1967 Ford Mustang Street Machine “Tomahawk”

A supercharged Coyote 5.0 sits under the hood of this ’67 Mustang fastback, wearing an Eleanor-inspired stance and running its entire interior through a single iPad instead of a factory gauge cluster. Copper-centered wheels and a custom build free of traditional switches push it well past tribute-car territory into something closer to a rolling art project. Read on to find out why builds like this one split car show crowds right down the middle.

Somewhere between a restomod and a rolling art project sits a ’67 fastback that borrowed its stance from Hollywood’s most famous Mustang, then refused to stop there. Under that louvered hood isn’t a numbers-matching 289 – it’s a supercharged Coyote 5.0, a modern powerplant that makes more horsepower in stock trim than most factory big-blocks ever managed with a full head of aftermarket parts bolted on. Step inside and the theme keeps going: no traditional switches, no factory gauge cluster, just an iPad running the entire car from the center stack. Builds like this one draw a hard line between people who want an original survivor and people who want a Mustang that could embarrass a modern sports car at a stoplight – so which side of that line does this one actually land on?

Why the Coyote Swap Has Become the Restomod Standard

Dropping a Coyote 5.0 into a first-generation Mustang isn’t a novel trick anymore, but it has become the default move for builders who want serious, reliable power without babysitting a finicky, carbureted big-block that hates hot-weather traffic. Ford’s modern DOHC V8 made around 460 horsepower in stock late-model form even before any aftermarket work, runs cool and predictable on pump gas, and – with a supercharger bolted to the top of it, like this build clearly has – turns a stylish ’67 fastback into something that can genuinely embarrass cars that never should have had to worry about a decades-old body style in the first place.

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A Controversial Swap Among Purists

Not everyone in the Mustang community celebrates the Coyote swap the way builders and drivers do. Purists who chase numbers-matching, date-code-correct restorations see any modern engine swap as erasing a piece of the car’s original identity, no matter how much better the replacement performs on paper. Builders chasing a genuinely fast street car rather than a museum piece generally see it differently – for them, a period-correct 289 or 302 was never going to keep up with modern traffic, modern tires, or modern expectations, and a Coyote swap solves that gap without sacrificing the classic sheetmetal everyone actually fell in love with.

The ‘Eleanor’ Look That Launched a Thousand Tribute Builds

The stance and silhouette on this build clearly draw from ‘Eleanor,’ the heavily modified 1967 Shelby GT500 that became a movie star in the 2000 remake of Gone in 60 Seconds, complete with its silver-and-black livery and aggressive hood pins that most viewers still recognize on sight decades later. That single film spawned an entire subgenre of tribute builds, though genuine licensed replicas are rare – the rights to the specific Eleanor design are tightly controlled, which is why most builders create Eleanor-inspired cars rather than exact recreations, blending the recognizable silhouette with their own personal touches instead.

An Interior Built for a Different Era of Car Culture

Most Eleanor-style tribute builds stop at the body kit and call it finished; this one goes considerably further. Ditching every physical switch in favor of a single iPad running the car’s climate, audio, and gauge systems pushes the build somewhere entirely different – closer to a modern custom show car than a straight visual tribute to a movie prop. It’s the kind of detail that splits a room at a car show: some purists will never forgive a build for erasing a factory gauge cluster entirely, while plenty of others point out that a genuinely well-executed digital interior is exactly the forward-thinking touch that keeps this hobby from turning into a static museum exhibit.

What a Supercharged Coyote Actually Delivers

A stock naturally aspirated Coyote already outmuscles most of the big-block options Ford offered in period, and bolting a supercharger on top pushes output well past 600 horsepower on a mild tune, with some builds climbing past 700 or 800 depending on boost level and supporting modifications. That kind of power in a car weighing considerably less than a modern Mustang GT translates to acceleration numbers that would have been unthinkable to the engineers who designed the original 1967 fastback, and it’s exactly the gap that makes a Coyote-swapped classic feel like an entirely different driving experience from a factory-original car of the same year.

Copper Wheels and Small Details That Set It Apart

Beyond the engine and the interior, small styling choices separate a genuinely thought-through build from a generic restomod parts-catalog assembly – the copper-centered wheels on this particular fastback are exactly that kind of detail, a warm accent color that plays against the cooler tones of the body without fighting the overall Eleanor-inspired theme. It’s the sort of choice that tells you a builder was thinking about the whole package rather than just chasing horsepower numbers, and those small design decisions are often what separate a build that gets remembered at a show from one that blends into a row of similar-looking tribute cars.

The Restomod Debate That Never Really Ends

Every build like this one reopens the same debate that’s followed the restomod movement for decades: is a heavily modified classic still the same car it started as, or has it become something else entirely wearing familiar sheetmetal? There’s no settled answer, and that’s part of what keeps the hobby interesting rather than static – a numbers-matching original and a Coyote-swapped, iPad-controlled tribute build can both be genuinely excellent examples of what a 1967 Mustang can be, just aimed at completely different owners with completely different priorities behind the wheel.

Where a Build Like This Fits at a Show

First-time show entries carry a particular kind of pressure, and this fastback reportedly made its debut appearance carrying all of that pressure at once – a fully custom build with no factory switches, a supercharged engine swap, and a movie-inspired silhouette all competing for attention in the same package. Judges and spectators alike tend to either love or genuinely dislike a build this bold, with very little middle ground, which is often exactly the reaction a builder chasing this level of customization is actually hoping for rather than a polite, forgettable nod of approval.

A Fastback That Refuses to Pick a Lane

Whether this particular Tomahawk reads as a tribute, a restomod, or something else entirely depends almost entirely on who’s looking at it, and that ambiguity is arguably the whole point of a build this deliberately unconventional. It borrows just enough from a Hollywood icon to be instantly recognizable while pushing hard enough into new territory – modern powertrain, modern interior tech – that calling it a simple tribute undersells everything the builder actually accomplished. Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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