Back in the ?90s, the hot-rod set often called the Fox-body Ford Mustang, produced from 1979 to 1993, the modern ?55 Chevy. Given the plethora of machines built on the Fox platform and the abundance of speed parts available for its venerable Windsor V-8, playing mix and match with FoMoCo parts was as easy as building a Lego car. By the late ?80s, the notchback Mustang GTs and LXs had evolved into a pretty potent package for the era. Like the ?55 Chev decades earlier, they were cheap to pick up and easy to modify, and parts were plentiful. So we?ve seen plenty of worked-over later Fox Mustangs, but the earlier cars have often been denied the limelight. The Goodguys Rod & Custom Association figured it was time to change that.

For years, Goodguys had capped the model year of vehicles allowed entry into its shows at 1972. Muscle-car purists tend to decry anything built after that year as down on performance and less than classically styled. But 1972 was 45 years ago, classic muscle cars are often spendier to get into than later iron, and with shows like the ?80s-and-?90s themed Radwood popping up, snaring a new generation of enthusiasts demands newer machines. So Goodguys adjusted, raising its model-year cutoff to 1987. To celebrate the move, Goodguys dug up a clean, first-year Fox Mustang, relieved it of its turbocharged 2.3-liter four-cylinder, and stuffed in a 5.0-liter Ford Performance Aluminator crate engine.
Bathed in custom-mixed PPG Goodguys Gold paint, with a l...