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Cars

Deep-running auto admiration

The 1965 Ford Mustang Angelo Rumore Jr. owns is the latest in a line of classics he has restored.

By MARTY CLEAR
Published October 21, 2005

CITRUS PARK - Beauty is supposed to be skin deep. But maybe that's just true for people, not cars.

When Angelo Rumore Jr. bought his 1965 Ford Mustang a few years back, its skin was far from beautiful. It had been sitting in a carport for something like five years. No one had driven it; it's probable no one even cranked it up in all that time.

It was covered with a half-decade of dust. One window was open, so the inside had become damp and mildewed. Small animals with six or eight legs had probably made their home in there over the years.

But the engine was pristine. The oil was still clean and black, the radiator was full of still green antifreeze. And the woman who owned the Mustang, who had owned it since its early years, had incredibly meticulous records. Every tuneup, every oil change, every belt or hose that it been replaced - she had records of it all.

Rumore has a theory as to why a car that had been so pampered for more than 30 years had been left out to rot for the next five.

"She was divorced and everything was in her husband's name," Rumore said. "I think it was his pride and joy and she took it in the divorce just to burn his a--."

It was an ideal project car for Rumore. He has been doing body work on cars for 50 years, since he was a kid growing up in Ybor City.

"I just always loved cars," Rumore said. "My mother's brother was a paint and body man I would go to his shop after school and help out, sanding cars and stuff like that. I was happy to help, just to be around the cars. I was like 11, 12, 13 years old."

It wasn't long before his friends started asking him to work on their cars. He would "bullnose" their cars - remove hood ornaments and emblems, then fill in the holes to give the front a smooth and sleek look - or paint flames on the side.

He'd do it for free. The way he looked at it, his friends were doing him a favor. They were giving him a chance to work on cars.

It wasn't until 1980 that he bought his first classic car, a 1929 Plymouth he restored to mint condition. He restored it, top to bottom and inside and out, and started bringing it to car shows.

A few years later, he traded it for a 1931 Pontiac coupe.

"When I traded the Plymouth, I gave the guy all the trophies that it had won," Rumore said. "I told him I did all the work, but it was the car that won the trophies, so they should stay with the car. He had a Montero and the trophies filled up the back of it. I think there were 33 if them, and most of them first and second place."

He restored the Pontiac next, and started bringing it to bigger car shows. It took second place in two Antique Automobile Club of America national shows, but then he decided to retire it from serious competition.

"I didn't show it anymore because if you want to win first place in national competitions everything has to absolutely perfect," he said. "You can't have the slightest little thing wrong with it. So you can either show it or drive it, and I wanted to drive it."

When his current home was under construction, in the early 1990s, Rumore sold the Pontiac through a broker, mostly because he needed garage space.

"It ended up with a collector in Spain, unbeknownst to me," Rumore said. "The only reason I knew was I got a call from U.S. Customs asking me where the serial number on the engine was. They told me it was being shipped to Spain and they couldn't find the serial number."

It was actually his daughter who first came across the 1965 Mustang. She saw it sitting in a carport near her house and noticed it was dusty, and obviously nobody was driving it.

She kept an eye on it for awhile, just any time she drove past the owner's house. She finally decided she wanted to buy it and stopped in the next time it looked like the owner was around.

The woman who owned the car was hesitant to sell, Rumore said. It seems she always had it in her head that she would get around to fixing it up and getting it road-worthy someday.

But she finally decided to sell. With virtually no work to the 200-cubic-inch six-cylinder engine - new wires, a carburetor, replacing the fluids - the car ran beautifully.

Rumore ended up buying the car from his daughter just a couple of months ago and restored the body and interior. Even the finish was in good shape once it was sanded and buffed, and Rumore reworked the red interior.

He has the name of the man who owned it previously, the ex-husband of the woman Rumore bought it from, the guy who kept a folder lovingly stuffed with the car's history. He's thinking of looking him up.

"I'd kind of like to see if I could find him," Rumore said. "I'd like him to see what his car looks like now."

[Last modified October 20, 2005, 09:03:09]