True Muscle Car Fan Stories: Crashing The Goat

A Muscle Car Fan reader recalls buying his first real performance car, a 1969 GTO nicknamed The Goat, for $1,200 in the summer of 1979, then living an entire high school year defined by drag races, a blown clutch on his first date, and a January night that ended with a friend’s Fairlane wrapped around a utility pole. Somehow nobody called the police on him. Read on for how the story, and the car, both ended.

Every gearhead has a car that defined a specific stretch of their life, but few stories end with two muscle cars tangled around the same intersection on the same night, with nobody calling the police on the driver who caused it. This is one Muscle Car Fan reader’s account of buying his dream car for $1,200 in the summer of 1979, teaching himself to drive a manual transmission on the way home from the seller’s driveway, and living what he calls the time of his life for exactly one school year. Then came a red light, a patch of ice, and a decision that could have ended very differently than it did.

Trading a Satellite for a 1969 GTO

In July of 1979, before his senior year at Bloomington Lincoln High School, the author sold his Plymouth Satellite for $1,000 and went looking for something with more muscle. He nearly bought a neighbor’s 1970 GTO but passed because it had air conditioning, which he felt would rob the car of performance. Instead, a classified ad in the Minneapolis Star Tribune led him to a 1969 GTO in St. Paul: a 400-cubic-inch, four-speed car in largely original condition, with a rebuilt engine, black vinyl interior, air shocks, and a tiny chrome-rimmed steering wheel with a sponge rubber grip. The asking price was $1,200, and he bought it on the spot.

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Learning to Drive a Four-Speed on the Freeway

There was one problem: he had never driven a manual transmission in his life. His friend Curt gave him a crash course right in the seller’s driveway before he had to pilot the car home on the freeway, uncertain the entire way whether he was in second gear or fourth. He describes being simultaneously euphoric at finally owning a performance car and genuinely nervous merging into traffic in a car he barely knew how to operate. Somehow he made it back to Bloomington without incident, and from that point on the GTO, known simply as The Goat, became the center of his daily life.

Performance Row and the Status That Came With It

Parking in what students called performance row instantly moved him up the high school social ladder. That summer and fall became, in his words, the time of his life, drag racing new Trans Ams and usually beating them, cruising the drive-ins, and hanging around downtown Hopkins with friends. He got a girlfriend that summer, and their first outing together involved watching Let It Be from the back seat of The Goat at the Mann France Avenue Drive-In. It was the kind of ordinary teenage milestone that thousands of muscle car owners from that era can probably still describe in exact detail decades later.

A Clutch That Failed on the First Date

The GTO’s mechanical fragility showed up almost immediately. On an actual first date downtown, exiting Interstate 35W, the clutch went out entirely and the car limped into a hotel parking lot with his date still in the passenger seat. His brother-in-law had to tow him all the way back to Bloomington with a 1965 Ford van and a tow chain, and the repair bill came to roughly $250. Not long after, showing off with some hard acceleration, he blew the timing gears and a motor mount, and had to get a friend to push him to a nearby gas station for repairs he could not finish himself.

The Race That Started as a Grudge Match

By January of 1980, a classmate named Scott had challenged him to a race more than once, driving a 1966 Fairlane GT with a 390 under the hood. He had brushed off the earlier challenges as a waste of time, but this time he agreed, on the condition that his friend Curt would drive the GTO instead of him. Scott agreed to hand his own keys over too. The two cars lined up heading east on 86th Street in Bloomington, GTO in the left lane and Fairlane in the right, and once they crossed the 35W bridge, both cars floored it toward a red light at Lyndale Avenue with neither driver backing off.

Ice, a Red Light, and a Car Wrapped Around a Pole

As Curt braked for the red light, the Fairlane hit a patch of ice and slid left, clipping the GTO between the passenger door and rear wheel before spinning a full 360 degrees in the middle of the street. The author fought his own car’s fishtail and kept it under control, stopping at the light while his passenger panicked, convinced the other two occupants were dead. Looking back, he saw the Fairlane wrapped around a utility pole half a block away with smoke rising and no visible movement, an image he still describes as one of the more frightening moments of his teenage years.

Why the Cops Never Came Looking for Him

After parking in a nearby strip mall, he found the rear quarter panel of the GTO crushed, but Scott and Curt had climbed out of the wrecked Fairlane with only cuts and bruises, most of their injuries coming from colliding with each other when the bucket seats broke loose during the spin. Two construction workers had witnessed the crash and gave their account to police, but neither Curt nor Scott mentioned the author’s involvement, and officers never questioned him directly. He drove home and told his mother he had slid on ice and hit a pole himself, never filed an insurance claim, and quietly began repairs in his own driveway.

A Bright Orange Repaint and One Last Good Summer

Fixing the GTO meant hours of cutting away the wrecked quarter panel, welding in a replacement, and working through Bondo, sandpaper, and primer before a neighbor sprayed on a bright orange finish that he says made the car look better than it ever had. The summer after graduation, cruising with his girlfriend in a freshly painted GTO, became one more chapter in a car’s life that had already survived a near-total loss. But money was getting tight, gas had climbed to a dollar a gallon, and broadcasting school was on the horizon, which meant the GTO’s days with him were numbered.

Sold, Totaled, and Traded for a Leaking Mercury

He eventually sold the GTO for $1,400 to another Lincoln High student who spotted the for-sale sign while ordering tacos at a nearby drive-through window. Four days later, that buyer totaled the car on Interstate 35W after rear-ending another vehicle, driving recklessly and never bothering to transfer the title into his own name, which meant police called the original owner that same night asking if his car had been stolen. He replaced the GTO with a Mercury Capri that burned oil constantly, closing out his time with muscle cars for years, though he notes he now has his eye on a 2005 GTO to bring the story full circle.

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