The Only New 1968 Mustang Fastback Ford Ever Approved Has 710 Horsepower — And Jay Leno Had to Drive It

Jay Leno gets a look at a car that shouldn’t exist by any normal logic: a brand-new 1968 Mustang GT 2+2 Fastback with Cobra Jet badging, built from freshly manufactured tooling rather than a restored donor car, and packing a modern Coyote V8 underneath period-correct steel. Watch to see how a Florida manufacturer is legally building Mustangs Ford stopped making decades ago.

Buying a brand-new 1968 Mustang fastback sounds like a contradiction nobody should be able to resolve — the tooling that stamped those body panels went cold decades before most car shops on the internet even existed. And yet here is exactly that car, fresh from the factory rather than restored from a barn, rolling into frame for a look from a man who has personally owned or driven nearly every significant American performance car built in the last sixty years. What he found underneath that unmistakably vintage sheet metal is the part that actually surprised him.

A Company Building Mustangs Ford Stopped Making Decades Ago

The car comes from Revology Cars, a low-volume manufacturer based in Orlando, Florida that builds new-production 1960s Mustangs under license from Ford, using freshly manufactured body tooling rather than salvaged or restored donor cars. That licensing arrangement is what allows Revology to legally badge and sell these as genuinely new Mustangs rather than modified replicas — a distinction that matters enormously to collectors who care about provenance.

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Vintage Looks, Modern Engineering Underneath

Underneath the period-correct sheet metal sits thoroughly modern engineering: a Ford Performance Coyote 5.0-liter crate V8, a chassis re-engineered for modern independent suspension geometry, and cabin amenities like air conditioning and a hidden modern infotainment system built to look like it belongs in 1968 rather than clash with it. The goal isn’t a hot rod that looks old — it’s a car that drives like something built this decade while looking exactly like it rolled off a Dearborn assembly line during the muscle car era’s peak.

What The Cobra Jet Badge Actually Means Here

This particular build carries Cobra Jet badging, a nod to the legendary 428 cubic-inch big-block that Ford dropped into select 1968 Mustangs mid-year specifically to compete at the drag strip. Revology’s version pays tribute to that heritage through trim and badging while relying on the far more modern, more reliable Coyote V8 to deliver the performance — a compromise most owners seem happy to make in exchange for a car they can actually drive daily without babying a fifty-plus-year-old drivetrain.

Why Jay Leno Keeps Featuring Continuation Cars

Jay Leno’s Garage has featured continuation and restomod builds repeatedly over the years, reflecting Leno’s own well-documented interest in cars that blend vintage design with contemporary engineering — his personal collection includes several vehicles built around exactly this philosophy. That recurring interest is part of why Revology’s cars keep finding their way in front of his cameras rather than staying a niche curiosity known only within Mustang forums.

What The Comments Are Marveling At

Comments on the video capture the reaction Revology seems to be going for: genuine disbelief that this is even possible, with one viewer marveling at living in a world where buying a brand-new, technologically updated 1968 Mustang is something you can simply order rather than spend years restoring. That sense of “wait, how is this legal” wonder is a big part of what makes the car compelling content in the first place.

The Man Behind Revology

Revology was founded by Tom Scarpello, a former Ford executive who held senior roles on the Mustang and SVT performance programs before leaving to build the company around solving a very specific problem: buyers who wanted the exact look of a 1960s Mustang without inheriting the rust, deferred maintenance, and safety compromises that come standard with a fifty-plus-year-old unibody.

What It Actually Costs To Buy One New

That solution isn’t cheap. Revology’s continuation Mustangs typically start well above $200,000 depending on specification, engine choice, and options — a price that reflects low-volume manufacturing, licensed tooling costs, and the labor-intensive process of hand-finishing a car built to modern quality standards inside a body designed decades before modern quality standards existed.

How This Differs From A Typical Restomod

It’s worth separating this from a typical restomod, where a shop takes an actual vintage donor car and modernizes its drivetrain and chassis. Revology isn’t modifying old Mustangs at all — it’s manufacturing entirely new ones from current-production materials and tooling, which is precisely why Ford’s licensing cooperation was necessary in the first place and why the finished product carries a genuine VIN as a new vehicle rather than a title branded as a modified classic.

Where This Sits In The Collector Conversation

For collectors, that distinction reshapes the entire calculus. There’s no numbers-matching concern, no rust to inspect, and no thirty-year-old restoration to evaluate — but there’s also no original-production provenance to point to, which means Revology cars occupy their own emerging category in the market rather than competing directly against genuine 1968 originals at auction.

How Revology Sources Its Body Panels

Getting the body panels right required more than scanning an old car — Revology worked from Ford’s original engineering data and had new stamping dies produced to recreate the 1968 fastback’s specific proportions, down to panel gaps and trim details that a typical restoration shop reproduces by hand rather than by tooling. That level of investment is part of why the company operates at such low volume; building continuation cars this precisely doesn’t scale the way ordinary manufacturing does.

Comparing Revology To Other Continuation Builders

Revology isn’t alone in this space — outfits like Singer have built a similar business reimagining vintage Porsche 911s with modern engineering underneath — though Singer reworks a customer’s existing donor car rather than manufacturing a new one, and several boutique shops now offer comparable continuation builds for Broncos and Blazers. What sets Revology apart within that emerging category is Ford’s direct licensing involvement, giving the cars a level of manufacturer-sanctioned legitimacy that most restomod builders can only approximate.

What Ownership Actually Looks Like Day To Day

Day to day, owners report a driving experience that splits the difference deliberately: enough vintage character in the steering feel and cabin ambiance to feel like a real 1968 Mustang, paired with air conditioning that actually works, a stereo that pairs with a phone, and a drivetrain that doesn’t require specialized knowledge to keep running reliably — exactly the combination that makes a car like this usable as genuine transportation rather than a trailer queen.

Why It Still Manages To Surprise

For a channel that has covered nearly every kind of exotic hardware imaginable, a re-engineered Mustang built with new tooling still manages to stand out precisely because it defies easy categorization — not a classic, not a modification, not a factory reissue in the traditional sense, but a fourth thing the market is still learning how to talk about. That novelty alone is probably why this build earned a full walkaround rather than a passing mention buried inside a larger episode.

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