The patriarch, the late Gilbert Speed of Valdosta, Ga., and his wife had seven children, and one pet pony. So he sold the pony and bought a 1965 Mustang, and they were off to the races. "One Saturday, Dad said, 'If you guys won't ride him, I know what I'll do with him,'" as son Daniel Speed tells it. "Then he came back with that car."
Next, the youngest Speed sibling, Chester, purchased a 1965 Mustang in 1980. Following that, four other Speeds started buying Mustangs of their own, and Daniel and Chester restored them. Daniel works in aerospace now, but before that he was a mechanic for his dad's trucking company, where the fleet was all-Ford.
The Speeds currently own eight Mustangs – seven are Mach 1 versions, and there's a 1969 convertible. The Speeds take them to car shows twice a year in honor of their late father. They live spread out across Georgia and Florida, so the shows are a chance to get together.
"We really enjoy getting the Mustangs out on I-75 and just kind of have our own little parade – our own rolling car show," says Daniel. They have another stable of Ford pickups to transport the cars.
"We've owned Ford vehicles throughout our lives and had good experiences with them," Daniel told Ford. "So we gravitate to what keeps us going."
