Mutant Mustang

What do you do when you are bored with Coupes?

by Mike the "Classic Mustang Magician"

In 1977, I was driving my 1965 Mustang Coupe down a country road, just around sunset when I looked over and noticed the shadow it was casting on the ground beside me. Elongated and modified by the rays of those last failing rays of sunlight, I saw my Mustang as a pick-up truck. It looked so cool, that the image stuck in my mind longer after my memory of which road I was on and where I was going to have faded away!

For a long time or roughly two Mustang Coupes, I did nothing about what I had envisioned that one day; but after about four years without a Mustang, I felt like having yet another one. It was not content to have another coupe; I wanted something different for once. I could not afford a convertible, and finding a fastback that I could afford proved to be impossible, then that fuzzy memory of the pick-up shadow I saw came back to haunt me.

Using a side view of a coupe (since coupes are about as rare as pigeons on statues) I cut, splice and Xeroxed three different versions of a Mustang pick-up. In one version the door windows were unmodified, only the quarter windows were removed. The next version used a modified door window that followed the roofline, but with the area behind the quarter window unmodified.

The last version had both the door window and the roofline modified, I considered this one to be the best looking and most functional because it had the most trunk space (bed place) and it also allowed the package tray to be positioned right behind the seat. I put all three pictures up in the shop and invited all the customers that entered the shop to vote for which one they thought I should build.

Well the one nearly everyone liked the best was the same one that I liked the most, too! I knew it was not going to be easy this design was the most radical of the three and would require the most welding and fabricating. I looked at several coupes and was ready to give up when Stan Jacobs, my boss at the Mustang Collection, found one that was perfect for my purposes and me. First of all, it was dead, it had been sitting in someone’s backyard for several years, but with the exception of the hood it was almost rust free, and it was a six cylinder automatic. I took pity on it, it was green with fungus, and it stunk like an open septic tank. As soon as we brought it, to the shop, I had problems with it. When it came off the tow truck all four of the tires were flat, so I filled them up, one hour later one tire blew up, so I changed it. Two hours later, a second tire blew up, so I changed it. You would think that that would be enough for one day but almost as if to test my resolve, with in seconds of each other the two remaining tires blew out, but that was not enough, when I went to push the hulk into the shop for the night, I found the brakes were frozen solid. I spent the night cleaning out the brakes just so the car could be moved in and out of the shop.

The next day, to my surprise, I discovered that the engine was not frozen, even though that starter was dead. Every day, I would clean or fix something new before and after I worked on the cars at the shop. In place of the rotten 1966 16-gallon fuel tank I installed a used but clean 1970 22-gallon tank because it would allow me to have I flat floor in the pick-ups bed. I rebuilt the starter using several dead starters and it slowly turned over and for a few tense seconds I thought it would not start, and then it did until the carburetor started leaking like a tea bag. I fixed the leaks and when I was sure the engine would run, I stripped the car of all the flammable materials and locked the doors and started to mark where to cut.

For my first cut, I choose the flattest section of the roof and measured out a section as wide as from the door opening to the quarter window opening. This would bring the end of roof rail molding to the door jamb. The only concerns I had were that after the cuts would the roof be lower in the rear and how would I fix that. Sawzall in had I slowly cut along a line I marked out on the roof, No turning back now, this poor sixty six six was either going to be my mutant mustang of a glorious miscalculation. The first cut was surprisingly easy as well as straight, I was impressed with myself, the second cut was a whole different story. Now that the mustang uni-body had been violated, removing the section of roof started to become a chore. Now the roof started to dance and flex as cut across the top of it. Banging against the first cut as the teeth of the sawzall dug in and bit down into the metal. I learned two things the hard way, one: brace or join the previous cut, and two: always change the saw blade after a long cut because the teeth wear out. With that section of roof removed I went on to the big cut separating what remained of the roof and rear window from the body.

To do so I made a calculated effort to cut through as little of the body as possible while removing as little as possible as well. What remained was going to be heavy since I did not remove the rear window while making these cuts to maintain it's shape and alignment, so I braced everything including the door jambs by welding pieces of angle iron across the body joining the two together permanently. These two pieces would remain in the car to help form a package area/storage compartment behind the seat as well as bracing the body in ways Ford never envisioned, something I would be very thankful for later..

I cut the braces to the wheel wells at the wheels wells following the curve. I cut the trunk divider at the floor. I cut the quarter window mount away from the body and the roof section and remove it entirely. For all those of you wishing to do this, the next cuts were fun, The roof has a boxlike structure to it coming down the sides underneath the outer skin, if you have ever replaced a quarter panel you are very familiar with it. It gives the roof the support, and once you cut through it the roof gets all wooblely, ask me how I know. After that removed the trunk and I cut the trunk hinge mounts at the wheel wells. The last cuts I made were through the trunk lip and along side the quarter pillar to the window opening. I could now remove the rear section of the roof and reposition it to the front section.


After a good paint job!