1989 Ford Mustang GT - Reluctant Renegade

Horse Sense: "I am glad that I started out in a relatively slow car and progressed from there," B.K. says. "A 12-second ride is different from an 11-second ride, and even more so a 10-second ride. You can walk into a shop and order a 140-mph car, but can you drive a 140-mph car?"

We didn't know how long it had taken-we only knew it looked great. From its Sapphire Blue paint to its dark-tinted windows, right on down to its surgically clean engine bay and uniformly black sidewalls, B.K. and Jennifer Meyers' '89 GT had our attention from the moment we laid eyes on it in the pits at last summer's Mid Michigan NMRA event. The Meyers didn't even have to clean up the hatchback for our photo shoot-this is the way it looked all weekend.

That they could keep it so sanitary while thrashing to dial in the brand-new combination on its debut in NMRA EFI Renegade competition makes it immediately apparent that this Kentucky couple take great pride in their Mustang. Less apparent is that it took nearly two-often frustrating-years to get it to this point.

They had owned, gradually quickened, and casually raced the Fox since 1994, but as B.K. explains, "It was during the '99 season that we decided to run in the EFI Renegade class for the 2000 season. I had run in Open Comp in the NMRA Bowling Green event in 1999, and made it to the final round where I was 'treed' by my opponent Clair Stewart. Clair and I stayed in contact after the event, and we were both going to make the move to Renegade. While Clair had a great season in 2000, mine was less than stellar..."

The problems started when it took B.K. four months to get his new crankshaft, three months to get the Ford Racing Performance Parts R302 block, and more than six months for the ported Holley SysteMAX II intake combo. But it was with everything finally assembled that things really began heating up. "After assembling the engine," B.K. says, "I made the mistake of not taking care of a leaking fuel injector while I was trying to do my initial engine startup. It's pretty darn scary to look out from the driver's seat and see flames coming over the cowl of your car."

It seems the raw fuel had been ignited by a backfire, and-yes, kiddies-this was with the car sitting in the Meyers' attached garage. B.K. credits a $10 fire extinguisher for saving not only the race car, but also quite likely the house. Ah, but it gets worse. In Jennifer's '91 GT convertible on his way to pick up new injectors, B.K. was cut off by a couple in a lumbering Caprice, totaling his wife's pride-and-joy ragtop. The financial drain of finding a replacement basically wrote off the 2000 season.

The '01 season didn't start off much better, as delays and mechanical failures kept the car out of early competition. Finally, by July at Mid Michigan, the Meyers were determined to enter their first Renegade competition, even though the GT was still not completely sorted out. A year-and-a-half out of the driver's seat for B.K., and a tight converter in the GT, resulted in a 10.69 at 137 mph and a loss in the second round of eliminations, but at least they made the show. And thanks to their meticulous level of detailing, they also made it into this magazine on their first time out. After two years of tribulations, things are finally looking up.