1988 Ford Festiva
Spring, 1992 - Summer, 1995
This car was originally owned by a little old couple who towed it around behind their RV and used it on vacations. It had somewhere around 45,000 miles when I purchased it, and had around 160,000 when it finally died, so I certainly got my $3000 out of this puppy.
I added 2 Lanzar 12"s in a box, picked up a Coustic 180 amp to push them, and powered it all from the stock tape deck. Not bad for starters. In a car with such little airspace, the 12"s would rattle your brain pretty good. Of course in '92, CD's were getting pretty big, so I added a CD Walkman hooked up to the tape player.
That was an okay system, but there were some things I didn't like. One, tape player. Two, CD Walkman would always skip if you turned it up too loud. 3, not enough power. These were all corrected in "system #2" in the Festiva. Sold the Lanzar 12"s to a friend (mistake - those were great woofers) and bought 2 Crunch 15"s. I bought an isoberic box to put them in. Put in 4 6" speakers for mids. Put in a Sony CDX-4040 CD player in the dash. Pushed the 15's with a Fosgate Punch 100 amp bridged, and the 4 mids with the Coustic 180 amp.
This was the configuration when my car got BROKEN INTO. I lost everything - speakers, amps, tapes, cd's ... The police report said that the value of everything was around $1300. I also had a cheap car alarm on this car and somehow they stole it too.
I drove the Festiva for another couple of years. I put the stock tape player back into it, and hooked the stock speakers back up. One day while driving to work, the timing chain broke. It in turn broke the camshaft off in the came, and tore up the entire upper end of the engine. Estimated cost to fix was $1300, blue book value on car was $800. Sold the car as-is for $100 and a six-pack of tacos to a co-worker.
One time I wrecked this car while delivering a pizza. Knocked the transmission out of the engine. Turns out it pops back in, no tools needed. Took a week or so to figure this out though. Scott Bailey's dad (who was a mechanic at the local Ford dealership) finally gave us the knowledge.
