After confirming that driver Mike Murillo was unhurt in an unfortunate no-prep racing crash earlier this month, the attention of the racing community quickly turned to his fan-favorite ‘LaFawnduh’ Ford Mustang, which has been one of the most traveled, decorated, and accomplished race cars in all of drag racing over the last decade and a half. Having carried the popular Texan to championships with the NMRA, NMCA, the Street Car Super Nationals, and countless world records, the car was and is truly as famous as the man driving it. And while Murillo was hesitant to call Fawnduh a complete loss, initial dialogue seemed to be pointing in that direction.

“The body was completely toast and the front frame was bent a little bit. For the most part, the cage and the chassis really didn’t take too much damage, though,” Murillo says.

But, he and his team, not content to put the SCT Performance-sponsored Fawnduh — which was once owned by Kevin Marsh and driven by Chuck Samuel — out to pasture, set out to find a donor vehicle to make some magic happen.

“We certainly can’t afford to do this on our own. We just don’t have that kind of money, and my wife is already freaking out about it. But, it just all came together and worked out. DMC Racing came to us and said ‘hey, let’s do something.’ We put a post out there asking for some donor bodies, and a gentleman out of Nashville had a nice, straight body he donated for us to use.”

Murillo and company borrowed a flatbed trailer, loaded up the worse-for-wear LaFawnduh, and drove through the night to Nashville to pick up the new body, making a stop in Indianapolis for a 3-hour visit at the PRI Show before trekking north to Massachusetts and Dennis MacPherson’s DMC shop, some 2,000 miles from Murillo’s home in San Antonio. He then loaded back up and drove straight though, 36 hours, back home to Texas, taking little more than a bathroom and food break or two along the way.

MacPherson and his team quickly got to work on the car, stripping it down to little more than the chassis, the firewall, and the rocker panels, leaving what Murillo called a “dune buggy”. The factory front framerails, of which the passenger side was kinked from the crash, were also cut from the chassis, and as of this weekend, new round-tube rails are being mocked up in place. Murillo shared that Fawnduh will remain primarily as a no-prep and grudge car, and therefore isn’t tied to any specific regulations regarding the stock framerails, as it would in a class like Outlaw 10.5.

“Our focus is to be back out and running by March. As long as there’s not too much damage, and not too much stuff that I want to upgrade along the way, we should be back out by then.”

Mike shares that, as soon as Fawnduh is back in hand, he and his team will be getting to work on a second car, another Fox body built using many of the latest tricks found in heads-up, small-tire cars, to go racing with in 2017 — potentially with radials bolted on.