Last week we mourned the death of the V6 Ford Mustang, one of the all-time great accessible enthusiast cars. The Mustang has a long and rich history of six-cylinder motors, all the way back to inline sixes in the original one. That’s why Beau Miklethun’s 2JZ-swapped Mustang is shockingly appropriate.
As documented by eGarage, this former six-cylinder 1968 Mustang now packs the legendary 3.0-liter twin-turbo inline-six from the 1990s Toyota Supra, making it not too far off from the crazy Mustang at the end of the best movie ever made, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. (That car had a Nissan Skyline motor, but same idea, cylinder count and relative level of outrage among purists.)
Beau scored this Mustang from family friends as a project car, and when he fixed it up he knew he wanted more power. Out with the Ford six, in with the Toyota motor. “I knew I didn’t want to go with the 302 V8 because that’s what everybody expected under the hood,” he said. Easier said than done, though; in this video Beau documents the trials and tribulations of swapping the 2JZ into the Mustang.
Now, no longer breaking driveshafts and transmissions, he says it drives really well, with the kind of turbo lag punishment you used to get on performance cars before every 911 and Hyundai Sonata decided to go forced induction. And it’s incredibly fun.
I see nothing wrong with this. Carry on.
(Hat tip to R&T)