CIVIC LESSON; OPEN LETTER TO THE CIVIC-SLAMMIN' SET: FIRST CAME MUSTANG. WELL, IF NOT EXACTLY FIRST, THEN AT LEAST BEFORE YOU.(News)

Byline: NATALIE NEFF

Dear ________,

Alas, we've been remiss. With all the attention given these days to you oh-so creative SoCal kids, your pimp import rides and all the wannabes across the country (yeah, you're legit, we know), too long has passed since last we waxed poetic on the state of the Mustang nation. After all, not every red, white and blue-blooded car guy dropped tran to run with the sport compact crowd. Folks from every wide place in the road have been modifying the late-model Mustang since Dearborn foaled the first some 25 years ago, and they're still at it.

We're not talking rodding stuff. Chopping and channeling have been around since at least '32. The importance of Mustang and its amen-ability to customization is that it helped turn the runt that was the automotive aftermarket into the $29 billion behemoth we know today.

What does that mean to you? Simply, that that Erebuni body and those Kosei rims don't make you original. Nothing you've done to your ride hasn't first been done on the Mustang.

"Mustang should be credited for revitalizing the aftermarket, which was really an Edelbrock manifold and Holley carb thing until the 5.0 Mustang came around,'' says Scott Oldham, editor of Sport Compact Car magazine. "The Civic was next. And it rode that wave, because without the 5.0 Mustang, tuning a computer-controlled motor was foreign.'' That's foreign as in "unknown,'' not foreign as in Japanese, got it? The 5.0 Mustang? That's so, like, 1986, right?

Maybe, but what Mustang started hasn't gone completely the import way. Mustang tuning still exists; we've tried to find out just how much.