7.0-litre, 625bhp RUFFIAN Mustang + 580bhp RUFFIAN GT40

Whatever happened to the great American hot rod? Every time I see that word, it's referring to a Porsche that looks like a thousand other Porsches, just in a different colour. For me, a hot rod is all about blood, sweat and tears of one person building a car in their garage and then unleashing it to the world. Well, hot rods do still exist, you just need to know where to find them. This is a 1970 Mustang seen through the lens of a man named Chris Ashton and inspired by the Trans Am race series. Chris made some, OK, lots of money in computer games and with the sale of his company, found himself with some free time. He's a passionate car guy and a creative and well, you can guess what that led to. A project, a killer one. He poured time and love into bringing his vision of the perfect Mustang to life. Chris had no plans to build cars for other people, but somehow these things tend to have a life of their own. He called the car the Ruffian Mustang and now it represents the genesis of Ruffian cars. A series of small batches of similarly outrageous creations will follow. Anyway, back to creating his vision in his garage. With just a few YouTube videos as learning aids, he bought an English wheel and some metal working tools and set to work. And this car has 1,600, 1,700 man hours in it. Yeah. And by man hours, I mean Chris hours. Yes. Yeah, that's me in my two car garage. And what else did you make on it? You made the entire body, which made, but you say you made the headers as well. Is that right for the exhaust system? Yeah, the full exhaust system I did. And then there's a lot of 3D printed parts on it that I did. Even the red stripe, which is vinyl, I did on my vinyl plotter in my bedroom. This really is your baby. Yeah, it's pretty much top to bottom. I sprayed the cage inside and the bottom of the chassis and the engine bay. That's all rattle can. Really? Yeah, spray paint. You just did it with a rattle can? Yeah. The finish, I have to say, the finish is gorgeous. The imagination behind it is stunning. Not just the look, but the interior, the way it's all come together. And yeah, I just, I can't believe you made it yourself with no experience, just straight out there. Your patience is incredible. Yeah. Yeah. My background is art, which I think helps a lot. You know, it's the whole thing is it has to be functional, but it also has to look good. Right. You can, you can go too much one way or the other. So it's this weird balance in the middle. Okay. Well, we know for sure that it looks good. We know that it's beautifully finished and that it looks completely outrageous, but the function we haven't tested yet. So that is my cue to go to a racetrack, Chris to walk away and not look too closely. And we'll find out just how functional this car is. The story behind this car is fantastic. Basically Chris, this guy is a car guy and he does autocrossing, racing around cones, all about precision, power, car control. So he wanted to build his own car that could do that. He loves that muscle car look, that Trans Am race heritage. So he chose this 1970 Mustang. It has, and some people will want to close their ears now, a Chevy engine, LS427, make about 625 horsepower, 6-speed manual Tremec box, 315 section front tyres, 345 rears, Toyobas, they're basically slick tyres. So when I tell you it's quick, the fact it can light them up like a little MX-5 tells you just how mad this engine is. What I really love about this car, it's got a real Instagram vibe to the look, a sort of fantasy render, but it's all about function and it's so beautifully realised. I think brilliant. So yes, it's a Mustang with a small block, but purists will hate this car already, so who cares? It's a mighty 7-litre aluminium block V8 running carbs and a dry sump and spitting out 625 horsepower. The gearbox is a 6-speed manual from a modern Camaro with 411 gears and a Torsen limited slip differential. Suspension is faithful to the basic layout of the donor car, but with a Watts link for the rear axle, revised tubular front arms for better geometry and it is completely rose jointed. Plus, the dampers are continuously adjustable DSC sport coilovers with street or track settings. There are four-piston wheel would brakes and despite the gorgeously sculpted steel panels, the Mustang weighs just a little over 1,500 kilos. Now I don't want to break the magic of a video, but I've been driving this car now for a good few hours to get all the action stuff we need and it's been perfect. Not temperamental, no over-heating, no brake fade, no problem for the engine. There's a cohesive feel to the way this car drives, but it's hard to describe. It feels like a classic old car, but the way it's been updated is so unrealised. That's the only way to describe it. Probably intuitive and I looked at this thing and assumed it would just be a nightmare, rubbing its arches, really snappy and I can drive it. All that grip, but just this beautiful progressive balance. For autocross, you need a pointy feel to the car, you need the rear to rotate because it's such a precise and tight course. This car is set to slide a little at the rear and on a bigger track like this, it's still a tight track. That just makes it such fun. I'm a little bit blown away. This is a homebrew car with a sort of sci-fi muscle car look, but to drive it's just so natural. So good, cannot beat a V8. I adore this pistol grip, it's so lovely to use. I could drive this thing all day long. It's funny that I mentioned Porsches earlier because when you drive some of those old Porsche Resto mods, the thing you're reminded about is how inherently right the 911 is. It's small, it's nimble and when you throw good stuff at it, updating those old air cooled cars feels like a genius idea because all their natural inherent qualities can be elevated even further. These old muscle cars like, I don't want to be rude, but a 1970 Mustang, it's not going to be a great thing to drive. So the achievement of one man to build this car in his shed, forget about the artistry of it to make it look this good, but to make it so much agility and inherent goodness. Absolutely mega. It appears that I rather like this car. The seven litre engine is deafeningly loud and sounds vaguely terrifying, but the savage power has a sweet linear delivery. The power assisted steering is light but provides great feedback and overall there's a completely unexpected subtlety to the way this wide body monster moves. This is one man's passion. I don't want to brag it, but I cannot bring myself to drive it slowly. It feels criminal to do so. It's built to do this. Well what a mad day with a Ruffian Mustang. I like this thing so much more than I thought I would. But you know what, it doesn't really matter what I think. It doesn't matter what you think. This is Chris's car. This is Chris's baby. This is what Hot Rodding is all about. And by the way, how much do you think Chris cares what you think about his car right now? Having driven and deeply enjoyed Chris's gorgeous Mustang, I feel compelled to say purist be damned. However, his next project makes me waver. The GT40 is to me maybe the best looking car ever made. By all means, play around with the Mustang, but a wide body GT40, it is a big swing. Here's a little peek at the Ruffian look and Chris's amazing ambition when applied to Enzo Ferrari's worst nightmare. So we've been concentrating on the Ruffian Mustang, but as a little bonus, we want to look at this, the GT40. Now the base car is a Superformance. You might not know them, but you should because they make fantastic cars. They're made out in South Africa. They do GT40s of all the different generations, Cobras, Shelby Daytona coupes. Obviously this is a long way from those cars. The Superformance cars, you can even get full FIA regulated cars to race them. That's how close they are to the original. This is not close to the original. This is Chris's version of a GT40. So this is the second car you built and it wasn't really intended as a full build. So why don't you tell us what made you buy the GT40 and then what made you make all these changes? Yeah, it's just that racing heritage and all that history. They really weren't on my radar until I started to shop more expensive cars, started to have a successful career and I found Superformance's local to me in Irvine. And so I stopped there and started looking at their cars. I wound up ordering one and the intent was just to put a motor and a transaxle in it. They sell them those rolling chassis and just drive it. And then I got it and as I started to look at it, the headlights look like they're from the 60s and the taillights look like they're from the 60s. But the car, the shape of the car itself is gorgeous and timeless, but I felt like there are these aspects that really kind of bugged me a little bit. And being, you know, again the artistic roots, it's like, well maybe I can swap out the taillights. And it just kind of snowballed and I wound up effectively doing a whole build on the GT40, you know, Ruffian style. You know, kind of in the same, like, oh it would be cool. I haven't ever seen a wide body GT40, like what would that look like? So we started to do renderings. Yeah, so the Superformance base car would be fiberglass, effectively, above the chassis. And then all of this wide body stuff, tell us about how you made it and then it's not hand-rolled steel, this one. Right, yeah, I mean I thought about it, but it didn't make sense, right? Like the whole car, it's all about lightweight, the only weight 2,400 pounds. And so it's fiberglass body, like you said, so it didn't make sense to do metal, but I still wanted to do flares, so how am I going to do that? So what we wound up doing was designing the the flares on the computer, and then 3D printing them in full size, and then body working those and pulling molds off of those, and then making these out of carbon fiber. So the side skirts, the fenders, front and rear, and the rear scoop are carbon fiber and designed and built just for this car. Okay, so the wide body look definitely. How big are the tires on this one, are they as big? They're not as big, they're 265s up front, but you've got to remember that there's not a lot of weight in the front, there's a lot of weight in the rear, and so it's much wider. These are again, these are actually the same rears that I have on the Mustang, these are also 345 3019s. Okay, so the look I think we can see for itself. Inside it's pretty much Superformance, but with some custom dials and everything else. But in the back it looks pretty special, so we should definitely take a look. Under the big carbon scoop. Okay, so even an idiot like me can say this is not an old-school small block or big block motor, so tell us about the mechanical makeup of this thing. Yeah, so this is Ford's 5.2 XS, so it's the same block and heads as the GT350s, but it's a crossplane crank and bigger cams. They only sell them as crate engines, they're not in any production vehicle. They make 580 horsepower, they spin at 8,000 rpm, and so for me this is a more exotic looking car, and with the carbon fiber and stuff, the theme started to be modernizing the old GT40s, so it made sense to me to put a new V8 in it, not an old-school V8, not have it carbureted, be a fuel injected, and go more modern with it. So that's why this motor in here is powered by a Ford PCM, and then I custom built the full exhaust system. It's equal length, 180 degree headers, so the firing is left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, in exact cadence, so it sounds like a flat plane crank. It doesn't sound like a normal V8. And you can see the detail in them, they're so much more refined than even on the Mustang. Yeah, and so it's crazy how what things drive you to do it, but I was like, oh the GT40, like I'm a little embarrassed of the of the Mustang headers. They work, but they're not pretty to look at, right? But a GT40, you open the bonnet, the headers are right there. They're the big thing to look at, so I was really worried about building my own, and I tried to hire somebody to do it, and they said, oh it'd be $10,000 and it won't be equal length. And I was like, well that's... Defeats the boy. Yeah, I can't, that's too expensive. I mean, $10,000, you can buy a motor for that, you know. So yeah, I set off to try to figure out how to build equal length, 180 degree headers on my own that looked nice enough to present. And that was all done on computers before you actually made them yourself? Actually wound up using Ice Engine Works makes these plastic, they're like Lego blocks for headers. Oh wow. And each each Lego block is an inch with all the angles and stuff. So you build them in plastic, and I built it three times in plastic before it all worked, and they were all the same length and everything. And then you just have to take the plastic and turn it into metal. Yeah, yeah. And how long does that take on its own? That was a while. I spent more time on the headers for this car than I spent on the four fender flares on the Mustang. Wow, that's crazy. It was. There's some lovely little details, like I love how it's your car, so it's beautiful in some respects, but also really functional. The throttle pedal down there is genius solution. Yeah, I didn't... So the Ford, all the Ford motors now, they sell them with drive-by-wire pedals, which makes sense. But when you go to put one in the old car, now you have to change stuff. You can either change out the throttle body, and then you have to tell the computer, and you have to, there's a lot of stuff that goes on with it. And I wanted to make it as simple, it sounds insane, but I wanted to make it as simple as possible. Given all the other challenges I have, anything that I can make less challenging is better, right? So my thought was, put the drive-by-wire pedal in the engine bay, and run the throttle cable to the drive-by-wire pedal, and just operate. So I press the gas pedal in the interior, and it presses the gas pedal that's in the engine. That's genius. Okay, one other thing we should speak about, talking of labour of loves like this, is the headlights, because they have a story all of their own as well. Yeah, again, way, way, way too much time invested in this. But I didn't like the headlights, as I said, they're big, square, ugly things in the front of this beautiful car. And my first thought was to swap to retrofit something. And I must have bought five different headlight assemblies, from everything from motorcycles, to Hellcats, to anything that might fit in there. And it all, it always looked like a hack job. And I saw the new Ford GT, and their headlights are beautiful, you know, so well integrated and everything. So I said about, rather than trying to retrofit other headlights in there, what if I just designed my own? And so these were designed on my computer, and I bought a 3D printer just to print these headlights. So these are actually 3D printed, and they're used on the car. So they're 3D printed, and then they come out with the little lines that you're used to seeing, but then all that's bodyworked. Yeah. And then the lenses and the electronic guts inside of there are from Harley Davidson motorcycle headlights. Okay, wow. The level of detail is crazy. So as you can see, Chris is complete nutter, basically, and has spent many, many hours creating these amazing cars. And again, they're just for him, which I really, really love. This is just one little detail that shows that level of obsession. I love the GT40 as it is, but I can appreciate just how much work and how much love has gone into this thing. It is, yeah, a really cool project. The world needs more people like Chris. Talented, fearless, divisive, and infected with car enthusiasm in a chronic, fascinating way. The Ruffian philosophy isn't for everyone, but on this evidence, the engineering integrity matches the look and feel. Function and form in harmony. I can't wait to see, hear, and drive what Chris and Ruffian do next.