CALGARY – The iconic Ford Mustang continues to gallop away after nearly half a century of production.
Introduced in1964, interest in the pony car has never really waned. There were some low points in the 1970s, but hundreds of thousands of Mustangs are still on the road.
And helping to keep them on the road since 1987 is The Mustang Shop, a Calgary-based business supplying aftermarket replacement components to performance and restoration enthusiasts.
“Dan Sawchuk started the business, and it was mostly a hobby for him,” says current co-owner Matt Mitchell. “It was a way for him to finance and supply parts for his own projects.”
Back then the shop was tucked away in a 750 sq. ft. bay in the Marda Loop area — in the same strip as My Favorite Ice Cream Shoppe. Mitchell’s father, Bruce, was a regular customer.
Bruce had restored a couple of cars, and was at work on a 1967 Mustang. During one of his visits to Sawchuk, Bruce asked if the business might ever be for sale – and should that ever be a consideration, he’d be interested in buying.
When Sawchuk was ready to sell, Bruce was still working for Shell, and wasn’t ready to quit that job. Enter son Matt.
“I was 17 at the time, and wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do,” he recalls. “It wasn’t a good time for Bruce to retire, but it was a good time for me to figure out what I wanted to do.”
The Mitchells bought The Mustang Shop in 1997, and Matt worked the shop pretty much solo for the first two and a half years.
Business grew rapidly, and the Mitchells moved two bays down to the end of the mall, doubling the floor space.
“Some 10 months later there were engines on the floor and parts everywhere,” Mitchell says. “And I was helping people on the phone, placing orders and shipping them all. I had rashes on my neck from the stress.”
Dad Bruce retired from Shell in 1999 and started working with Matt full-time, and they moved The Mustang Shop into a 4,500 sq. ft. industrial bay. Currently, including Matt and Bruce, there are six employees looking after shipping and receiving and front counter sales. They have about 21,000 Mustang part numbers they can supply for cars from 1965 up to the latest generation.
“As the vehicles age, the aftermarket responds, and there’s a lot of competition in making parts for the Mustangs,” Mitchell says. “The restoration market is massive, and we’ve had 15 record years in a row, with growth sometimes as high as 80 per cent, and sales now at more than $2 million per year.”
For a few years the Mitchells operated installation and restoration bays, but closed them in 2004, around the same time they put up a website (www.themustangshop.ca). Thanks to Internet orders from mostly Canadian customers, the company has grown steadily and never really had to advertise.
Many customers are in the Calgary area, but packages are shipped out daily.
“We ship a ton of stuff to Ontario, the folks out east love their Mustangs,” Mitchell says. “The Maritimes, Ontario and B.C. would be our biggest markets outside of Alberta.
“Our No. 1 sales category would be body panels,” he continues. “You can buy every piece of a Mustang from entire floor pans to body shells, fenders, hoods and new quarter panels. Most of our customers enjoy working with their hands and are turning wrenches in their own garage.”
Mitchell’s first car was a 1980 Mecury Capri, followed by a 1967 Cougar. When he was 17 – the same year the family bought the shop – Mitchell bought a 1988 5.0-litre Mustang. He worked on it, building an engine and adding a supercharger, but he never finished the project.
He still has the car, and says he hopes to get back at it soon – finding the parts isn’t the problem, it’s finding the time to work on it.
