Fred's horsepower fiesta comes courtesy of an A4 block stuffed with a 347 stroker and fed 12 pounds of boost via a Vortech S-Trim. The car is driven every day-which unfortunately shows on its 12-year-old body-including the trip from South Florida to the event, nearly 20 hours away. We were impressed.
Fred admits the 12-year-old hatch has seen better days and needs the interior freshened up and a new paint job, but then again, so does my '90, and my car doesn't make nearly 650 hp. Unfortunately, Fred broke Third and Fifth gear in his transmission during drag testing (which we ignored while driving his car) when a 29-cent snap ring failure allowed Fifth gear to slide back on the countershaft. But, even after making the 20-hour return trip in Fourth gear at 3,000 rpm, the hatch still knocked down 16 mpg. Fred and his Mustang really made a good showing.
Last year, Paul Svinicki of Paul's High Performance submitted a shop project car called The Ignitor. It was a fun car to drive and it handled well on the street, but it didn't quite have the oomph to run with the more powerful cars in last year's KOTS competition. This year, Karl Roekle (pronounced wreck-lee), Paul's lead technician, decided to throw his car into the applicant barrel and we invited him to participate.
In his spare time, Karl came up with this plan: Take one '97 Cobra with lots of electrical and tuning problems, buy it cheap from a distressed owner, and then use your professional mechanical abilities to resurrect the car into a daily driven street machine with more than 600 hp.
His 4.6 Cobra features an overbore, with new Manley rods, ported heads, a ported intake, custom cams, and other goodies. Topped off with a Vortech SQ, pumping 16 pounds of Mother Nature's oxygen into the 4.6 equals 637 hp in our KOTS dyno testing. Karl drove his Cobra all the way from Jackson, Michigan. He drives it every day-except for when the snow is as high as the car's roof-and the OE paint finish and interior show it. The car is mild mannered on the street, while the '03 Cobra six-speed gives it plenty of gear to stretch its legs. The swing-out door bars make the car easy to use for daily use. Karl even brought his young daughter along for the ride, strapped in a child seat in the back. All in all, it's a fun car that can hold its own.
The one and only New Edge Mustang in the KOTS competition is also one of the most desirable of all Mustangs right now-the '03 Cobra. Sure, it comes from the factory with the highest horsepower level of any Mustang ever produced, but to make it this far into the KOTS competition it has to have more than stock numbers, right? You bet. Norma Wallis, who owns Livernois Motorsports, also owns this '03 Cobra. Her son, Dan Millen, along with the rest of the crew at Livernois, yanked the OE Eaton off the top of the Four-Valve and installed a Kenne Bell Blowzilla pumping 17 pounds of boost through an otherwise stock 4.6 Cobra engine (save for a K&N air filter and an FRPP throttle body). The mod motor also wears a full dress of Bassani exhaust, including Mid-Lengths, X-pipe, and after-cat, to put out 559 hp for the KOTS dyno test. Livernois employee Rick LeBlanc, who brought the car to the competition, says some tuning issues prevented them from putting up a bigger number, but Dan got after the tuning issues once the car was back at the shop, where it made 658 hp and 591 lb-ft of torque. With that kind of power and everyday driveability, Norma's '03 Cobra would be a blast on any boulevard.
Some MGW billet interior bits and a CDC Light Bar dress up the otherwise stock interior, and the HRE wheels and Steeda/FRPP suspension goodies provide a wicked look. While we give the Livernois crew kudos for building Norma a drop-dead, sweet convertible, we had to acknowledge the car's innate performance.