Bass770 by Equus a newly launched muscle car

A small group of muscle car enthusiasts built Equus Automotive around a simple bet: that a hand-built coupe with a Corvette ZR1 drivetrain and a retro-inspired body could compete with far more established manufacturers. The Bass770 backs that bet with 640 horsepower, carbon-ceramic Brembo brakes, and a six-figure price tag to match. Read on to see what a four-month custom build actually gets you.

Most low-volume American car builders start with a familiar platform and spend years modifying it until it barely resembles the original donor car. A small group of muscle car enthusiasts who founded Equus Automotive decided to go the opposite direction entirely: design something new from a clean sheet of paper, build it by hand in small numbers, and let the finished shape only hint at the cars that inspired it. Their first offering looks, at a glance, like somebody took a 1968 Mustang GT and reworked every panel in carbon fiber. Popping the hood on the Bass770 reveals just how far from that first assumption the finished car actually is.

A New Company Built by People Who Wanted Something Different

Equus Automotive wasn’t started by an established manufacturer looking to expand a lineup — it was founded by a group of muscle car enthusiasts convinced there was an untapped market for a newly designed, hand-built performance coupe. The Bass770 is their first product, a four-seat coupe meant to prove that a small, purpose-driven team could build something worth cross-shopping against far larger manufacturers.

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Retro Silhouette, Modern Architecture

The Bass770’s sheet metal invites comparisons to a late-1960s Mustang GT — long hood, sloped nose, a low, raked stance — but underneath that carbon fiber and aluminum body sits a purpose-built aluminum racing chassis adapted for legal street use. It’s a car that borrows its visual language from Detroit’s muscle car era while relying on modern lightweight construction that no factory car from that period ever had access to.

The Corvette ZR1 Engine Under a Retro Body

Equus didn’t design its own engine — it sourced the supercharged 6.2-liter V8 straight from the Corvette ZR1, rated at 640 horsepower and 602 lb-ft of torque at 6,500 rpm. Power goes exclusively through a six-speed manual with a heavy-duty twin-plate clutch; there’s no automatic option at all, which tells you exactly who Equus built this car for. That drivetrain is enough to push the Bass770 from 0-60 mph in a claimed 3.4 seconds with a top speed north of 200 mph — numbers that put it in direct competition with cars costing two or three times as much from manufacturers with decades more engineering history behind them.

Brembo Carbon-Ceramic Brakes and GM’s Magnetic Ride

Stopping power comes from non-fade carbon-ceramic Brembo brakes, with six-piston calipers up front and four-piston calipers at the rear. The chassis rides on GM’s Magnetic Selective Ride suspension system — a widely praised setup borrowed from the same corporate parts bin as the engine — mounted to 19-inch wheels wrapped in Michelin Pilot Sport rubber, 255/40 front and 285/40 rear. Traction control and variable-ratio power steering round out the driver-assistance package.

An Interior That Doesn’t Feel Like a Kit Car

Despite its low-volume origins, the Bass770’s cabin is far from a stripped-out track special. Standard equipment includes leather seating, a GPS navigation system, a tire pressure monitor, cruise control, and a CD/DVD stereo with a USB input, plus front and side airbags for a level of everyday livability that a lot of boutique builders skip entirely.

A Ford-and-GM Marriage That Actually Works

The Bass770 is a strange hybrid by any conventional standard — Ford-inspired styling wrapped around a GM-sourced drivetrain and suspension — and Equus leans into that combination rather than hiding it. It’s an unusual pairing for a low-volume builder to commit to publicly, especially when either component alone could have anchored a marketing pitch on its own, but the resulting mix of a proven ZR1 powertrain and a bespoke aluminum chassis is exactly what let a small, newly formed team compete with output numbers that established manufacturers spent decades chasing.

What It Costs and How Long You’ll Wait

Base pricing for the Bass770 lands around $250,000, with finish, upholstery, and options pushing some builds toward $290,000. Every car is custom-assembled to order, which means a roughly four-month wait between placing a deposit and taking delivery. Equus was filling orders bound for Europe, the Middle East, and the United States, signaling early ambitions well beyond a single domestic market.

Where the Bass770 Sits Against Established Supercars

At $250,000 to $290,000, the Bass770 lands in territory usually reserved for established European exotics and limited-run American specials, but its power-to-price ratio compares favorably against many of them. A 640-horsepower supercharged V8 backed by carbon-ceramic brakes and magnetic ride suspension is the kind of spec sheet buyers expect from manufacturers with decades of engineering history behind them, not a startup selling its first model. That’s precisely the gamble a boutique builder like Equus is making — betting that spec-sheet performance and hand-built exclusivity can substitute for brand pedigree.

Why Small-Batch American Builders Keep Trying This

Equus is far from the first small team to bet that a hand-built, low-volume muscle car can find buyers willing to skip a big-name badge. The pattern repeats across the industry every few years: a group with real engineering chops sources a proven drivetrain from an established manufacturer, wraps it in a distinctive body, and tries to carve out a niche before capital runs out. Whether the Bass770 becomes a footnote or a genuine cult classic likely depends less on the car’s performance — which is clearly there — and more on whether Equus can sustain production long enough to build a track record.

What Happened to Equus After the Bass770

Low-volume performance brands built around a single flagship model face a difficult path forward once the initial wave of orders is filled — sustaining a hand-built production line at four-month lead times requires a steady pipeline of new deposits, something even well-funded startups often struggle to maintain past their first model. Whether Equus expanded the Bass770 into additional trims, developed a second model, or scaled back production entirely says more about the company’s staying power than the car’s engineering ever could. For a boutique builder competing against manufacturers with decades of dealer networks and parts supply chains already in place, the real test was never the car itself — it was everything that had to happen after the first deliveries went out.

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