I was going to make this one a “CC Wordless Outtake”, but I couldn’t keep silent. Nope. I realize I write a lot about having grown up in Flint, Michigan, and of its place in the legacy of the automotive industry in the United States, being the birthplace of General Motors. Today, I bring up the Vehicle City (yet again) for two reasons: a.) This Frankenstang was spotted at Flint’s annual car show held downtown traditionally in the third week of August; and b.) It seems to me that a creation like this one could only be born from the wellspring of automotive know-how that exists in much of Genesee County. I’ll bet you won’t find anything like this tooling around the streets of a city like Chicago, Illinois… or its suburbs, for that matter.
You may join me in pondering the “why” of putting a small-block Chevy 350 V8 into a Ford Mustang, but I hope most of you will agree with me that this is a very unique creation. Have you ever seen a Ford 302-powered, F-Body Camaro or Firebird? (I have not.) This goes beyond a mere “heart transplant” – this is a straight-up mixture of two different species. I’ve always thought its powertrain is, and has always been, a huge part of what defined a Mustang as such. Perhaps dropping an SBC in this ‘Stang was in a partial attempt to make this Ford more acceptable in what is still a very GM-centric town.
Before anyone points out that the front bumper cover is from the Mustang’s 1983 – ’84 model years, note that its color is slightly different (dark maroon) than the rest of the car (Hershey’s brown), though this was really hard to notice at first. I did get a good look at the back of the car (no picture, sorry!), and it’s definitely from the first four years of this generation’s production. I also seem to remember on a placard somewhere in or on the car that it’s an ’82. There’s no doubt in my mind that this entry has been a one-of-a-kind at the entire show, for years. As for me, I look at this car with (lots of) curiosity, and with kindness. After all, this conversion must have taken a lot of imagination and even more skill… much more than I possess, anyway.
Downtown Flint, Michigan.
Saturday, August 21, 2010.
Related reading:
- From William Stopford: Curbside Classic: 1979-1982 Ford Mustang – A Clean Break; and
- From SavageATL: Curbside Classic: 1979 Ford Mustang – A New Hope.
How about a Corvette with an identity crisis? 😉 There’s a 1969 Corvette who received a 1st-gen Chrysler 392 Hemi from a 1958 New Yorker. http://www.superchevy.com/features/vemp-1007-1969-chevrolet-corvette/
This is coming from a Corvette lover: that engine swap is AWESOME. The 4×4 stuff not that much, but cool anyway
I used to attend the Iola old car show in Iola Wisconsin. Someone came in with a really nice blue ‘Vette of the same vintage. Under the hood was a gold lump of a mid fifties flathead Studebaker inline 6. How weird is that? Wish I had pictures.
Bob
Why do I like these??
They’re like those “Monster Machines” of the 80’s, come to life in full-scale!
I find it interesting how much Monza is in that front end once a bowtie is applied.
At that time, I always thought comparing the Mustang and Camaro was like comparing two different classes of cars. The Mustang was like if GM had dropped the F body, and then retooled the Monza to make a Camaro out of it when performance made a comeback. Kind of like today, where the Challenger is really a different class than the Mustang and Camaro although they tend to be considered together.
I’ve heard rumors about there is a Mustang out there somewhere that the owner put a 289 Studebaker V-8 in it. True or not, it sounds like a interesting engineering project.
My aunt bought a ’51 Studebaker Commander Land Cruiser sedan with V8 and automatic, with most all accessories available, In 1959 when my cousin went to college, he used the Studebaker. It came back with a ’57 300C 392 Hemi with pushbutton TorqueFlite. My aunt resumed driving the car and noted it could “Hit over 100 mph at the top of freeway ramps” She last drove it four days before she passed away at 97.
Forgot to finish the entry. Norm (best friends since 5 years old) in the 60’s Norm bought a ’65 Mustang notchback coupe he got cheap because the running gear was shot. I had a ’57 Golden Hawk that had been rear ended and shoved into the car ahead. We switched the 289 Supercharged engine plus auto trans and Stude posi rear into the Mustang we also switched as much of the leather interior into the ‘Stang as we could, with some alteration to the seats. As a final touch we shortened the damaged Hawk fins and added them with the side trim from the Hawk. Most people were amused, as we were, but a few were ready to kill us for doing the swap. It went like hell, but still didn’t corner.
I’ve seen a Fox body ‘stang with a Buick 455 in it.
I once heard of a Chevette with a 500 cid Cadillac engine, While it’s true that both are GM products, It’s at least as ”scary”as a Fox body with a 455!
IIRC, that was one of those Hot Rod project cars where they were trying to build something fast as cheaply as possible.
That’s correct, I have the article somewhere. They had to cut the firewall and install the engine partly inside the gutted interior, so it would fit. They used a stronger rear axle and used the front half of the leaf springs from a Ford F250 as lower control arms. A roll cage added much needed bracing for the unit nody and perhaps some Hail Mary safety.
The car was criticized in later issues for being an undriveable, lethal handful, although it did run 11 sec quarters for someone brave enough to do so.
Yeah, seems like they were going for something outrageous, and I’m sure they figured jamming a 500 cid V8 into a Chevette would make for good copy. Trouble is, it didn’t otherwise make much sense. I guess it wouldn’t be too difficult to find one of those boat-anchor Cadillac engines in a junkyard for peanuts. But making it work in anything (let alone a Chevette) seems like it would be a whole lot more trouble than it’s worth. Besides all of the custom work, all that upfront weight would make trying to drive it insane. I can’t see it being any faster than a run-of-the-mill SBC, either.
Even a SBC in a Chevette is overkill. As has been said before, a 2.8L V6 transplant would be a much better fit for overall driveability and still be plenty fast enough.
The idea was to put the largest GM engine into the smallest car they produced. To me, it was another example of why even though you can do something, it may not be the best use of resources to do so.
Found it! The “Bad Seed” Chevette!
I thought the Chevette was probably a rear engine conversion using an Eldorado transaxle, like the ones built around Olds Toronado drivetrains but I have been proved wrong
There was a Yugo that had a 455 & transaxle swapped into the back of it. You can find it on YouTube.
My guess is they considered it, but the modifications would have been even more ‘intense’. For starters, they would have had to shorten the half-shafts, and might not have been able to get the Unitized Power Package (UPP) narrow enough to fit. They couldn’t use any kind of neat-o trans shifter, and getting slicks/wheels to fit probably wouldn’t be very easy, either. OTOH, if someone did it with a Yugo…
Still, there’s the driveability thing. A heavily front-weight biased Chevette is bad enough, but it would be even more difficult to control one with all the weight, power, and torque over the rear axle. With big tires on the rear, I would imagine the thing would constantly be trying to lift the front end off the ground and would require a very light foot on the accelerator pedal.
This particular Mustang belonged to a coworker who kept harping on how fast it was and we finally called BS, I happened to buy some parts off him and saw it with my own eyes… that thing was scary if it ever ran, and made me question the safety of that car.
Forgot about it, I owned a Gremlin X in deep purple, with a 401 AMC engine. I bought it, warmed it up, floored it from a stop and after the spinning for a block and a half, sold it the same day.
“I have a nice old Mustang with a blowed-up 4 cylinder, and this rusted out Chevy truck. I also have a welder. What can I make?”
Evan, this sounds like the most probable explanation – thanks for this!
I lived in Michigan for 22 years, Joseph. I know these people.
Who would do such a thing?
Well, I hear Purvis’s got tools. 😉
https://youtu.be/Ef201LbbAPE
“The Wind” by The Zac Brown Band (Animation directed by Mike Judge)
*Outstanding.*
Glad you liked it! The video is full of interesting touches. The Cadillac Eldorado on the grease rack in one of the background shots and the girl in the audience that resembles LuAnn Platter are two of them.
A few years ago I saw the opposite of this – a Chevrolet S 10 with a flathead Ford V8. It’s somewhere in the archives.
Years ago I saw a ’32 Ford in a UK magazine fitted with a Rolls Royce V8.
A year ago I bought All original 1973 Ford Mustang Hardtoop landau coupe 8600 original miles bronze color brown interior 302 2B V8 Auto , Factory AC , Factory AM radio , manual windows . I was Never Classic Mustang fan but being this low miles original vehicle I couldn’t resist !! Oh I forgot mention I paid 17K !
I think this treatment may have been called “Grande” back in ’73.
It’s a super secret Camaro prototype!
You heard it here first!
Ha ha ha???
Going retro AND crossing to the other side of the tracks? 😉
Hey – at least one can now see out of it!
(For the record, I do like the new Camaro. ?)
I used to work with a guy who put an Olds 350 in a 1980 Mustang. It felt like the rocket strapped to a horse that it was.
Chevy V8? So *that’s* why the hood is up. 🙂
I think I understand the mindset. I applaud the owner for doing something that nobody else is doing. Although it takes very little to stick an SBC into something, it surely takes some work to do so into a platform that almost never sees one. I would be surprised if it was an easy conversion. I’ll bet it goes pretty good, too.
Norm and I wanted a lightweight drag car. Found a Puegoet 403 sedan for $25 (didn’t run) We used the Chevy 409 and drive train from Norm’s Impala coupe he’d rolled. We didn’t do any trial runs, and should have braced the body somewhere. When the lights tripped, with a tearing sound the body twisted on the little sedan, and probably thankfully the engine quit, it unplugged a few things. It sat for years by Norms garage, front twisted, with the left front wheel two feet off the ground.
Also remember a customer who had two engine fires in has Jag XJ12 sedan. He checked out chevy conversions and was told $10,000 to do it. He also had a 1970 Olds Vista Cruiser with a 455 that he spun into a pole. He checked it out, it was a drop into the jag and it bolted up to the gm trans. There was no room for an air cleaner, but he figured “What the hell” he only spent a few hunded to change it. It ran for at least 20 years.
In my Mustang days in the ’80’s, I encountered a lot of Ford-hate from people who truly disliked vitually all Ford engines, and were convinced the SBC was the best engine ever.
This probably was overdone brand loyalty. But they often had grudging admiration for the Fox body itself, the light weight and the sporty packaging. So I can see some old school Chevy fanboy building this combination, thinking he’ll show those Ford boys what a real engine can do.
As a Mustang owner and enthusiast I still get some of that Ford hate. I also have a lot of Chevy guy buddies who like to jab me about being a Ford guy. I like to point out to them that I have owned a Chevy Malibu for 38 years.
I have seen several SBC Fox Mustangs set up as drag cars, which my buddies like to point out to me.
When I go to a street rod show I don’t bother to look under the hood of very many of them because I know what I will find. It is nice once in awhile to find a Flathead, Buick Nailhead, or a Hemi, though. Reworking the firewall just to fit in the distributer can be a real pain in the rear. I must confess, however, that I am a former street rodder who drove a ’35 Plymouth with the usual SBC.
And just when you thought all the Frankenstein Cars were in Cuba…
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/international/cc-global-the-immortal-and-frankensteinian-curbside-classics-of-cuba/
?
In the early days of Gm ohv v8s many HM engines found their way into fords of all types. Mostly flathead replacements. Otoh have a friend who replaced the 4 banger in his S10 with a 304 and c4. Works great and the sbf seems smaller than the sbc. Hard to believe that anything works better than a 350/350 or 700r4 combo but welding rods are cheap.
Autocorrect sure has a mind of it’s own.
Not just the early days. As Regular Car Reviews recently put it, on a long enough timeline everything gets an LS.
I once seen a 1979 Ford Courier 4×4 with a GM 350 engine underneath the hood, I would gone for a 5.0 Mustang GT engine or a 4.0 Liter V6 engine if I wanted more power for the truck.
I’ve seen many Foxstang builds on the internet that involved some variation of an LS as the powertrain- and why not? They’re stout, easily modified, and about the lightest/most compact V8 out there; not to mention they can be had for peanuts compared to any modern Blue Oval equivalent- have you seen what they want for a Coyote? 4.6 Modulars are nice engines, but much heavier and they take up a lot of space underhood; the performance parts also require a higher income bracket than most young people have access to.
All that being said, a 350 SBC in a Mustang is probably more a middle finger to the purists than anything else, although once again, they’re cheaper to build than a 5.0 Windsor
Years ago, I read an article of someone putting a SBC into a very nice ’67 or ’68 Mustang fastback. Prior to the wild explosion of the Fox 302, it would have made sense. But with the myriad array of go-fast stuff for the 5.0L, not so much nowadays.
Hot Rod once featured a late 60s Mustang with a 454 Chevy conversion. Apparently the owner had a wrecked Corvette with the 454 and a Mustang that needed an engine…
That might have been the fastback Mustang I remembered, but mistakenly thought it had a SBC. It was very nicely done and, given the circumstances, understand why he did it.
The closest I can come to that swap is that a friend had a ’73 Mach 1 with a 428 SCJ in it from his brother’s wrecked ’68 Mustang. It looked stock. The 302/tranny from the Mach went into the fathers Pinto wagon.
Probably the original Vulcan/AXOD drivetrain is still in it, so not really a parallel, but there’s that Gen 1 Ford Taurus wagon with the front clip of a 1950 Studebaker…
I suppose if all you had was a crappy “1982” Mustang which was the ugliest of the Mustang brand. And you had a old Chevy laying around. Sure why not? It looks like a shade tree mechanics work. The paint job looks to be amateurish as well. Just wonder how many places he had to weld in motor and transmission mounts. Not to mention making a driveshaft to fit to the rear end.
i personally would have found a 302 to drop under the hood.
Maybe back in the day the owner worked in a GM assembly plant but loved the Fox Mustang, so did this to be able to park near the plant without getting vandalized.
I tend to go lean more towards the idea that the bow tie is really a middle finger to the Ford fans.
It must be subliminal for me, but whenever I see the Chevy bowtie on a car, it cheapens it for me. Even if it is associated with better cars now, and some great legacy cars, it identified too many bad cars in the past.
The gold bow ties are ‘cheap’ to me, especially on 7 year old Cobalts, already faded away.
Blue Bow ties are the real Chevy logo.
A M E N.
I’ve hated the gold bow tie since it was introduced. I’m not a fan of branded logos in general but at least the blue oval is consistent. Chevy’s had bowties in black, blue, outlines in seemingly various colors, and pale gold, the worst of them.
I don’t know the builder’s motivation. But hey, it’s a small-block V-8. It just happens to be made by GM rather than Ford. And it takes extra work to get it bolted up and situated.
Same thing as doing an engine swap on an earlier car.
I’ll bet you won’t find anything like this tooling around the streets of a city like Chicago, Illinois…
au contraire. See that 70 Cougar next to mine?(note the plates)
Powered by the Heartbeat of America :/
Matt, I stand corrected.
(Actually, on my lunch break, I did something I might have done before scheduling this piece: I Googled “Chevy Mustang” in quotation marks. I was shocked that there were more than a handful of entries.)
As for the content, putting the ugliest(IMO) nose of the Fox era on an 82 body(the best nose, at least of the 4 eyes) is more offputting than the small block Chevy swap. The badging is tacky though, I get it, you Chevy swapped a Ford, bravo.
How about a Concord wagon with a Ford 5.0?
This brings to mind a philosophical question I’ve long wondered — how extensively can you modify a car and still call it whatever make/model it started out as? Like the author, I’ve always considered the powertrain to be a big part of what defines a particular car. So is this car still a Mustang, or is it something completely new entirely?
The Mustang/Studebaker mix norm and I did we referred to as the Studestang.
The thing is is a 90° V8 is a 90° V8. This won’t be a big different driving experience from a SBF powered Mustang if you took a blindfold test. The differences in all the various engines that were optional in these 2.3, 2.3T, 2.8 Cologne V6, 3.3 I6, 3.8 V6 would be more perceptible in the nuances. You can’t ask your philosophical question without asking how extensively can a car vary in factory forms and be called the same make/model?
The SBC in the Fox body is a great drag car recipe. I’m a big Fox body fan and I usually like SBC swaps in most everything, but in these, I prefer the SBF. Regardless, I see these as the modern day Deuce coupe that our fathers and grandfathers used to build.
There are some kits for this kind of thing and it makes perfect sense if you were going to use the car on track. There are way more mods for SBCs or LSs; and many of them are less expensive than a Ford motor. Hard to argue against it.
I have seen a 1969 Camaro with a 514 cube big block Ford in it.
Ugh. Oh, did I tell you I’m a fan of Fox Mustangs?
We’ve all heard stories about how common it is to swap in a Chevy 350 V8 in place of the old straight six engine in Jaguars. Especially in the XJ-6. I heard a story about a guy who swapped in a Jaguar six in a half-ton Chevy pickup. Apparently it worked quite well, but one time while checking the oil at a service station he met an Englishman who, upon seeing the Jaguar engine in the Chevy pickup, took umbrage and wacked the pickup owner over the head with his walking cane.
SBCs in Fox bodies are not that rare, sure you don’t see them every day but I’ve seen a few in magazines and a couple in person. Of course it is all about the LS nowadays so those are the kits I could find. http://stores.lsxeverything.com/full-ls-swap-kit-for-foxbody-mustang-79-93/ Though I seem to remember people making K members so you could drop in an old school SBC using the stock engine brackets.
I once saw a 350 SBC dropped into a Porsche 944. It actually looked like it belonged there, as the owner did a fine job of replacing the original engine. I suppose that was cheaper than rebuilding the 944 Turbo Engine?
I’ve seen photos of a similar setup, built by a poster to a local message board. Had a high-mileage NA 944 that needed a rebuild and decided to just throw an LT1 in it instead. It was a low-buck build and looked it, but he had it running pretty good until he eventually lost interest and sold it.
I don’t know what’s powering this bad boy, but this was at the same show in Flint in 2014.
SBC. Rear distributor is the easy tell
IIRC, the Porsche I saw was maroon in color, almost like an early to mid-eighties Camaro color was used to paint it when the project was done. This car was done up right… looking almost as though it came from that factory that way. No huge blower like in Joseph’s example above, no ridiculous Mickey Thompson’s on the back; just an engine swap and made to look stock. There may’ve been a few chrome goodies like valve covers and an air cleaner housing.
A friend here at work had a bright red 944 Turbo up until a couple of years ago, and said that he had heard from some of his other Porsche buddies that this was a more common swap you would think it is. Perhaps the SBC lends itself nicely to this sort of thing.
My favorite engine conversion here at CC has to be this one though:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1959-edsel-eco-boost/
;o)
My son’s former roommate is an engineering student and a damn good wrench. He loves doing this and currently has an ’89 Foxbody with a GM (Chevy) 5.3 litre LS series motor (turbo charged) and a Turbo-400 transmission. Still has the FMC 8.8″ diff. but he favors the FMC 9″ which I guess is next. And yes, agreed, I have never encountered the reverse (F-body with a FMC engine).
If I had one of those old Mustangs I’d swap in a Toyota V8 and running gear from a Tundra. That way I’d be driving a Ford Mustang that was actually mechanically reliable!