Fox On The Run

A White-Hot 5.0 takes on the competition.

- Scotty Lachenauer

Thomas Polito grew up running the streets of his hometown of Colonie, New York, in a series of built and boosted Fox-bodies.

In his early teens young Polito was bit by the Mustang bug, and it started a Pony-car-packed lifestyle that he has not been able to shake.

Polito remembers the first time he ever drove a Stang. It was a sweet 1990 5.0 LX ride he got to take out for gas runs while detailing cars back in high school. With an aftermarket exhaust and a set of gears out back, the car was a runner, and the stout little Fox-body sounded the part. Polito was hooked the moment he got to put his big foot on the gas pedal. From that moment on, he never looked back.

Believe it or not, Polito’s first taste of competition in the automotive industry was not from ripping up a quarter-mile track. Strangely enough, it was contending in the high-end stereo showdowns across the Northeast. Blasting killer tunes with decibels to spare really grabbed his interest at first. But once he got a taste of what it was like to go really fast, Polito dumped the boom boxes and decided to make an all-out assault on the motor motivation under the hoods of a few topnotch Fox-bodies.