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Schwartz Performance took a dented California 1969 Mustang fastback, spent roughly 1,400 hours on it, and handed the finished car away to a stranger at a Las Vegas trade show. Under the Boss-inspired paint sits a 444-horsepower Coyote Boss 302 crate engine, a fabricated G-Machine chassis, and a GT500-spec brake package. Read on to find out how a brake company ended up building one of the more serious restomods of the SEMA era.
By 1973 the Oldsmobile 442 had been reduced to an option code on a Cutlass, mostly stripes, emblems, and a stiffer suspension bolted under a body made heavier by federal bumper rules. Jeff Schwartz of Schwartz Performance took that exact car and gave it the performance Oldsmobile was no longer allowed to build, fabricating custom front bodywork while deliberately keeping the outside looking factory. The restraint is the entire point. Read on for what makes it work.
Jeff Schwartz of Schwartz Performance Inc. spent two years turning a 1970 Plymouth ‘Cuda into something far more than a restoration: a Pearl Orange Metallic restomod packing 805 horsepower from a 426 Hemi, built on a modern chassis and engineered to handle like a road-ready race car. The shape is instantly familiar. Almost everything underneath it isn’t.
Lou Costabile heads to Schwartz Performance Inc. headquarters in Woodstock, Illinois, to check out a custom 1966 Pontiac GTO owned by Dale Schwartz, whose father Jeff runs the shop’s build team. The orange paint gets attention, but the real story is underneath: a lighter, stronger custom frame plus disc brakes and improved steering. Watch to hear directly from the builders why the chassis mattered more than the finish.
Raybestos Brakes and Schwartz Performance built this 1969 Mustang Fastback as a SEMA Show giveaway car, spending fourteen hundred hours making it look completely stock while quietly replacing almost everything underneath. From the curb it reads as an unmodified Fastback. Underneath, it drives nothing like the car it appears to be, and that gap is entirely the point.