If you fancy owning a mint condition 1969-1970 Ford Mustang Boss 302, 1969-1970 Mustang Boss 429, or a 1969-1970 Mustang Mach 1, you’d better prepare yourself for a long and laborious search and some pretty eye-watering asking prices.
But if you prefer the idea of a car that looks just like one of those originals but uses a modern chassis and running gear under the body, Ford has licensed a company called Classic Recreations to produce such vehicles.
Classic Restorations is a company from Oklahoma in the United States that has a somewhat tainted history to be honest, but over the last few years, it’s been building some very impressive Shelby Mustangs with modern underpinnings under the body.
Now the company is expanding its horizons and the newly licensed trio of classic Mustangs will become available from them from later this year.
Just as with the Shelbys, the new models will come with updated engines featuring fuel injection and computerized engine management systems. The Boss 302 will come equipped with a brand new Ford Coyote V-8, which is the unit that now powers the current 2018 Mustang GT. The Boss 302 will also be offered with an optional 383 stoker engine.
The Mach 1 is probably the least revered of the three reproductions the company is going to produce, but that probably allows for a lot more flexibility when it comes to what goes under the hood.
Classic Restorations will, therefore, build the Mach 1s with any engine it has available to it, which could even include the current 2.3-liter EcoBoost turbo-four if that’s what the customer wants.
The first batch of cars will be making their global debut at this year’s SEMA show in Las Vegas in November, and they can also be built from original bodies if anyone has one available to them and they want to use it for what’s basically a restomod.
It’s hard to imagine too many people sacrificing an original Boss 302 or Boss 429 for such purposes unless there’s nothing left of them to save beyond the body. The majority of those produced are therefore likely to be the licensed reproduction bodies, although a salvaged Mach 1 body with an EcoBoost four-pot could represent one of the more affordable ways of getting one of these cars.
Although no prices have yet been quoted for the new trio of classic Mustangs, a Shelby GT500CR 545 from Classic Restorations based on the original Shelby GT500 starts from $189,000.