Profile: Muscle Car Factory, Melbourne
The Muscle Car Factory in Melbourne does everything from restos through to full builds and is very well known in Mustang circles for its "flatpack fastback' kit.
DIY Mustang
Muscle Car Factory Mustang chassis kit
Leo Banks, the ringmaster at the Muscle Car Factory on Melbourne’s south side, is pretty hard to stop once you get him talking about Mustangs. His enthusiasm for building and modifying them is infectious – it’s clear he not only knows what he’s talking about, but enjoys the work.
You’re likely to have seen his efforts pop up in a number of places. The company does everything from restos through to full builds, and is a little famous in Mustang circles for its "flatpack fastback" kit. However the item that got our attention recently was a full chassis/bodykit, perfect for the ambitious race or road car builder.
For under $30,000 (which, believe or not, is ultra-competitive) he can supply you with a full shell that is not only new, but comes in right-hand-drive and has the gear required to meet Australian Design Rules, such as properly engineered seat belt mounts and side anti-intrusion bars. That means the crew at the Muscle Car Factory can point you towards the proper engineering certification, to keep your local rego folk happy.
The ‘kit’ is the result of months of painstaking work, setting up a custom reference using the in-house Globaljig bench system. As Leo sees it, you really have to start from scratch to get a proper straight car. "To succeed, you need people with panel and sheet-metal experience," he says. "What we’ve done is get all the sheet metal, build it and set the jig from that. So we’re not trying to match a car made in America 60 years ago. Gaps have to be right, otherwise the doors won’t close and the whole thing is a mess," he explains.
If building your own car from a shell seems a little ambitious, they’ll undertake the whole job, handing over a turnkey car with a 12-month warranty.
The options to choose from are myriad. For example they have developed their own 427 stroker V8 which, in fuel-injected form, develops over 530 horsepower. That, says Leo, is still a very driveable rig.
We’ve been talking to the crew about following one of their builds – look for it in our Garage Gurus section of Unique Cars over coming months.
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