Crazy Godzilla

Bob and Preston Folkestad swapped F Ford’ s 73-liter Godzilla engine into their 1988 Mustang and prepped it to compete in the Optima Ultimate Street Car Challenge.

- HEIDI ELZAS

The notion of built versus bought is a contentious subject that can lead to heated debates in the car community. Either way, Bob and Preston Folkestad, the father-and-son team at Creative Werks, have taken the built side to a new level.

Their 1988 Mustang GT was built around Ford's new 7.3-liter Godzilla engine, and Foxzilla, as they call it, has morphed into a monster worthy of the name. They use this radical car as a test bed for developing parts for this new engine platform. Along the way, they have utilized the talent of local experts in the Des Moines, Iowa, area and sought feedback from the racing community the Folkestads have been a part of for many years. They started with a $1,000 rusted-out Mustang, and within 10 months had completely transformed it to a vehicle ready to take on the Optima Ultimate Street Car Outlaw class at Road America 2022.

This Mustang was meant to be driven relentlessly, and in doing so, catastrophic failures can often be the result. So far, Preston's Mustang has already had two development engines installed, and multiple prototype parts have been refined as testing progressed. The upside, however, is that the amount of data collected has only resulted in improvements for the modifications to the 7.3-liter engine, including the Indy Power Products Oil Conversion system. Even after a crash at Road America earlier this year, data shows that the parts are not only reliable but also safe under extreme conditions.