POWERING FORWARD

WHEN DARREN GOJAK LOST HIS WIFE SUE, HE VOWED TO MOVE FORWARD. ADDING A HEAP OF EXTRA GRUNT TO HIS 1964½ MUSTANG DEFINITELY HELPED WITH THAT

- DAVE CAREY

IT’S A hard road losing someone you love. You can trust Darren Gojak on that one; he’d been with his wife Sue for 17 years when she passed suddenly in 2019, leaving him at a loss. There’s no rulebook on how to cope with grief, but eventually you’ve got to move forward. And few things move a man forward like a worked small-block V8.

It was simpler days back in 2013 when Darren spied a green Mustang coupe on Gumtree. Sue agreed it was worth checking out, and before long, it was in their driveway. There were a few imperfections bringing it down, including an untidy set of 80s-spec Delta Wires, but the wheels are easily fixed. Importantly, Sue liked it, the paint was excellent and the potential was evident.

Darren wasted no time making the car his own, with the wheels the first things to go, replaced by a set of Magnum 500 steelies wrapped in whitewall tires. He then got cleaning to bring the car up to the standard he knew was there underneath all the grime. “The seller had lived on a farm, so it had all the gunk that came with that,” he explains.

Some careful polishing brought the car up a treat – a testament to the quality paint job. “Later, I met some guy at a car show who remembered working on it,” says Darren. “He reckoned he spent months and months on the paint back in 2004.” After an interior tidy-up, all Darren had to do was load up Sue and get cruising. “For us, car nights were always burger nights,” he says, getting a bit misty-eyed. “If we were going on a cruise or something, Sue and I would always get a hamburger from somewhere. It became a tradition.”