Ford Mustang 1968 Street Machine

This 1968 Mustang fastback looks stock at a glance, but Customs by Killkeary dropped a modern Coyote V8 under the hood, turning a classic silhouette into a genuinely different driving experience. Read on to find out how shops make a fifty-plus-year-old chassis work with thoroughly modern power, and why this kind of build keeps growing in popularity.

A 1968 Mustang fastback rolling out of the factory was already a good-looking car in its own right by any reasonable standard, but drop it next to one that’s been reworked from the ground up by a serious build shop, and the difference becomes obvious in about two seconds flat. The proportions look similar at a glance, the silhouette is unmistakably a first-generation Mustang from fifty feet away down the street, but everything about how it sits, how the panel gaps line up under close inspection, and what’s rumbling under the hood tells an entirely different story once you get up close. Somewhere in this build’s history, a shop called Customs by Killkeary took a stock ’68 and decided the factory small-block simply wasn’t going to cut it anymore for this project. How do you make a fifty-plus-year-old design work with genuinely modern power?

Swapping in Modern Power Without Losing the Classic Look

The build reportedly drops in a Coyote V8, Ford’s modern 5.0-liter DOHC engine family that currently powers the Mustang GT straight off the showroom floor today, into this vintage unibody chassis designed decades before that engine family even existed on paper. What went in the original small-block’s place is essentially the same engine family powering Ford’s modern performance cars right now, shoehorned into a chassis platform designed long before anyone at Ford could have realistically imagined it happening.

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A Well-Documented Restomod Trend

Coyote swaps into first-generation Mustangs have become a well-documented and increasingly mainstream restomod trend over roughly the past decade of build culture. Specialist shops like Velocity Restorations have completed similarly clean 1968 Mustang Coyote conversions of their own, often pairing the engine with a modern automatic transmission like the 10-speed 10R80 unit, though the exact drivetrain specs on this particular Killkeary build weren’t detailed in the original coverage that accompanied the car.

The Engineering Behind the Swap

These swaps typically require custom-fabricated engine mounts, long-tube headers built specifically for the application, and often a reworked fender apron or firewall opening just to achieve adequate mechanical clearance and cooling airflow, since the factory engine bay was never designed with a modern DOHC V8’s dimensions in mind decades ago. Radiator capacity is another common sticking point, since a Coyote making genuine horsepower generates meaningfully more heat than a vintage small-block ever did, pushing most serious builders toward an aluminum radiator and electric fan setup sized well beyond what the original 1968 cooling system was ever engineered to handle. Builders frequently fabricate custom cold-air intake routing to get cooler ambient air flowing to the engine, exactly the kind of fine-tuning implied by getting the stance and functionality right on a build as thorough as this one clearly is. Wiring is often the hidden challenge in these swaps, since a modern Coyote depends on its factory engine control computer to manage ignition timing, fuel delivery, and variable valve timing, meaning a proper conversion needs a standalone or reprogrammed ECU rather than simply splicing new wires into a fifty-year-old harness.

Why the Factory Engine Bay Wasn’t Built for This

The original 1968 engine bay was sized specifically around Ford’s small-block Windsor family of engines — the 289 and 302 — which is physically narrower, shorter, and considerably lighter than the wider, taller, heavier Coyote sitting in its place today. Every single inch of clearance has to be found somewhere during the swap process, which is exactly why these conversions rarely stop at simply swapping the engine itself and calling the job finished right there.

Getting the Stance Right

Getting the stance right on a build like this usually means far more than just bolting on a basic lowering kit ordered from a catalog. Builders commonly pair a Coyote swap with upgraded coilover suspension components and considerably larger four-wheel disc brakes, since a modern V8 producing genuine horsepower numbers demands genuinely modern stopping power to match it safely on today’s roads and in today’s traffic. Rack-and-pinion steering conversions have also become common on builds like this, swapping out the original recirculating-ball steering box for noticeably sharper, more direct response that better matches the car’s newfound power and modern tire grip.

The Rise of Turnkey Coyote Swap Kits

The trend has grown broad enough over the years that several dedicated companies now sell turnkey Coyote swap kits specifically engineered for 1964.5-1968 Mustangs, complete with off-the-shelf motor mounts, pre-made wiring harnesses, and matched suspension components, meaningfully lowering the barrier to entry for other shops attempting this same ambitious conversion on their own customer cars. Some kit suppliers even offer matched transmission crossmember and driveshaft packages sized for the specific Coyote-to-manual-or-automatic combination a customer chooses, turning what used to be a fully custom fabrication job into something closer to a guided bolt-in project for an experienced home builder.

A Different Kind of Collector Car

Coyote-swapped restomods like this one sit in a genuinely different collector lane entirely compared to numbers-matching factory originals from the same era. They generally aren’t judged on strict concours authenticity at all during evaluation, but clean examples built by respected, well-known shops can still command strong resale prices among enthusiasts who want a classic-looking daily driver without any of the compromises that come standard with a fifty-year-old original drivetrain.

What This Means for Resale Value

The appeal to modern muscle car fans is genuinely straightforward once you break it down piece by piece: modern reliability, sequential fuel injection, and horsepower well beyond what any factory 289 or 302 could ever hope to deliver, all while keeping the classic sheetmetal and aggressive stance that make first-generation Mustangs so desirable to enthusiasts in the first place.

What a Buyer Should Ask Before Purchasing a Swap

Anyone considering a Coyote-swapped Mustang like this one should ask for documentation on exactly which components went into the conversion — whether the wiring harness and ECU came from a reputable, name-brand supplier, whether the cooling system was upsized to match the engine’s real output, and whether the work was performed by a named shop with a track record of finished cars. Those answers matter more for resale value and long-term reliability than the swap itself, since a poorly executed Coyote conversion can hide expensive problems behind an otherwise great-looking engine bay.

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