Win a 1966 Ford Mustang GT Convertible in Nightmist Blue

What you're looking at

The 1965–66 Mustang is the most familiar shape in American motoring, which means the details are the only thing separating one car from the next. This one has the details. It is a Nightmist Blue GT convertible — Ford's deep metallic blue, one of the better colors of the era — running the A-code 289 four-barrel, rated at 225 hp when it left the factory.

The GT Equipment Group is the part that matters: front disc brakes, quick-ratio steering, the heavy-duty handling suspension, grille-mounted fog lamps, GT badging and rocker stripes, and the true dual exhaust that exits through trumpet tips cut into the rear valance. Layered on top are the options most survivors are missing — the Deluxe Pony interior with its embossed galloping horses, power top, power steering and brakes, the Rally-Pac tach-and-clock on the steering column, a console, styled steel wheels, redline tires and a passenger mirror.

Then there is the second layer, which is where honesty matters: this car has been quietly modernized. A five-speed replaces the original gearbox, a Holley 600 sits on the 289, and the car carries Vintage Air climate control, a RetroSound head unit, LED lighting throughout, Pertronix electronic ignition, an Open Tracker suspension setup, a power antenna and radial redlines.

Why it matters

A first-generation Mustang convertible is easy to find. A genuine GT convertible is not, and one with the A-code four-barrel and the Deluxe Pony interior on the same build sheet is the specification collectors chase. The GT package was ordered on a minority of cars and picked apart on most of the ones that got it, so intact examples carry a real premium over the sea of restored six-cylinder and two-barrel drop-tops.

What the modern updates buy you is a car you can use without ceremony. The five-speed drops the cruising revs that make an original three-speed miserable on a highway; Vintage Air makes a black-top convertible tolerable in August; Pertronix ignition removes the single most common roadside failure on a points car; and the Open Tracker front-end parts fix the vague, wandering steering that stock 1960s Mustangs are notorious for. The trade is originality. Numbers-matching purists will mark this car down for the transmission swap and the carburetor, and that ceiling is baked into what it is worth. If you want a concours trailer queen, this is not it. If you want a GT convertible you would actually drive to breakfast, it is close to ideal.

It is also worth knowing who is running this. The Cobra Experience is a real 25,000-square-foot museum in Martinez, California — DJEK Inc. dba The Cobra Experience, a registered 501(c)(3) — and its car sweepstakes are the museum's fundraising engine. It publishes named winners with their hometowns going back to 2020, including a Shelby Cobra CSX4051, Carroll Shelby's Daytona Coupe continuation and a 1966 Shelby GT350H "Hertz Rent-A-Racer." That track record is rarer than the car.

The fine print worth knowing

Entries are handled through TapKat, the third-party sweepstakes platform the museum uses for all of its drawings; you pick a donation level on the museum's page and the entry count scales with it. The museum states plainly that a donation is not required to enter or win, and the mail-in free entry route is spelled out in the Official Rules on that platform — read them, because that is also where the closing date, the drawing date, the prize's stated value and any cash option live. The museum's own car page advertises only a "limited time" window and does not print the deadline, so check the rules before you assume you have weeks.

Budget for the tax bill. A sweepstakes car is ordinary income at its fair market value in the year you take delivery, and nothing here suggests a cash allowance to cover it — on a roughly $58,000 car that is a real four- to five-figure bill in April, on top of registration, transport from Northern California and insurance. Finally, the odometer reading, the VIN and the restoration history are not published; on a sixty-year-old car those are the three things that determine whether you are getting a fresh build or a tired one, and they are worth asking about before you donate.