When you find yourself browsing Facebook Marketplace for modified cars, you’re going to stumble upon some strange stuff. Perfectly preserved early-2000s tuner cars, unusual stretch limousines, engine swaps that seem mildly terrifying in an amusing way. However, body-swaps are some of the strangest. While putting the body of one car over the chassis of another isn’t unheard-of, swapping the body of a 1966 Ford Mustang onto the bones of a 2008 Porsche 911 is off the wall. Guess what? Someone did it, and it’s up for sale.
Complicating this concept, the two cars involved in this feat of automotive alchemy aren’t dimensionally close. Not only is the 911 three inches wider than the Mustang, it rides on a wheelbase 15.5 inches shorter than that of the Ford and cuts a silhouette some 7.3 inches shorter. Nevertheless, one builder decided to make the two cars fit together, and the result looks decidedly weird.
The biggest source of strangeness isn’t the lobster claw wheels filling bolted-on wheel arch extensions, but the dash-to-axle shenanigans going on with this build. Remember the wheelbase disparity? Part of that is due to how the 911 was able to suck its front wheels relatively close to the front bulkhead because the engine’s in the back. In contrast, the first-generation Mustang features a front axle pushed well toward the front of the car, so to make the Mustang body fit over the 911 chassis, the builder of this thing had to move the front wheel arches way back.
The result is a front overhang that really hangs, seemingly three times longer than it actually should be. We’re talking borzoi-tier levels of snoot, like this thing’s reaching out for a treat. Oh, and it gets weirder. Because the 911 has its fuel filler neck in the right front fender, elements on that fender get really squished, with a metal filler cap sitting quite close to the fender flare.
Beyond the cosmetic weirdness, there are some upsides to this conversion. A late-2000s Porsche 911 drives a whole lot better than a 1960s Mustang, and since just about the entire cockpit is straight-up Porsche 911, you get supportive seats and highly legible gauges and modern conveniences like climate control. You could even retrofit a PCCM Plus head unit for factory-grade Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. I could also imagine that the large Mustang trunk gives decent access to that rear-mounted engine, particularly when compared to the relatively small engine cover of a 911.
At the same time, I’d love to see what the cooling package looks like on this creation, given how much front end it has. The seller also states that the “Interior/frunk needs finish work,” so what lies beneath that long hood is still a bit of an unknown.
Still, if you’re alright with the oddness, this mashup of Mustang and 911 is relatively cheap. In a way, this is a 53,000-mile stick-shift 997 up for sale at a list price of $19,500. Granted, it doesn’t appear to have the full body structure of a 997 so I have no idea how the conversion has affected the handling (probably not positively), but it’s probably still a fun machine to hoon about.
Top graphic credit: Facebook Marketplace
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Uuuugggg
Has to be an interesting story on why this thing exists. The only slightly rational explanation I can think of is a older person with money that wanted a porshe but didn’t want it to look like a porshe. Maybe that they didn’t make the 05 mustang as rear engine or some other general insanity (disorder)
All it really needs is an Audi Sport Quattro S1 E2 front clip, boxy rear fenders and a biggish rear wing. A white and yellow paint job and it would be even more confusing.
Really annoyingly I have the front bit! It is a thing that sticks out of a wall for reasons I have long forgotten.
The Hillman Ogre.