Bill's Garage

1986 Mustang SVO

In our driveway (Click to enlarge)
1986 SVO
(Click to enlarge)
This is my wife's '86 Mustang SVO. The SVO was a limitted production Mustang and was Ford's top of the line performance offering for that year. The SVO was much different then other Mustangs produced that year. Ford's goal was to build a car that had a ride quality, noise/vibration/harshness, steering feel, shift quality, handling, and brake feel on par with a BMW. The SVO was able to exceed the BMW in all of those categories. However, the SVO was the most expensive Mustang and the much cheaper 5.0 Litre V8 Mustangs built that year could out accelerate the pricer SVO in a straight line. In addition, the buying public did not really understand the SVO with its high end suspension, 4 wheel disc brakes, and fuel injected turbo charged engine. While the SVO would out handle and out brake the V8 Mustangs most buyers just wanted the cheaper V8 models. And the BMW buyers wanted the status of owning a BMW. Therefore not many SVO Mustangs were sold.

History of this SVO

This SVO was bought new in 1986 by a Mustang enthusiast in Missouri. He understood the relavance of what Ford had produced and decided to preserve the car. He frequently trailered the car to many car shows around the country and won many best of show trophys. The car was also featured in the March 2008 issue of Mustang Monthly magazine. In the fall of 2009 he decided to sell it after only putting 8,300 miles on the car. He sold it on ebay to a car dealer in Harrisburg PA in November of 2009. That dealer had the car shipped to PA after the sale. In the summer of 2010 the dealer took the car to the Ford Nationals show at the Carlisle PA fair grounds and placed it in the for sale section of the show. I attended the show and saw it for sale. I took a couple of pictures of it and showed it to my wife. We both liked the car and decided we wanted to buy it. A price was negotiated and we drove to PA the next Monday and picked the car up. Today the car still has less than 10,000 miles on it. It is used as a pleasure car and only driven on days when the roads are clean and dry.

Mustang SVO Production

Only 3,300 SVOs were build in 1986. The Mustang SVO was only produced between 1984 and 1986. The 1985 1/2 and 1986 models received many key upgrades including the flush head lights, more powerful and more torqey engines, along with lower ratio rear end gears for better acceleration. All Mustang SVOs had 5 speed manual transmissions.

Maintenance

The following maintenance has been done to the car since I have owned it: