NORTH KINGSTOWN

Most of us fall in love with our first car.

And years later, many of us seek out that first love by buying the same model car from the same year.

But Steve Tudino still has his first car.

“I had a Mustang like that,” he said people tell him at car shows. “And it’s pretty cool that I can say, ‘Actually, this is my first Mustang.’ ”

Tudino bought his white 1967 Mustang coupe in 1968. He said his parents promised him a new car when he graduated from high school if he went on to college, but “they probably did not mean a brand new car.”

“They didn’t say much (when he turned up in the Mustang),” he said in a recent interview. “They just smiled with their eyes wide open.”

He said the car was priced at $2,200 but his parents paid $1,930 for it because it was an older model and “they cut me a deal, supposedly.”

Tudino, 57, said he drove it while a student at Rhode Island College, taking in two or three friends from Smithfield every morning and going on skiing trips on the weekend. Indeed, he remembers lashing skis across the trunk and slamming the lid on the ropes to keep them in place.

“I always took meticulous care of it,” he said. “I’d wash it if I drove it in salt. I’m that way with my trucks.”

Tudino, who lives in Narragansett, is the president and owner of Water Filter Company, which sells water filters for residential, commercial and industrial use. He and his wife, Alice, established the company in 1986.

After graduating from college in 1972, he drove it for a couple of years until he fell for and bought a 1974 Dodge Charger SE. (“What a car!”)

But while he was no longer driving the Mustang, he could not bring himself to sell it.

“There was something about this Mustang,” he said. “I could not get rid of it.”

So he stored it for the next 25 years and it served as the “best shelf in the garage.”

That long-term indoor storage, combined with the meticulous care that he had taken of it, resulted in the car being in almost perfect condition in 1999 when Alice suggested that he should get the car out and restore it.

So he started it up and drove it to the restorer on the original tires, which were cracked and perished.

He said auto restorer Lucien Carbone, who sold his shop in East Providence in 2004, was astonished at the condition of the car, telling him that it was more like a museum piece than a driver.

So the question became, “How many of the original parts can we restore and keep?”

As it turned out, almost every part was saved. If a part was damaged or missing, he said, they searched out the exact part from the same era to replace it. Some items such as the rubber seals and hoses and top panels from the front seats had to be replaced because they had perished or gotten torn, but it was with exact replicas.

Tudino pointed out the chrome rear bumpers and bezels around the brake lights, which he said had been re-plated. But he said the gas cap was entirely original, including the leather seal on the inside.

Ford introduced the Mustang in 1964 and it was a success right out of the box. The 1967 Mustang marked an upgrade from the original 1964-1966 models.

“This is the 289, two-barrel (carburetor) that everyone drove,” Tudino said, adding that it has the Sport Sprint package, which includes additional chrome detailing and a passenger side rear-view mirror, and is relatively rare. It also sports unusual small directional signals set in the hood and aimed back at the driver.

The year-long restoration included repainting it the original Wimbleton White. The interior is saddle with chocolate brown rugs. He also acquired the vanity plate OUR 67, but said “we still get asked what year it is.”

He said he and Alice started taking the restored car, which has only 92,000 original miles on it, to local Mustang Club of America shows where it has won trophies.

“We started going to shows and we’d sit around the car, get a trophy and go home,” he said. “We thought, ‘There’s got to be more to it than this.’ ”

So with a friend he established a club for Rhode Islanders who own classic Fords and it has opened up a whole new social life.

“Lincolns, Mercuries, Thunderbirds, Fairlanes, anything that’s a Ford,” he said, adding that he is particularly partial to 1967 and 1968 Mustangs.

Why? “Because that was the year I was buying (my car)!” he said.

Tudino’s club, rifordclub.com, organizes a weekly cruise night at Wickford Junction during the summer months and rallies to parks and historic sites throughout New England all year round.

“We took 20 cars to Mystic Village (Conn.) last weekend,” he said, adding, “If the weather is really bad, we call each other up and complain that we can’t drive.”

But Tudino said he wants to take his 1967 Mustang up to the concours trailer division of MCA competition. So he now drives a green-gold 1968 Ford Mustang convertible with a white roof “that’s loaded with AC, power steering, power brakes.”

He estimates it will take at least two years to take his original 1967 Mustang to the national level of MCA competition.

“We want to take it to national shows, get a badge on the grille,” he said. “It’s a dream, hopefully we’ll achieve it.”

“It has to be perfect,” he said, pointing out a small kink in the rubber seal around the window on the driver’s side.

“That dip in the rubber could take six hours to fix,” he said, noting it would involve taking the door off. “It’s the time-consuming stage of the (restoration).”

He said he thinks the car requires 100 hours of work to the car to concours trailer condition.

“Working two hours a night after work, it could take a couple of years,” he said. “But there’s no rush.”

And while he and Alice dream of national MCA shows, their primary love seems to be just driving around in their Mustangs.

“Nothing brings back memories or makes more friends than cruising around in a car that you had many years ago,” he wrote in a statement about his 1967 Mustang. “Hopefully, you’ll get a Ford, even better a Mustang, and you can come along with us.”

For more information, go to:

www.rifordclub.com

pelsworth@projo.com