We first saw this wild ride at the 2007 SEMA show, and like many of you at car shows across the country, studied the car from bumper to bumper. Matter of fact, we loved the '05 Mustang door handles that were added to the car so much we stole the idea for our current project car, Generation Gap. While Ron Schoch of Lawrenceburg, Indiana, certainly enjoyed building this fastback for the SEMA show, it's not his first Mustang project and not his first SEMA project either. He actually took a brand-new '05 Mustang he customized to the 2005 show. Hmm, I wonder if that's where he got these door handles?
But we're getting ahead of ourselves in our story here. Ron had a '65 fastback show car back in 2003 as well. It was painted Grabber Blue and had some nice upgrades that made it show worthy, but during an indoor show Ron was attending he sold the car. He sold it because he wanted to do a '65 fastback in a more radical build, but didn't want to do it with his current fastback. He wanted to find another car and build it from the ground up. That, and it was quite a healthy check too; that always helps.
A few months went by and Ron and a friend hit the annual Hotrod and Restoration trade show in Indianapolis, Indiana (a trade-only event like SEMA), looking for some product sponsors and to check out all the new parts on display. While there Ron picked up a copy of Hemmings being handed out at the show and he spotted a rust-free '65 fastback listed for sale. It was a clean car with a 289 V-8, a four-barrel carb, A/C, a four-speed, power steering, and even disc brakes. While this was exactly what Ron was looking for, he was skeptical about the rust-free status. Ron actually called the owner on the drive back home that day and the owner reinforced the fact it was rust-free. Ron debated the purchase for two days and finally called in sick one day, hooked up his trailer and went to go check out the car, which was in Columbia, Missouri-cash in hand just in case.
Ron was surprised when he saw the car that it was exactly as described and quite rust-free indeed. Ron and the owner discussed the selling price and came to a mutual number. As Ron was loading the car into his trailer he asked the owner why the car hadn't sold yet. Come on, it's a clean, rust-free, V-8/four-speed fastback at a fair price. It turns out Ron was the first person who had called, and in fact, the only person who had called, because the copy of Hemmings he had picked up at the trade show hadn't been distributed to the newsstand or subscribers yet. Probably the luckiest break of Ron's automotive career.
The fastback sat for a bit as Ron contem-plated what he wanted to do with it and how. This is about the time he built the '05 Mustang for the 2005 SEMA show and really liked a lot of the new Mustang's details, including the flush quarter glass and other features. Ron wondered what it would be like to incorporate some of these modern looks into the classic lines of the '65 Mustang fastback. Over the course of the next year Ron and several of his friends, including Greg Huber, Brian Knigga, George Meinhardt, Todd Sclhuermann, and Milt Carley worked hundreds of hours to bring the fastback up to the beauty you see here worthy of displaying at the SEMA show.
The body, as rust-free and straight as it was, needed very little work, except for of course the modifications required to install the flush glass windshield and the '05 Mustang quarter glass. The latter accomplished with a custom-built steel framework to mimic the new Mustang's window opening for the glass to sit in properly. The '05 Mustang door handles took nothing more than a bit of welding work and relocating the door handle actuation rod from one side of the door latch to the other (the '05 handles push down instead of pull up like the '65's handles). The topcoat is not Grabber Blue, but a DuPont Hot Hues color called Bombay Blue-a close look, but a bit "softer" blue. The interior was treated to the same body color as well.