Newspress USA
When you’re making a comeback, your odds of success go up when working with material everyone loves. And by all accounts, people love the new Ford Mustang. The fastback design recalls the early days of the famed pony car, and the 5.0-liter V8 engine, six-speed manual and thoroughly modern suspension deliver on performance.
So it was a good starting point for Henrik Fisker’s return to the car world. You remember, Fisker, right? Great designer, penned some knockouts like the Aston Martin DB9 and BMW Z8, then thought he’d start his own automaker. That didn’t go well at all, even if the plug-in hybrid Fisker Karma was a stunner. We haven’t heard much from the man (aside from that motorcycle he designed) since he left his eponymously named automaker in early 2013. But there he was on Thursday at the LA Auto show with that guy from Glapin Auto Sports, pulling the sheet off the Rocket, a custom-bodied Mustang with 725 horsepower, bold lines and several square yards of carbon fiber.
Although Fisker’s no stranger to designing sweet cars and even did a little coachbuilding, he’s more commonly associated with continental fare like Aston and BMW. Turns out he’s always had a thing for the original pony car.
“I’ve always wanted to design a Mustang,” Fisker told us. “I just never really had the opportunity in my career because the timing was never right.” He arrived at Ford (where he worked as design director for Aston Martin) in 2000 and never got to work on a Mustang before heading out on his own in 2004 to launch Fisker Coachbuild. Then came Fisker Automotive, which, well, failed spectacularly. Now he’s a free agent, and when Fisker saw the all-new Mustang, he saw what he called, “a fantastic starting point to do something special.”
Then he caught up with Beau Boeckmann, an old friend and COO of Galpin, as the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in August. One thing led to another, and they started talking about a coachbuilt Mustang. Fisker showed him a few sketches, and Boeckmann loved the idea. They set to work.
They had to move quickly, because they wanted the car ready for the LA Auto Show. That gave them three months. It didn’t help that Ford didn’t begin delivering Mustangs until September. With a project like this, Fisker typically spends about six months with the car, figuring out what he wanted to do and how to do it. He had seven weeks. While waiting for his Mustang to arrive, Fisker spent more time than usual working in two dimensions, using drawings, based on photographs of the 2015 Mustang, to hone his design before working in 3-D.
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When the Mustang finally arrived, Fisker and his team made two digital scans, one of the car with its bodywork and another without. This provided them with the care’s exact dimensions and identified key structural pieces Fisker didn’t want to touch. Once you start playing with structural components, he says, you make the project far more complex and risk compromising crashworthiness. A key goal was maintaining the fundamental design, so any Ford mechanic can handle repairs. “It may be one of the most affordable supercars to actually maintain and drive,” Fisker says.
From there, Fisker’s team milled a full-size clay model of the car, with which Fisker made the very finest changes and adjustments, often measured in millimeters, to nail the design. He likes working with clay because it provides a more realistic representation of what the car will look like. “That’s where you get that last 10 percent of emotion,” he said. Once the model was perfect, the team scanned it and set to work making molds for the carbon fiber bodywork.
The Rocket is a Mustang that’s been thoroughly upgraded yet retains its roots. “I didn’t want people to go, ‘What is that?’” Fisker said. “It should be recognizable.” There are styling cues from Fisker’s favorite Mustangs, the hot-rodded Shelby models of the late 1960s. And the grille is clearly inspired by the 1967 Mustang. Only the original’s steel doors and roof remain; everything else is carbon fiber and designed by Fisker. He added more curve to the front fender and the front wheel lips, and air intakes on the front wheel wells. The car’s belt line kicks out near the rear of the car, and it’s got an integrated rear spoiler. And of course it’s got racing stripes, because Mustang. But rather than paint them on, he simply left the carbon fiber exposed.
The result is a car that is clearly a Mustang, if Ford made the (already impressive) Mustang just a bit sharper and bolder.
The Rocket doesn’t just look faster. It is faster. Galpin gave the 5.0-liter V8 a supercharger to give the car whopping 67 percent increase in power, from 435 horsepower to 725. That tops even Dodge’s tire-smoking Challenger Hellcat. Fisker and Galpin haven’t revealed performance specs because they haven’t done the testing yet. But Boeckmann and Fisker promise the Rocket will be quite capable of running with far more expensive European cars, even if they weren’t willing to name any specific marques they’ve got in their sights (cough*Ferrari*cough*Lamborghini*cough). “We think the new Mustang is so good that by doing what we’ve done to it, it can actually play in that league,” Fisker said.
How much? How many? That’s to be determined, but Galpin and Fisker expect to sell a few hundred Rocket for a bit over $100,000 a pop. If it lives up to the numbers they promise, that’s a pretty good deal: It’s a great-looking muscle car that promises to put down crazy numbers and burn all the rubber you can stick on the back wheels. What’s not to love?
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