved in the crash on I-285 in Atlanta.
The drivers were headed to a car rally called Caffeine and Octane in Kennesaw, in the Houston, Texas area, but never got there. Instead, they had to find an explanation for their respective insurance companies.
Last year, we came across a Ford Mustang that crashed at the drag strip. The car was brand new when its owner took it to the drag strip. While racing a Cadillac CTS-V, the Mustang's tail section broke off and the car hit the guardrail before coming to rest in a chain-link fence.
Luckily, the driver walked away unharmed. A month later, we found his car on the accident market. The listing on Copart stated that, before the accident, the Mustang was valued at $52,507, meaning the owner had specced it with about $10,000 in options. What a sad end for the poor Mustang…
