Interior
Mark's Mustang has custom upholstery over factory bucket seats. There are many options that can cost even less. TMI's new carbon fiber upholstery is one option. The Haneline instrument panel can be substituted with a stock five-dial cluster and Scott Drake's soft-glow instrument faces. The 8-point roll cage is excellent for safety, but you can get away with a simpler roll cage that is less involved. Mark's Mustang also has a Ron Francis electrical system. you can get away with a stock wiring harness from Painless.
The interior is where you can save all kinds of money, yet use your imagination at the same time. Companies such as Mustangs Plus and Dallas Mustang allow you to shop for terrific interior appointments without having to spend a lot of money.
A stock automatic shifter does not have to be replaced with something from B&M or Lokar. You can dress it up with a nice shifter handle and, perhaps, a different shifter base just to be different. for example, use a Cougar automatic shifter base instead of a Mustang's.
Always spend money on the side of safety. A three-point safety belt system doesn't cost much and can save your life. A four- or five-point safety harness designed for racing makes no sense on the street. It becomes user-unfriendly for even the most seasoned racer when it's time to run to the market.
So How To Get There For $15,000
If you do the math on everything we have covered here (and a few things we haven't), you can get into good-looking, high-performance driving for under $15,000 and crack the quarter-mile in under 11 seconds. To get there, you have to watch every penny and engage in common sense thinking. First, ask yourself what you can do yourself-and do it. If you don't know how to do it yourself, learn to do it yourself.
To build a 10.79-second ride, you have to focus on where to spend your money wisely. This means spending less in areas that really don't have a significant effect on the big picture: a budget suspension, stock disc brakes with rear drum brakes, chassis-stiffening components (that don't cost much to buy and install), a factory 9-inch case with a four-pinion differential, low-cost traction bars, a fit and trim interior, and affordable rolling stock.
To build a 10.79-second rocket ship, invest your money into the engine where performance counts. Invest wisely in the driveline, which has to effectively channel all of that power to the rear wheels. focus your creative energy on bodywork and paint, which is what people see first. if you watch your pennies and exercise common sense, you can go fast, look good, and have a little something left over for the upgrades to come later.