They Dropped a Supercharged Coyote V8 Into a 1970 Mustang Fastback — Then Gave the Finished Car Away

A shop-built 1970 Mustang fastback traded its original small-block for a supercharged Coyote V8, a Tremec five-speed, and a full brake and suspension overhaul. The twist: nobody who worked on it got to keep it — EBC Brakes gave the finished car away to a sweepstakes winner at SEMA.

A stock 1970 Mustang fastback rolled into the Detroit Muscle shop wearing its original small-block and drum brakes, and it rolled out belonging to a total stranger. EBC Brakes teamed up with the Detroit Muscle crew to tear a plain-Jane SportsRoof down to bare metal, drop in a supercharged Coyote V8, and rebuild the chassis, brakes, and interior around it — then hand the finished car to a sweepstakes winner who never turned a wrench on it. There’s no barn-find backstory here and no numbers-matching survivor pedigree. It’s a straightforward pony car that got a full professional transformation on camera, and by the time it rolled onto the SEMA show floor in Las Vegas, almost nothing under the skin still matched the window sticker from half a century earlier.

The build ran across a full episode of Detroit Muscle, hosted by Tommy Boshers and Daniel Boshears, and it’s built around a simple premise: take a car nobody would call rare or valuable and show, step by step, what a shop-quality restomod actually requires. The crew starts with the unglamorous work — pulling the drivetrain and tackling the front and rear suspension — before moving into the parts most viewers tune in for.

What sets this one apart from a typical weekend garage build is the sheer number of specialty vendors involved. EBC Brakes supplied piston calipers, rotors, and brake pads for a car that left the factory with drums on at least two corners. American Powertrain Systems handled a Tremec TKX five-speed manual gearbox in place of whatever automatic or three-speed the Mustang wore in 1970. Detroit Speed contributed front and rear suspension components built for a car that’s going to see real road miles, not just a trailer to car shows. None of it is the kind of parts list a first-time builder assembles on a budget — it’s the kind a shop puts together when the goal is a giveaway car that has to actually work.

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A 1970 SportsRoof Built in Ford’s Last “Total Performance” Year

The donor car matters here, even if the video treats it as a blank canvas. 1970 was the final model year of Ford’s “Total Performance” era, the corporate push that had defined the company’s racing and street-performance identity through the 1960s. It was the last year Ford offered the race-bred Boss 302 and the massive Boss 429 in a Mustang, and the last model year before the fastback grew noticeably longer, wider, and roughly 500 pounds heavier for 1971. Buyers that year could choose from nine engine options across two inline-sixes and three V8 families, including the 428 Cobra Jet — a motor Ford famously underrated at around 335 horsepower for insurance purposes, when independent testing at the time put the real number closer to 400.

It wasn’t a strong sales year industry-wide, and Mustang volume dropped by roughly a third to 190,727 cars, with the Mach 1 remaining the most popular trim after the base hardtop. A plain SportsRoof fastback like the one Detroit Muscle started with, likely built with one of the smaller-displacement engines, would have been one of the more common and least collectible cars on that lot — exactly the kind of Mustang nobody feels guilty cutting into for a full drivetrain swap.

The Parts List Behind the Pony-to-Stallion Transformation

Swapping a modern Coyote V8 with forced induction into a car engineered around a 1970 small-block is not a bolt-in job, which is why the episode spends real time on the supporting cast of parts rather than just the engine reveal. A custom exhaust system, built with TIG-welded fabrication rather than off-the-shelf clamped tubing, had to route around the new drivetrain and suspension geometry. The interior got a full overhaul using TMI’s seat, console, door panel, and carpet products, since a modernized chassis with real power going through a manual gearbox isn’t much fun to sit in wrapped in 50-year-old vinyl. The car left the shop wearing a fresh wrap rather than paint, a common choice for a giveaway build where turnaround time and a show-ready finish both matter more than a numbers-matching respray.

Why Giving Away a Finished Mustang Made This Build Different

Most build series end with the car going back to an owner who’s been checking in on progress the whole time, or staying in a shop’s own collection as a demo car. This one ends with a sweepstakes winner taking delivery of a car they had no hand in designing — suspension geometry, gearbox ratios, brake bias, and all decided entirely by the build team. That changes the calculus of every decision along the way. A build meant for one picky owner can chase that owner’s specific preferences; a giveaway car has to be broadly right for whoever ends up with the keys, which likely explains why the team leaned on proven, well-documented components from established suspension, brake, and drivetrain vendors rather than one-off custom pieces.

Viewers who’ve watched the episode consistently point to the same thing in the comments: this wasn’t a stroked Windsor or a crate 350 shoved under the hood, which is the default move on most Mustang restomod builds. Going with a modern, supercharged Coyote instead is a heavier lift — different mounts, different wiring, different exhaust routing — but it’s also the difference between a Mustang that just sounds fast and one that can back it up against modern iron. Pair that with a five-speed manual instead of an automatic, and the finished car drives like nothing that ever left a Ford dealership in 1970, even though it still looks the part from the outside.

For anyone considering a similar swap on their own SportsRoof, the build is a useful blueprint precisely because it isn’t flashy about it: brakes, suspension, and drivetrain got addressed together rather than one at a time, which is the difference between a car that’s fast in a straight line and one that actually stops and turns to match.

Watch the full video above and let us know your thoughts in the comments.