Mustang of the Month

Leon & Tana Johnson
2014 Premium Ruby Red Convertible

I've enjoyed serving at Pierce County Mustang car shows, and even entered the 2014 one year. Our schedule didn't permit me to be a part of this year's show. What a fun experience and great bunch of people.

Hard to believe it’s been six and a half years since we flew to Phoenix to take a look at a 2014 Premium Ruby Red Mustang Convertible I found on the Internet. There was no dickering in 2019 at the dealership, OverstockVehicles.com. The price, $14,500 was firm. We signed the papers and started our drive back to Puyallup. It was a very fun drive. Stopping for gas was always a treat because several people wanted to talk about the Mustang.

This car is so much nicer than my first notchback Mustang purchased new in 1969. Back in the day, I ordered a magnetic cruise control cable from J.C. Whitney which held the ‘69 to a speed until you start ed up a hill causing the car to slow down. There wasn’t air conditioning either. The Windsor 351 had plenty of power.

The V-6 in our 2014 has a 3.7-liter V6 engine rated at 305HP—amazing power for a V-6 with thirty miles per gallon on the highway and an average of twenty all around driving. We especially enjoy driving in temperatures of above seventy degrees when the top comes down. East Pierce and King Counties are some of our favorite drives. Our son and family live in Enumclaw. We regret the Buckley bridge on 410 is out (at time of editing it has since re-opened.) We’ve walked the beautiful foot bridge a few times to be picked up by our son, and detoured four other routes to Enumclaw.

In other news, we’ve been very busy downsizing our no longer needed belongings because we're having a one-story house built in a new development called Liberty Ridge, Phase Two—a part of the Sunrise community with Mt. Rainier as the backdrop. Our current home of twenty-two years goes on the market November 7. New home completion set for mid-January 2026.

Our stock Mustang has only 62,000 miles on it, and runs like it was new. One of my thrills is to floorboard at freeway entrances up to the speed limit. There seems to be a power band at about fifty when the Mustang really takes off. Guess I’ll always be a Mustang guy.

We’ve had an amazing time traveling this summer to Slovakia (one of the countries where Kias are made), Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Germa ny, Serbia and Austria—spectacular countries and wonderful people. English is taught in the schools, so there was no language barrier. Six members of the Viennese Philharmonic Orchestra performed a classical concert for us in Vienna, a highlight of the trip. In the third week of travel, we boarded a riverboat on the Danube where I played piano for a talent show. The chef and his crew provided amazingly delicious food that week. We never expected these countries to be destinations for tourism, but, indeed, they are. The ship passed through fourteen locks between Regensburg, Germany and Budapest, Hungary.