CJ Pony Parts Finds New Purpose for Company Mustang’s Life
Once a drag-strip pony, re-acquired ‘Gotta Have It Race’ Mustang will now autocross with the help of customer suggestions.
Mustangs can do all sorts of things with the right gear. Some are kept stock and enjoyed as they are. Others are stripped to the bone, then caged and amped up for straight-line speed and/or short-track cornering. There are even those who jack-up their pony’s suspension, give it a transfer case, and take it out rock climbing.
How often, though, does an owner decide to repurpose their Mustang from what it was built by them to do? We can’t think of any instances off-hand, but we did find this video from aftermarket supplier CJ Pony Parts, where they’ve re-acquired their green ‘Gotta Have It Race’ 2013 Mustang from its previous owner, with visions of cones dancing in their heads.
“A little over a month ago, we were looking for an opportunity to buy an S197 project here at CJ’s, ‘Gotta Have It Race’ became available, and it was a must-have for us,” said CJ Pony Parts brand ambassador Bill Tumas. “This car, as far as we’re concerned, it’s pretty much a part of CJ history.”
As Tumas says, CJ built and raced the green Mustang down the quarter-mile for a good while before selling it to its now-previous owner, who did much the same thing. Now that the company has their car back, though, it’s time to figure out where to take their piece of company history next.
Always Meant for Racing
“This car was always a race car,” Tumas said. “When we owned it, we campaigned it in NMRA Super Stang, and the next owner actually campaigned it in True Street all up and down the East Coast. This car is pretty much been a drag car since day one.”
Once CJ got the Mustang back, though, they found the car “hit a wall performance-wise,” being unable to drop down below 11 seconds without more power. However, the shop decided that their racing pony should do something other than the quarter-mile. That something is autocrossing, which they’ve never done with any of their builds before.
“Our plan’s gonna be to get this car out to as many autocross events as we can,” said Tumas. “We’re gonna start by going step-by-step to see if the car gets faster and faster. There’s a lot of parts on this car that we can keep: it’s got a Barton short-throw shifter that’s fine. The MBRP exhaust is good, the engine’s good, we got a JLT cold-air intake on it. It’s got a Maximum Motorsports roll bar. All that stuff can stick around.”
What will be changed on the Mustang is its brakes, tires, and suspension, as the current pieces are all for going quickly down the quarter-mile, not for taking a coned-off set of corners at around 40 mph. Before any of those changes are made, though, the team at CJ will take their green pony to an autocross as-is (with street tires from a 2019 Mustang) to establish a baseline. Then, it will be up to their customer base to decide what components go on the car. We can’t wait to see what happens.
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