Ever since the Ford Mustang turned 50 years old, owners have started celebrating Mustang Day on April 17th. This is a day for owners to get their Mustang out of the garage and onto the streets to enjoy a nice cruise. For Ford Muscle, it’s a day to look back through the archives and find some amazingly well built and beautifully crafted cars to showcase once again! After years of featuring the Blue Oval’s Pony car, it’s not hard to find a variety of purpose built Mustangs. So, for your enjoyment here are a few of our favorite Mustangs from the past to get you pumped for Mustang Day!

Independent Rear Suspension Fox Hounds The Corners

When it comes to extreme on-track handling, the Fox Body Mustang is probably not everyone’s go-to. However, Mike Trenkle is unlike the rest. He built a widebody Mustang for handling road courses and autocross setups. In trying to get the best response and traction he designed the short long arm suspension up front and then grated in a Cobra IRS with a cantilever rear suspension for the back half. His widebody kit allowed him to throw a set of 325-section tires on, giving him the ultimate handling experience.

Shelby GT500 Reconfirms A Love Of Drag Racing

When you’ve progressed the sport of drag racing through Fox Bodies in the 1990’s and 2000’s, sometimes you get a little burnt out. After deciding to re-enter the sport, Jason Wagoner wanted something different this time around. This led to building an extremely fast and competitive Shelby GT500 to race in NMRA True Street. While the VMP supercharger throws air down the intakes throat, the car still remains completely streetable after a promise to his wife to keep it from becoming a gutted drag car.

Mustang II Makes The List

It’s rare that the Mustang II makes any list, let alone a positive one. When it comes to Dave Fortuna’s Mustang II though there is a massive exception. This once V-10 Triton swapped chassis was a SEMA show car that became extremely damaged in transit. Fortuna purchased the car, redid the body work, installed a Coyote engine and repainted it Grabber Blue. The car is once again a SEMA show stopper, but will now see track time as well!

A Rowdy S550 Slays The Strip

With a company name like FNROWDY you have a lot to live up to when building a shop car. To match the same energy as the company name, Caleb Skinner painted his Mustang mystichrome and added a twin turbo kit. While the car still sees street duties, it can be found at the local 1/8-mile running 5-second passes with ease.

Coyote Swapped GT500 Confuses Competitors

The Coyote engine has proven to be the ultimate swap of choice by Ford fanatics. The engine has found itself wedged between the strut towers of restomods to the more recent Fox Body Mustang. One place we never thought we would see one is in the engine bay of an S197 GT500! Competition can make you do weird things, but in the case of this Mustang, weight savings was a must to keep up with the field of heavy hitters at the Optima Ultimate Street Car competition. Check out the attention to detail in the engine bay too.

7-second Monster Mustang S550 Attacks

Another Orange Mustang made the list and this time instead of taking corners, it takes on the competition at the drag strip. What was going to be a friendly rivalry with his father, turned into a max effort build with the help of Limitless Performance and Fabrication. They transformed the Orange Mustang into a blur that runs down the 1/4-mile in 8-seconds with the aid of a pair of Comp turbos.

Wide, 4-Eyed, And Ready To Party

After watching the horror of his childhood dream car slip in and out of his hands, Chris Leonard finally acquired it for good and decided to make it his own creation. He went from a built and supercharged Modular engine to a Coyote swap and maintained a manual transmission the whole time. After a few inattentive drivers tried to end this dream, he decided to go with a 3-inch widebody kit and give this Fox a thick appearance. Check out the width of those rear tires while you are at it!

Mustang Fastback Fun!

A Fastback Mustang will always get our attention, but this one got the owner’s heart pounding long before he could even drive. This Fastback is packing a serious engine with a Vortech YSI blowing air through the carburetor. A C4 transmission keeps its street manners in check, but still allow it to make it down the 1320 with ease. You won’t want to miss this feature as it brings retro vibes and hardcore drag racing on the same platform.

Gotta Have It Green With Envy

A clean engine bay can sometimes be the tell-tell sign of a well built car. After giving up on finding a clean Terminator Cobra engine to swap into a 1993 Mustang GT, Robert Lewis decided on going the Coyote route with a Coupe. While his dream of having a Terminator-powered Cobra replica was diminished, his new Mustang Coupe with a Coyote swap proved to give him the driving factor he needed to complete the build. After all, he knew he had to have it so bad that he painted it Gotta Have It Green!

Menacing and Murdered Out 1969 Cobra Jet Mustang

Dave Robinson has had a borderline obsession with drag racing since he was 18 years old and rode in his first 10-second car. Robinson remained a Ford guy throughout the years and continued to have a handful at any giving time. While he has a host of modern muscle, he still always resorts back to his classic Fords for sentimental reasons. If the stance and paint isn’t menacing enough, the 428 cubic-inch under the hood is sure to scare a few competitors away.