The 2006 Year One Experience - Crashin' The Party

Horse Sense: It's hard to believe, but we're getting to the point where early Fox Mustangs are candidates for restorations. Since most of the 5.0 cars still around are fairly clapped out and battered, new replacement parts are a must. Year One's '79-'04 Mustang catalog has just about everything you'll need to return your Fox to showroom condition.

Every April, Year One (www.yearone.com), the outstanding supplier of restoration parts, including an impressive line of Fox-body and SN-95 Mustangs parts), stages its annual Year One Experience for gearheads to come and ogle everything that makes being a car lover great. The Experience, as always, was a first-class event all three days. The Thursday before the event, Year One hosted a media day at Road Atlanta, where members of the press got a chance to learn driving techniques and skills from the pros at the Panoz Racing School. The next three days were spent enjoying the Georgia sun and looking at the best iron Detroit ever created.

While the late-model Mustang crowd is still mustering its forces to enter the car show at the event, everywhere at the Year One Experience late-model partisans were in force for all to see. We know the '07 Year One Experience will top this year, and we encourage the late-model crowd to make a showing in force at the car show. It would be spectacular to walk into the car corral and see a double row of nothing but late-model Mustangs. Our fearless leader and editor, Steve Turner, has offered to cut off his ponytail if the members of 5.0 Nation show up to dazzle everyone with late-model Mustang greatness. [No, I didn't!--Ed.]

The weather was a bit more stable this year. From open to close, the road course was alive with the sounds of power as show-goers enjoyed the parade laps and onsite chassis dyno. Awarding the Year One Cup was the peak of the show. This coveted trophy goes to the best car as selected by members of the media and other special guests. The winner receives the crystal cup and a check for $5,000 worth of Year One products, and a check for $1,000 goes to the Second Place winner.

When it came time for the coveted Year One Cup, the Blue Oval once again lost out to the Bow Tie guys, but Wayne and Bob Julian snagged second place with their badass SN-65 Mustang. Their work of art is a '65 fastback body grafted onto an '03 Cobra chassis. Terminator power, handling, and technology, combined with the classic Mustang look, makes for a jaw-dropping creation. Surprisingly, this was the Julians first build, so it's safe to assume car No. 2 will also be a showstopper.

The annual event, which takes place simultaneously between Road Atlanta and Atlanta Dragway, also gives us a chance to visit some of our friends in Georgia. We stopped by MV Performance in Statham, Georgia, (www.mvperformance.com), and we got a look at some of the tire-shredding projects being worked on (or not worked on in the case of Associate Editor Johnson's Project Roadkill). From there, we visited our friends at GMP Diecast in Winder, Georgia, to get a peek at what goes into making their spectacular die-cast replicas. GMP has released a '93 Cobra die-cast, which is sure to make Fox freaks go ape. It's currently working on other great late-model Mustang models in the skunkworks department, including a '93 Cobra R. Check out the company's Web site (www.gmpdiecast.com) for all of the available replicas.