Back in the day, every pizza joint in the world promised a hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less. This prompted every delivery driver to drive his or her Toyota Tercel like a modern-day Duke boy in an effort to keep you from getting a free pizza. Several accidents and lawsuits later, the 30-minute delivery time went the way of the IROC Camaro.
If there was ever a restaurant that could keep its promise of a 30-minute delivery time, it would be Maria's Italian Restaurant in Cape Coral, Florida, because the GT you see here has seen delivery duty by its owner Michael Saponara. And with 700 hp under the hood, you know he won't be late.
The GT is Michael's fifth Mustang. He started out with a black '86 GT, then moved on to a gray '86 GT, a red '93 5.0, and a '96 4.6 that he bought brand-new. All had the same exhaust, gears, and shifter modifications to keep them street-friendly. "I never wanted to do more," Michael says, "because I was delivering pizzas with all of them and couldn't afford to lose the driveability. Then I bought my '87 GT. I drove it bone-stock for about a year, until Third gear went out." In October 2000 he took the car to J&J Performance where co-owner Justin Nelson rebuilt the transmission. "That transmission was better than my brand-new '96 GT," Michael says. "I was so impressed with the work, I went back and asked Justin what we could do to make it fast but still keep it a daily driver for my job."
Justin's answer included the initial installation of an off-road pipe, Flowmasters, and 3.73 gears. This 5.0 Mustang staple of mods lasted two weeks before round two kicked in with GT40P heads, a Crane 2031 cam, an Explorer intake, a mass air conversion, a throttle body, roller rockers, a fuel pump, an Auburn diff, and a Nitrous Works 175-shot kit. In this form, the car's best quarter-mile pass was a 12.0 at 110 mph. "After going through two bottles of nitrous a week for two months, I had enough," Michael says. It was time for another change.
In February 2001 Michael again talked to Justin, this time about building a seriously fast street car and "...whether we would we be able to get it ready for Fun Ford Bradenton, which was a month away."
Fortunately for them, a friend happened to have a brand-new A4 block lying around, for which the dynamic duo ordered up a Probe Racing Components 347 Street Fighter stroker kit, Trick Flow Twisted Wedge heads, a Holley SysteMAX II intake, Kooks 17/8 headers, a Dr. Gas X-pipe, and an ATI-ProCharger D1 supercharger. Knowing the car was going to make killer power, the boys also called UPR Products for a fuel system capable of supporting 1,000 hp. With the hope of running 10s, safety was also pushed to the front of the class, with Justin welding in an S&W Race Cars eight-point cage. Justin also installed a driveshaft safety loop and Superior axles within the stock 8.8 rear, along with a slew of Auto Meter gauges to keep track of underhood goings-on.
Working day and night for three weeks, everything went as planned, except the blower had still not arrived. Michael and Justin threw the nitrous back on the car and headed to Bradenton for the Fun Ford race. The stock computer still lived in the kick panel, and the car didn't even have a Ford Racing Performance Parts RPM Extender. Without any tuning on the car, the boys had to chase down the proper tune-up at the race. Even so, the GT qualified with an 11.60. In the first round of eliminations, they had the tune figured out. "What a wild ride that was," Michael says. "The car launched and the driveshaft stayed."
The blower showed up two days after Bradenton. Once it was installed, instead of fighting clutch issues, Justin cried uncle and called Performance Automatic for a Super Pro Comp C4 transmission. With the blower installed and the transmission ready to rock, the two took the GT to UPR for some tuning and a few dyno pulls. Sounding as if he's read one too many issues of Car Craft magazine, Michael says the car made "605 hp at the tires on 93 octane!"
At Fun Ford's next stop in Atlanta, the car ran an average of 10.94 at 130 mph with a 1.80 60-foot time. Before the Alabama Fun Ford, Michael and Justin tuned the suspension, which helped them realize a best of 10.40 at 132 mph with a 1.60 60-foot time and a Second-Place finish in True Street.
Then Michael got greedy, turning up the wick on the blower and adding racing gas. With these changes the car made 706 hp and 754 lb-ft of torque at the rear wheels, again at UPR. But after this boost in power, traction problems once again came back to bite 'em. Joe Mainiero at UPR suggested changing around the suspension by adding his double-adjustable upper control arms, single-adjustable lowers, an antiroll bar, Lakewood 50/50 drag shocks, Competition Engineering struts, four-cylinder springs, and a tubular K-member.
Michael had to sit out the Gainesville Fun Ford, but Justin took the car to victory in the True Street class with a 10.18 at 138 mph average. The duo still had traction problems, with 60-foot times hovering in the 1.8 area.
Even though Michael was still driving the car daily, and even delivering pizzas on occasion, he and Justin continued fine-tuning the car's tune-up, suspension, and appearance. Wally Schbolom at Wally's Auto Restoration in Fort Myers, Florida, painted the car Rubine Red Pearl (a PT Cruiser hue), and Michael added a Kaenan 4-inch cowl hood and a Cobra grille insert. A trip to the dragstrip to test the suspension tweaks resulted in a 9.90 at 136 mph with a 1.48 60-foot time on slicks. Just to show you those times weren't a fluke, at the '01 Ford Power Festival at Moroso Motorsports Park (where we photographed the car), the GT ran 10.10s at more than 139 mph with a 1.50 60-foot time using Mickey Thompson ET Streets.
"I think we solved our traction problems," Michael says. To which we respond, "Really!"