Luca and Emily Share More Than Just Love for Mountain Roads | Your Cars

Words and Photos by Luca De Masi
My name is Luca and I’m a 24 years old car enthusiast living in the south of Germany. I am the owner of a 1967 Ford Mustang Coupé called Emily. Emily is born in Dearborn, Michigan. And I
bought her 52 years later in Palmdale, California.

My passion for cars started about 10 years ago when I was 14 years old. Together with my father I watched the movie “Gone in 60 seconds” with Nicolas Cage. The son of Nicolas Cage gets into trouble and has to steal 50 cars to buy himself out. On this list were only high‑quality classics, sports cars and luxury sedans. The last missing car was Eleanor, a 1967 Ford Mustang Fastback with the famous bodykit from Chip Foose. Since this movie I knew the 1967 Ford Mustang is my dream car.

I searched the whole internet and looked for a suitable one for 7 years. Either they were too expensive or too rusty… But then I found the perfect Mustang. A friend from Los Angeles gave me
a contact of an old lady from Palmdale, California. After many conversations and pictures I decided to buy the Mustang from “Emily, the previous owner”, because she could not drive it
anymore. After a long way from California to the south of Germany I decided to give her a Frame-Off Restauration.

And there it stood in my driveway, my dream car, completely scratched and dented. The paint was awful and the smell was disgusting. But it was my dream! And what next ? I had no plan and no space only a single garage. I bought a bunch of books and watched a lot of videos in the internet and started MY Project. I started by removing all the interior stuff. Seats, Headliner, Dash and carpet. Everything was filthy. Next thing was grinding down the old paint and rust. This took a long time but at the end it looked perfect. I had only one issue, the floor panel. I quickly changed it and started removing the engine and the transmission. I drove the car to the paint shop and in the meantime I restored both the engine and the transmission.

4 weeks later my Mustang was shiny as on its first day. I glued in the headliner, installed the carpets, the seats and of course the engine and transmission as well.
At this moment I didn’t have the money to restore the engine and the engine bay perfectly. That’s why I’m working on that this winter. I try to do everything on my own because all these workshops are super expensive and I made a lot of bad experiences.
The moment when I first started my dream car was indescribable.

So let’s talk about its modifications.
From the first moment ‘till now the plan was to keep her as ORIGINAL as possible! I added a new Flowmaster Straight Piped Exhaust (the sound is from a different world, just awesome),
brighter Headlights and Taillights (for safety) and a new Edelbrock Setup to give her a little bit more power (new Carburetor and intake manifold). And that’s it!

The difference between driving a modern sports car and driving a classic car on a mountain drive is pretty easy to explain. If you want to go for a ride with a modern sports car you’re driving to the
gas station and fill up the gas tank buy some snacks and just GO. Super simple. Driving with a classic car is much more than that. You need to check all your fluids and all time of bolds before
you go for a ride. You need to think about what can happen and which parts do I need ? For example, as i was in the mountains my battery died in the middle of nowhere. No cellphone
network and no one around me. Just me and my car. But luckily I had my whole trunk full of parts, fluids and tools. So I could jump start myself ! The next thing is driving. If you’re sitting in a modern car you have a lot of assistance systems, airbags, disc brakes and other stuff. In you’re classic car there is nothing, just a steering, 4 wheels and a huge V8 Engine. No power steering,
no brake booster, no airbags, no disc brakes. If you brake to much your brake pads get to hot and you could have the problem that your car is impossible to stop…
Driving a classic car needs a lot of practice but in the end it’s worth it because you’re driving a piece of history and having fun. Driving a classic car in the mountains is like driving a real car!

I think youngest drivers should start with a cheap unrestored vintage car and try to restore it by themselves as soon as they have time for it! Why? If you’re changing your oil or other stuff you learn how everything works in your car. And I think this is super important because if you know how a rear axle is mounted to the frame – for example – you would never go drifting with it…

Cars, Roads, Adventures
In September 2020 I started a Roadtrip to the Swiss alps with two friends. In these two days we drove over 600 miles, over 550 curves and 5 different Alpine Roads. Our highest elevation was at the famous Hotel Belvedere (Furkapass) at 2,429m (7969ft.) We met a lot of people there and just enjoyed having the possibility to drive a classic car in the mountains. We saw a lot of different
roads, and different types of weather. We got everything: fog, rain, sun and storm and in the end I would say this roadtrip was just perfect as it was with all the little problems in it!

I would like to do something crazy next year. I want to drive all the way from the south of Germany through some beautiful Switzerland alpine roads over Italy to France to check out some nice roads next to the ocean. Because Emily wants to see the ocean… This place is called Massif de l’Estelle. The Roadtrip should be around 2 weeks to have enough time to take lots of photos and videos (because I love taking photos). I also want to go swimming in some mountain lakes and just chill.

Hard to say what the ultimate day out with Emily looks like because driving in the mountains left me speechless but it can be stressful sometimes, because you don’t know how long she wants to drive… So I would say my ultimate day out is driving to an one hour distanced lake, Emily directly next to me with my girlfriend on the other side watching the sunset, while eating BBQ and listening to chilled music. My favorite Soundtrack for an early drive cruising into the sunrise should be „Your Man” from Joji or „Clouds“ from Børns.

Currently I’m repairing some broken parts and upgrading some other things to make Emily ready for all what I want to do with her. A lot of Roadtrips are planned for 2021. A couple of them?
1. Passo dello Stelvio, Italy
2. Cortina d’ Ampezzo, Dolomites, Italy
3. Massif de l’Estelle, France
4. Passo san Bernardino, Italy and many more Roadtrips !