Meet the MUDstang

Have you ever heard of a trar? It’s a combination truck and car, which more often than not sees a car body situated on top of a truck frame. We imagine the idea was concocted by a bunch of crazed off-road enthusiasts (or rednecks) who wanted their mudders and crawlers to stand out from the crowd. And what better way than to drop a muscle car body on top of a badass truck chassis? Usually these are hackjobs utilizing old, beat car bodies but only the best in off-roading gear.

This S197 Mustang Mudder, found on Mustang Heaven, is not a hackjob. It’s a high quality show car, that also just happens to be able to turn dirt into mud and ford some pretty deep bogs.

So we did a little Internet searching and found out the backstory behind the “Mudstang.” It was a father-son project of Bob Eubanks and his son, Bobby Jr. The Eubanks own Rusty Acres Automotive, and they built the Mudstang using the body of a 2006 Mustang. The frame comes from a 1990 Ford F-350 pickup, pretty much the perfect chassis for some extreme muddin’.

However, they choose not to use either the 460 engine from the F-350 of the 4.6 liter V8 found in the S197 Mustangs. Rather, the Eubants went ahead and used a FE427 racing engine to power the Mudstang. Pretty badass, eh? And before you get uppity about “ruining a perfectly good Mustang” remember there are a million ways to customize cars, and everybody is different. Besides, these guys got into a bunch of magazines, and we’re writing about them right now. Different is good, and the Mudstang is very, very different.