Ford Mustang 1967 GT390

1967 was the first year Ford let the Mustang carry a genuine big-block, and the GT390’s FE-series V8 finally gave the car muscle to match its looks. This red-on-red example is a great excuse to dig into what made the S-code special, how rare these cars actually were, and why the 390 Mustang only stuck around for a few short years before Ford moved to bigger engines.

This is an absolutely gorgeous 1967 Mustang GT390 in red on red!

Red on red isn’t a subtle color combination, and neither was Ford’s decision in 1967 to finally give the Mustang a genuine big-block option. Up until that year, the hottest Mustang you could buy topped out with a 289, plenty quick for the era but nothing that could hang with a real muscle car in a straight line. The GT390 changed that equation overnight by stuffing Ford’s FE-series big-block under a hood that was never really designed around one. The result was a Mustang that finally had the muscle to match its looks — and this red-on-red example is a textbook illustration of why the S-code cars still turn heads more than half a century later.

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The Engine That Finally Gave the Mustang Teeth

The 390 cubic inch FE V8 arrived rated at 320 horsepower at 4,600 rpm and 427 lb-ft of torque at 3,200 rpm — a jump of roughly 50 horsepower over the top 289 option, and the biggest engine Ford had ever fit into a Mustang up to that point. It came factory-equipped with a 490 Autolite four-barrel rather than the Holley carburetor used in previous high-performance Mustangs, and it was paired with the GT Equipment Group’s side stripes, fog lamps, power front discs, and dual exhaust with chrome quad tips — the whole package designed to look every bit as serious as it drove.

How Rare Is an S-Code Really?

Production figures on 390-equipped ’67 Mustangs vary depending on how you slice them — some tallies put 390-powered cars as high as 28,800 across all trims, while more specific S-code, GT-package counts run closer to 10,500, and genuine 4-speed S-code cars are rarer still. Whichever number you land on, the takeaway is the same: not every ’67 Mustang with a big engine badge was actually built the way this one was, which is exactly why verifying the S-code and matching numbers matters before you get too excited about any given car.

The Last of a Short-Lived Breed

Ford only offered the 390 in the Mustang from 1967 through 1969, after which the nameplate moved on to 427s, 428s, and eventually the 429 — meaning the S-code Mustang had a genuinely brief window in the model’s history. That short production run is part of what makes a clean, correctly-documented GT390 like this red-on-red example worth stopping for, rather than just another pretty color combination in a parking lot.

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