I emailed this to Snell with a photo, but will just paste the text here. I'm sure this happens to some of you guys a lot, but I rarely get the chance to examine other people's Mustangs:
I saw this car outside a buffet so of course I had to check it out, especially with the HiPo badges on it. I was a little skeptical because it would be a ’65 HiPo GT – pretty rare. The owner came out while I was gawking and he told me it was a super-rare “’65 HiPo GT Automatic” (red flag) that he bought in Texas. Hmmm – there were zero of those made that I know of.
While he was talking, he had the door open and I noticed that there was no VIN plate on it. More hmmm and another red flag. But he was telling me about needing to adjust the valve train (as you would expect with solid lifters) and I was dying to look at the VIN number under the hood. He liked to talk about the car and was very willing to let me see the engine compartment. While he was talking about the dealer-installed air conditioning, I saw a vacuum-diaphragm on the distributor, no manual choke, and the VIN code 5F07A6xxxxx.
A-hah! A standard 220HP V8 car, not a 271HP HiPo.
I didn’t have the heart to ruin his day by telling him that and didn’t have the time to see if it was an original GT (did they come with automatics in ’65?) Convenient that without the door tag, that “re-sale red” color couldn’t be verified. The guy is happy with his car so why mess with his day? He didn’t sound interested in Mustang websites when I mentioned HiPoMustang.com. One last flag: He was telling me about all the “NOS” parts available now and being made from Ford Tooling. New “New Old Stock”? He didn’t want to sell, and I reassured him I didn’t want to buy….<img src=images/icon_smile_approve.gif border=0 align=middle>