AUBURN – After raising a family, Tom and Vickie Ward are making more time for each other, sort of dating again. And not unlike when they met, Tom’s restored Mustang is the chosen vehicle for their road to romance.

Sitting in the office of Skyward Aviation, Tom’s airplane repair business, Vicki remembers when they met in Pennsylvania. It was 1981 at a mutual friend’s wedding. She, then living in Pennsylvania, was the maid of honor. He, living in Lewiston, was an usher.

The groom and Tom were in the Air Force together. The bride told Vicki that Tom would be a good match. “And he has this car, a ’66 Fastback.'”

She liked him right away.

“He had blue eyes, dark hair and tall,” Vicki said. “I remember what he was wearing like it was yesterday: a white button-down shirt, rolled up sleeves and faded jeans.”

He too was smitten, describing her as “cute and precious. … I spent the whole day talking with Vicki. It was really euphoric.” They discovered things they had in common, cars and their love of Foreigner music.

They began a long-distance relationship. She visited him in Maine when the fall colors were ablaze. In the Mustang, he took her on hiking trips and to the ocean.

By July they were engaged. They married the following October. Their honeymoon was, of course, a road trip in the Mustang from Pennsylvania to Vermont.

After he accepted a job with McDonald Douglas helping the Royal Saudi Air Force maintain F-15s in Saudi Arabia. A few years later, expecting their first child, they returned to Maine.

They found land in Auburn to build a home. He decided to sell the Mustang, a decision both described as painful. “It just was time to move on and start new things. It was the beginning of a new chapter.”

Before long they were driving a family van, taking their son and daughter to hockey and soccer. Eventually Tom bought another Mustang, a ’65 coupe, with plans to restore it. Because he was busy with the family, that painstaking hobby took eight years. As their youngest neared the end of high school, and with their daughter away at college, his work on the Mustang accelerated.

By the summer of 2007 it was ready.

Their first cruise to get ice cream was almost magical. “After driving Caravans for so long, I missed it,” he said. Just the two of them in a Mustang again “was just like when we first went out,” she said.

Celebrating 26 years Oct. 16, he says she’s wonderful to be around. She says he’s a good man, a good listener. “I can tell him things.”

These days they go to car shows, cruise-ins where they meet other car enthusiasts, and drive for fun. “We’ve been to the ocean more times in the last six months than we have in years,” she said. “We’re more spontaneous. We’re having fun.”

And interesting things seem to happen when they’re in the Mustang, Vicki said.

At one car show their coupe was photographed by a marketing group for “Mustang for Men” cologne. In June Tom was invited to display the car at the All Ford Nationals car show in Carlisle, Penn. This summer at the lobster festival in Rockland, the Mustang helped attract the attention of one of the couple’s favorite singers, former Foreigner lead Lou Gramm.

On the glove box, Gramm autographed the title of one of his songs, “Rev On.”