Following a prolonged period of neglect, the Fox Body Mustang that Ford built between 1978 and 1993 started enjoying the attention it deserves sometime last decade. This translates into breathtaking real-world builds and digital projects like this one, which pays homage to the ‘Stangs that helped Ford put a stop to the dreaded Malaise era in the early 1980s.
This third-generation Mustang features a digital restomodding process that gifts the pony with enough retro motorsport-inspired aspects for the vehicle to keep up with the quickest road cars of our time.
Naturally, the Group 5-inspired widebody, which adds enough real estate to see any jaw heading for the floor, is the first that catches the eye. Then you notice the details, from the Ferrari Testarossa-like cheese graters sitting aft of the front wheels to the monstrous air intakes that provide cooling for what should be seriously enlarged rear brakes.
The digital artist known as Scandalous Bodyworks (aka skandal.cr3) installed chequered flag-friendly rear wheels while adding aero discs to the front units. The latter might be all the rage these days, but their old-school racing inspiration means they fit this Mustang particularly well.
The extra bodywork is so generous that you can almost miss the door mirrors. And another way to tell just how much real estate has been added is to view the vehicle from behind. The open posterior exposes the tubular chassis supporting the aero beast. And with no wing in sight, only the roll cage obstructs rear visibility when you’re feeling feisty enough to take this beast out on the road.
How Ford left the dark years behind in the early ’80s
In his pixel journey, which is exemplified in the Instagram post below, the artist mentions the Group 5 racing inspiration for this apparently street-legal Mustang. And those early 1980s days of racing are of special importance to the Blue Oval.
You see, back in 1981 when Ford commissioned German racing team Zakspeed to build a Fox Body ‘Stang racer as a follow-up to the successful Euro circuit tool that was the Zakspeed Capri, times were troubled for the American car industry.
The Malaise Era, pushed by the 1973 and 1979 oil crises, saw carmakers being forced to reduce fuel consumption/emissions. And with little will (call it an incentive, if you so desire) for proper innovation, the impressive power figures that the late ’60s and early 70s has championed had turned to dust, with performance being ridiculously poor.
The more compact Fox platform allowed the Blue Oval to experiment. And the said ’81 racing effort, which was the Mustang Turbo GTX that can loosely be described as a new shell on top of the former Capri mechanicals, allowed the carmaker to use a successful Old Continent formula in America: the potent turbo-four.
The IMSA racecar got a road-going sibling, the Mustang SVO that Ford made between 1984 and 1986. All the model years involved a 2.3L turbo-four, but when the ’85 boosted power to 200 hp (203 PS), this became a clear sign that America was prepared to put the dark times behind it.
