The roar of power
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday January 8, 2010
Paralympian David Hall is used to turning heads on the tennis court and continues to do so in his Mustang. David Hall used a specially designed wheelchair to win gold when he represented Australia as a Paralympian.But his favourite vehicle now sports a distinctly different profile. It's a classic muscle car - a fully restored 1966 Ford Mustang Fastback that ensures he turns heads wherever he goes."For me, especially as someone who has issues with public transport, cars are independence and freedom," says Hall, who won every major wheelchair tennis title in a stellar career spanning 15 years. "I remember when I got my first car, I could go places, visit my friends, go to the movies, go to concerts and all that kind of stuff."Hall's fascination with Mustangs developed from a chance encounter when he was living and playing in the US during the mid-1990s."I was living in California and a friend of mine was going out to her parents' place for Thanksgiving," he says. "She asked if I wanted to come along. They lived in the desert, so we drove out there and as we pulled in, I saw her father had an old beat-up '65 Mustang coupe sitting in the front yard. He asked me if I wanted to go for a spin. It was so rusted, you could actually see the road through the floor but as soon as he started it up, it had that real V8 rumble. As soon as he took it out on to the open road and just floored it, I was like, 'I've got to have one of these."'Hall lost both legs after being hit by a car but that didn't leave him with a grudge against automobiles. He says the accident was a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.He had left his mother's 50th birthday party to attend another function being held by a friend. "I completely did the wrong thing and started drinking at my mum's party and then decided to hitchhike to my friend's party," he explains. "It was just a bad decision. Before I knew it, I was hitchhiking half on the road, half on the sidewalk and the guy just didn't see me and hit me. That was the beginning of a whole new chapter in my life."Amazingly, Hall is still able to see a bright side to the incident."If anything, I was almost a bit lucky because the car that hit me was an old, small Datsun 180B," he says. "If I'd been hit by a regular sedan, I would have been in probably even more trouble."Having never driven a car before the accident, Hall's motoring life finally began in late 1987 via specially fitted hand controls to operate the brake and accelerator."My folks bought me my first car - a little Ford Escort - after my accident, so I'd never actually driven a car with my feet before," he says.Of course, driving wasn't the only activity Hall took up post-accident. The other was wheelchair tennis, which saw him win eight US Open, seven British Open and nine Australian Open titles. Then there were the six Olympic medals - one gold, three silvers and two bronze.It was upon returning home from a tennis foray in 1999 that he finally sourced the Mustang of his dreams."My girlfriend picked me up at the airport and said, 'I think I've seen a Mustang for sale,"' says Hall, who now works in an advisory role with Tennis Australia. "Straight from the airport, we went to Hurstville to see it. That was the one I have now. I remember the first day I actually got into it. The power was pretty extreme and with both windows open, you could really hear the roar of the engine. It was just the best thing."
© 2010 Sydney Morning Herald