Today’s nice price or crack pipe Mustang is said to be one of but six custom “Boss 5.0” roadsters ever built. You may not agree with all the mods that have been wrought on the car, but we’ll still have to decide if its price will make it worth hitting the road in this retro pony.
PORSCHE! There, I have your curiosity. CHEAP PORSCHE! Ahh, now I have your attention. I think inarguably that’s the best line from the flick Django Unchained. I also think the movie could only have been made better by having had Jamie Fox ride off with Kerry Washington in last Friday’s 1979 Porsche 911SC. With its 63% Nice Price win they wouldn’t have had to have spent an inordinate amount of their bounty earnings to buy it either. Win-win, right? Okay, now let’s shoot forward a decade.
You know how they say there’s strength in numbers? Well, this 1989 Ford Mustang is a custom job, and is said to be one of only six cars so completed. Those aren’t big numbers, but this “Boss 5.0” (more about that name in a moment) rocks a claimed 360-bhp and 322 lb-ft of twist from its balanced and blueprinted 306-cubic inches of V8 displacement, and that’s, sure as it’s Monday, fairly strong.
I guess however, that your first question will be, what the hell is that thing? Let’s jump into the Wayback Machine to find out—get out of the way, Sherman—all the way to the heady and potential-filled days of the late 1980s. Seattle grunge was starting to fill the airwaves, Pete Rose was caught betting on professional baseball, and a gallon of gas sold for about a buck. What a time to be alive.
Ford’s Mustang was over a quarter century old then, while its Fox body iteration had at the time seen more than a decade’s duty in the dealerships. The Foxstang had even then already established itself as the de facto king of bang for your car-buying buck.
The thing of it was, there always could be more—more performance, more style, more more if you will. Enter a company called GB Motorsports and a custom car called a “Boss 5.0” and you get more of all of these things. According to the Internet, they built six of these and of those at least this one isn’t show and no go.
There is the aforementioned 5.0, and backing that up is a Tremec 3550 five-speed manual feeding a Ford Racing Traction lock 8.8-inch rear end with a 3.55 gear set. Cobra brakes and a Maximum Motorsports poly suspension connection supposedly provide the car with improved stopping and handling prowess, and the whole dealio weighs in at only 3,360 pounds, about a 10% reduction over a stock Mustang GT ragtop.
Of course that stock Mustang has a top, while this car is branded as a Roadster. With its capped back seat section and lack of any sort of weather protection evident, I’d say the diet came with some questionable trade offs.
The build quality and material use don’t seem to be among them, however. The fit and finish of the fiberglass bodywork and interior seem, at least in the photos, to be exemplary, and the car looks to have held up well in the ensuing years since its initial build. The ad claims zero miles on the odo but 3K on the engine build. I’m guessing that the DMV will want some sort of validation on those numbers to register the car.
Speaking of which, it would be titled as a 1989 Ford Mustang, and not a Boss 5.0 because such a thing doesn’t really exist outside of the badging on the six of these retro beasts. And remember, we were going to discus that name. Yes, Boss 5.0 sucks donkey balls, but it is at least reverential to Ford’s performance past without tripping over copyright regulations. The period of the late ‘80s/early ‘90s was also the time when Mustang 5.0s were somewhat hip. Just ask Vanilla Ice, if you can find him.
Okay, so let’s recap, shall we? This is a one of six custom topless ‘Stang with some ponies under its retro hood and an oh-snap attitude. If that’s not enough for you then maybe you’ll be swayed by its Hollywood connection: one of these cars appeared in the 2009 documentary Mischief: Joyride. Boom!
What does all this cost? How about $18,999. That seems like a lot of Mustang (less the whole no-roof part) for not so much cash. What do you think, is this custom ‘Stang a deal at those dollars? Or, is this 5.0’s price less than boss?
You decide!
Nashville TN Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
H/T to Casey McClure for the hookup!
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