1965 Ford Mustang Fastback - Pressure Cooker

Brett Evans hails from Glen Carbon, Illinois, and is the owner of this serious '65 Mustang 2+2. It's all business when he describes the various attributes of his car, and it doesn't take long to figure out that performance is the name of the game for him.

Getting started wasn't easy for Brett as it's difficult to find classic Mustangs in decent condition in the Midwest. Years of winter weather take their toll, and after four decades the raw materials for classic-Mustang projects are in short supply. Originally, Brett turned his vehicle search to California, but when the hunt ended, the car he purchased was from Washington state.

Once he got the fastback home, he had a lot to do since the car was far from perfect. Work began with a complete body repair job that included replacement of the floorpans. Brett wishes he had repaired the original doors instead of using reproduction doorskins, which took hours to fit correctly. Creative Customs of St. Louis, Missouri, completed the great-looking silver paint job. The blue stripes complement it and add some Shelby flavor. It was a long, hard pull to transform the car into the solid platform he needed for his project.

Brett wanted a Mustang that would look like a normal street car but run extremely hard. How fast was he thinking? Ten is a nice, round number, and the goal was quarter-mile times in the 10-second range. That's a tall order in anybody's book, so Brett chose from the best the aftermarket had to offer as he loaded the car with premium speed equipment, including a Dart block, Trick Flow cylinder heads, and a Precision 76mm turbocharger.

It's one thing to talk about those speeds but quite another to achieve them, and this car delivers with a best elapsed time so far of 10.06 at 132 mph. The car is close to a 9-second quarter-mile with less than a tenth of a second needed. The 60-foot times are good with a best of 1.55 seconds. The car has also run a 6.22 in the eighth-mile. Because it's turbocharged, there's not a lot of fuss while sitting at the traffic light. The low-compression engine idles like a Crown Vic, and if you were to choose this car for a little trophy dash, you might not realize what you got yourself into. You could end up getting your doors blown off.

What's A Turbocharger?
A turbocharger has the same function as a supercharger, which is to force-feed the engine with extra air. The more air (and fuel to go along with it) you can pack into each cylinder, the more horsepower is produced. A supercharger is a mechanically driven blower, usually driven by a belt. The power needed to run the supercharger is subtracted from the engine's overall power output.

A turbocharger is an exhaust-driven blower, in the simplest terms. The power to spin the turbo is taken from the exiting engine exhaust, hence there's little power penalty or mechanical tax on the engine for using a turbocharger. Both turbochargers and superchargers require careful installation and tuning to work successfully.