Jay Leno Thirsts Over Beautifully Restored Boss 429

By Tony Markovich - June 24, 2016

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The Ford Mustang has a guardian angel, and his name is Marcus. Marcus Anghel of Anghel Restorations, to be specific. To put it lightly, Anghel is a Mustang enthusiast. He owns a garage, he writes for Mustang Monthly, and he’s the national head judge for the Shelby Club of America. So he knows his way around the pony cars, and that’s exactly why Jay Leno brought Anghel, and one of Anghel’s cars onto his show.

The star of this episode of Jay Leno’s Garage is a 1969 Ford Mustang Boss 429, which has been completely restored to beautiful factory shape. According to Leno, amidst the Hemis and the Chevy big blocks, the 375-horsepower 429 engine was quite misunderstood. It was detuned for the street and underrated due to some of the restrictions that started to occur during those times, and was nicknamed things like the semi-Hemi or the shotgun motor. This particular engine was originally intended to go into the Galaxie as part of NASCAR homologation, but the new-at-the-time Ford president Semon “Bunkie” Knudsen told them to squeeze it into the Mustang.

The interesting part is that they weren’t actually built in Ford factories. These bad boys were contracted out to a small performance arm called Kar Kraft, which built the ’69 and ’70 Boss 429s.

Check out the conversation about what makes this thing so special, and watch as Leno takes it for a spin!