Feature car: Brat pack Mustang

Attitude Problem

THE IDEA WAS TO BUILD SOMETHING A LITTLE DIFFERENT AND TO THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX — THE REBIRTH OF THE MUSTANG PROVIDED A PERFECT PLATFORM FOR JASON AND HIS TEAM TO HAVE A BIT OF A PLAY WITH WORDS: SHANE WISHNOWSKY PHOTOS: GLEN MCNAMARA

Jason Hansen’s philosophy at his company, Autocolour Matrix, is to think outside the box and build stuff a little differently. When it was announced that the Mustang was to be sold brand new in New Zealand, with the steering wheel on the correct side of the car for our roads, Jason’s mind started wandering. There was no doubt that the marque was popular worldwide, but he likened them to a “packet of jelly beans: there were heaps of them, but they all looked exactly the same, apart from the colour.”

His company is a bit lucky when it came to building cars. Its specialty is building one-off fullcustom vehicles, therefore his team possessed the necessary skills and equipment to transform the humble pony car into something a bit more ‘yeah’ and a lot less ‘nah’.

They had just finished piecing together a latemodel Mazda RX-7 and attached a Rocket Bunny kit to the exterior of the Japanese coupe. Jason was pretty impressed with the quality and fit of the bodykit, and he just loved the tough look achieved. He approached good friend Dean Hewetson, who he’s built a couple of cars for in the past. Dean had overseas connections, and one of his friends just happened to know Cory from another Japanese bodykit powerhouse: Liberty Walk’s US branch. This is a company known for its radical reworkings of modern high-end cars, so who better to approach?

With a foot in the door and things starting to look a bit more positive, maybe he could pull this idea off. It wasn’t all plain sailing though. The vision Jason had in his head was clear, tough, aggressive, and race-car-for-the-street inspired. Surprisingly, however, the boffins in the States needed a fair bit of convincing that it actually was a good idea. Three solid months of conversation backwards and forwards finally netted Jason the answer he wanted.

The big thing that helped seal the deal was the fact that the Mustang name and popularity in New Zealand was massive. There was also a distinct lack of anything to change the look of the car, aside from paint colours and a few cosmetic trinkets. Jason and the team decided to base the kit on the RX-7 one they’d just finished applying to Dean’s car. Jason really liked the open-wheel look to show off the fat rear tyres. He didn’t want to hide the aggressive camber up at the pointy end either, so that style kit would be perfect. Now all he needed was a car.

In October 2017, John Andrew Ford in Auckland sourced a suitable donor car. With a three-month wait for anything not already in the country, options were a bit limited and it was a get-what-you’regiven kind of scenario.

But Jason looks back now and admits that the white Mustang he was given couldn’t have been more perfect, as the white gives the impression that things are much bigger than they are, as he explains: “When you’re doing a widebody kit that is 10 inches wider than factory, then big is good!”

Once the custom kit arrived on our shores, Jason approached Fraser Cars with his idea, and together they worked through the fitting and modification process so that the finished product would be perfect; fitted correctly; and, most important for all, would be 100-per-cent legal.

Once that phase was complete, the brandnew car was rolled into the workshop, ready to be transformed. It takes some serious intent to attack a car with only 15km on the clock with an angle grinder. Wanting wheels of Nascar proportions, Jason approached Craig from Mag & Turbo on the North Shore. He handed over the specs that he wanted and ended up with a set of BC Forged wheels measuring a rather impressive 20x10 inches on the front and 20x12 inches on the rear. Wrapping these seriously dished monsters are a set of Lexani meats, 245/35R20 up front and 325/25R20 at back — the open-style fender extensions would be perfect to show off these bad boys.

To help give the car a bit more tunability in the handling department, a D2 platform adjustable suspension and camber kit was grafted in place of the stock suspension. This gives the rapidly transforming Mustang the handling of a circuit car, not to mention the necessary adjustment tools to help it perform flawlessly on whatever road surface the driver encounters. The Mustang was already blessed with some serious stoppers on all four corners when it left the factory, so the guys decided to leave things alone there. It was time for

Jason to address the elephant in the room. The Liberty Walk kit didn’t come with a bonnet. A quick phone call to Mike Shaw in Hamilton saw the pair sat down, armed with a piece of paper and a pencil, and out came a drawing based on the Falcon Ford Performance Vehicles (FPV) bonnet hump. Problem solved.

The calendar showed that 2017 was rapidly coming to an end, and Jason was getting impatient. Everyone had broken up for Christmas, but he wanted the car worked on solidly during the break to paint the kit, fit it up to the car, and finish off some minor details here and there. The long hours were beginning to pay off, and they pretty much had a finished-looking car, apart from a few bits and pieces. But there was something just not right.

From the outside, the car was looking like everything Jason had ever wanted. It was most definitely in your face and looked fast standing still. But looks ain’t everything. Sam from CTB performance was approached and the pair decided to hit the Mustang with the biggest horsepower hammer they could find. They grabbed a catalogue from the tuning house of Roush and ticked the boxes marked: ‘all the horsepower and guaranteed to melt tyres — stage 3 goodness’. The 32-valve 305ci engine that once produced 435hp out of the box now makes 675hp of noise and aggression. Jason said the stage-three option was a bit of a nobrainer and came with some great features: larger axles to help contain all the extra power, a modified intake, performance chip, and a stainless full exhaust system that unleashes a glorious raucous bark when the loud pedal gets stomped on.

Jason then sat down with his mate Paul Black from Visign. Together, they nutted out the stripe and decal package that adorns the exterior and came up with the ‘Brat Pack’ idea. To Jason, the car looked like it was “up to no good, a bit of a menace, and a bit of a brat”. He also thought that, at a stretch, ‘brat’ could stand for ‘bad racing attitude’. “I always wanted a race car on the street, legal, that could be driven to work every day,” he says.

Three-and-a-half years on, and he’s had no problems, “apart from it being a touch low at times.”

Final words from Jason: “It’s awesome because it’s a combination of generations of car builders, old and young people coming together, which was my plan. The whole idea of the Mustang was that we could put this weapon together for the public in six weeks from order (depending on car availability), legal, and in the colour you wanted, for less than anything out of America; with performance, horsepower, and handling to burn, and still be under the standard Ford warranty.

“Unfortunately, Matrix got so busy with our Blackout Business of de-chroming new vehicles that our marketing lacked the punch, and Shelby walked into Ford New Zealand’s life and we got pushed to the side. The good thing is we still have the car to prove that we were the first to do a latemodel, widebody Mustang – and we could still build many more of our monsters easily today. A massive thank you to my mate Dean Hewetson for pestering Liberty Walk, which made this all possible, and, most of all, my beautiful wife, Rebecca, for believing in me.”