Ford Mustang Fox body Police RACE CAR!

This Fox body Mustang running high 9 second passes at a Street Car Takeover event started life built for a very different kind of high speed pursuit. Ford’s Special Service Package Mustangs were built for the California Highway Patrol and dozens of other agencies, reinforced from the frame up for real police duty. When those cars retired, their stiffened chassis and the massive 5.0 liter aftermarket turned them into some of the best cheap drag car donors around.

If drag racing next to a POLICE car with its LIGHTS ON isn’t a distraction, we don’t know what is! This beauty caught our eyes while we we’re filming in Orlando for another Street Car Takeover event. We we’re very impressed for TWO reasons:
1. This Ford Mustang is STILL running a Ford motor.
2. This car was said to run high 9’s – naturally aspirated with a small block, AND it was running out of gear due to being set up for 1/8th mile. BADASS!

Before this Fox body Mustang was setting high nine second quarter mile times at a Street Car Takeover event, it very well could have been chasing someone down a highway with its lights on for real. Ford originally built this exact platform for a much different job, patrolling interstates for police departments that needed something faster and lighter than the sedans they had been driving for decades. Nearly 15,000 of these purpose built cruisers went to law enforcement agencies across the country, and when their service years ended, drag racers quickly figured out why they made such good donor cars. What made a car built for traffic stops this well suited for the strip?

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Built for the California Highway Patrol, Not the Strip

Ford developed the Mustang SSP, or Special Service Package, after the California Highway Patrol asked for something faster and lighter than the full size Ford sedans they were using for high speed enforcement. Ford based the package on the Fox body LX notchback rather than the flashier GT, reasoning that a plainer car with the same 5.0 liter V8 would draw less attention, and added oil coolers, heavy duty radiator hoses, a beefed up alternator, reinforced floor pans, and calibrated speedometers. Roughly 15,000 SSP Mustangs were sold to more than 60 agencies between 1982 and 1993.

Why Retired Cop Cars Make Great Drag Cars

The same stiffened frame and upgraded suspension built for high speed pursuit duty translate directly into stability at the drag strip, while the enormous aftermarket built around the 5.0 liter V8 makes these cars cheap and straightforward to build serious power into. That combination is exactly why so many decommissioned SSP Mustangs, like the one featured in this post, found second lives running high 9 second eighth mile passes at events like Street Car Takeover instead of gathering dust in a police impound lot.

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