Cars by Kris Mustang gets a new look for SEMA 2009

In the spirit of not leaving well-enough alone, Kris and company completely redesigned the company's mainstay Mustang with the 2009 SEMA Show in their sights. This redesign was born of an unfortunate mishap at a small town car show in April where an unwitting contestant in a burnout contest shot a heap of hot chunks of rubber and gravel right at Kris's Mustang. This resulted in the front 2/3 of the car's paint being completely decimated and left Kris pretty sour on burnout contests.

Though as they say, "Everything happens for a reason" and well, we tried to roll with that...

Kris met with Jason Russell at Airhead Kustoms to discuss what direction to take with the car and after some tilted heads and some squinting - and a few hours at the computer working on a rendering of the car, of course - a new look for the Mustang was created. Being somewhat early in the year, the word SEMA was only being tossed about as a "wouldn't it be fun" sort of thought, but once the beautiful paint job was finished and sunlight hit the car once more, we decided that there was no way we couldn't debut the car at the SEMA Show.

After the paint was finished, Kris decided to strip the interior and swap out the light tan for black with some custom touches. Corbeau supplied a set of their A4 reclining race seats which were refinished by James Mendoza at A&C, an incredibly talented guy who was quick to lend his creative talents to the project. James also refinished the rear seats to match the fronts and covered the headliner, dash, and pillars in black suede, going so far as to include the updated flame pattern in the car's headliner. To quiet down road noise and help with insulation, QuietRide Solutions supplied an excellent sound deadening kit. Kris added a TCI ratchet shifter, Auto Meter custom gauges, Scott Drake billet pedals, and a Corbeau harness bar as well.

Because restyling the car visually wasn't enough of a task, Kris thought it would be "fun" to drop in a rebuilt and forged 4.6L V8 with an Edelbrock supercharger system as well. He claimed that he needed to pull the motor to paint the engine bay, but is that ever really the case? No, the answer is no. Kris had his good friend Daniel Capps take on the task of rebuilding the motor and installing the new blower kit.

Other touches were added in the weeks leading up to the SEMA Show, including new 3-piece "Traviata" wheels from the folks at Petrol, a set of Toyo TR1 tires, Eibach lowering springs and sway bars, custom center exhaust from Street Scene, a custom painted radiator cover from BangaStang, and a set of billet hardware and under-hood goodies from Scott Drake.

The Mustang enjoyed great feedback and a wonderful spot at the SEMA Show, parked right in front of one of the show's main entrances. Kris claims he's done with the car this time around and hopes to enjoy it from here on out, but then again...is a project car ever really finished?

Check out the Mustang Project page to see more pictures of the updated Mustang project and some of the work that went into it!