If you’re going to debut a brand new car, there’s certainly no place better to do it than on the grand stage at the year’s biggest and most prestigious event, and that’s exactly what Aaron Stapleton and the crew at Fast Forward Race Cars are planning on doing next month at the annual NMRA/NMCA Super Bowl of Street Legal Drag Racing at the Route 66 Raceway, just a stones throw from their Plainfield, Ill. shop.

The team at Fast Forward is hard at work to get the ’88 Mustang in racing shape prior to the Super Bowl on July 12-15. The X275 legal machine that will compete in the 275 Drag Radial category began life as a not-so-tough, all white 4-cylinder Mustang Coupe that Stapleton and company tore apart inside and out and re-constructed around a 25.3-cert chassis. Once complete, it will feature a complete lineup of Fast Forward Race Cars Pro Series bolt-on suspension components, while the grunt will come from a 520 cubic inch big block Chevrolet built and prepped by Steve Schmidt Competition Engines and backed by a Proformance-built powerglide transmission.

The source of Fast Forward's new X275/275 Radial project - a 1988 4-cylinder Mustang Coupe.

Looking nothing like the 4-banger that it once was and decked out in racey new red paint, the Fast Forward shop car sports virtually brand new everything, from the suspension to the rear end housing, Weld Racing wheels, MSD Digital7 Plus ignition, and more.

Jason Lee has pretty well been the dominant force on both the NMRA and NMCA sides thus far in 2012, but the joliet event always brings some great cars and racers out of the woodwork — like this machine from Fast Forward — and so things could get shaken up just a bit as the calendar turns to mid-July.