BRINGING FASTBACK

JUSTIN STEPHENSON WENT SEARCHING FOR A NEW RIG TO BARRA-SWAP AND RETURNED FROM HIS QUEST WITH A 10-SECOND MUSTANG FASTBACK

- TAS MCMILLAN

WE DON’T get to see many 60s Mustang fastbacks anymore unless they’re Bullitts, Eleanors or painstakingly restored examples with genuine NOS Motorcraft headlight globes. So Justin Stephenson’s head-kicking street brawler is a refreshing breath of tyre smoke, motivated as it is by the ‘Aussie 2JZ’, Ford’s Barra six-cylinder.

Justin didn’t set out with the intention of dropping the now world-famous taxi motor into a ’66 Mustang fastback. “We were at Powercruise in my mate’s 580hp XL wagon and got our arses handed to us by a Cortina with a Barra, so I decided I had to put one in something,” he says. “There are dream cars you think you’re never going to own, and the fastback was one for me.

I found it at a swap meet and thought, ‘If I don’t buy that now, I’ll never get another chance to own one.’”

The Mustang was sent off to the sandblaster and returned in a very sorry state. “My wife said it was a hunk of crap before I bought it, and she was right,” Justin laughs.

It's a good thing Justin’s damn handy with the hammer and MIG, because the ’Stang needed surgery to or replacement of every panel bar the roof. “Even the inner wheel tubs were rusted out and had been fixed with cardboard and bog-like they do in the States,” he says.