Tony Di Mattia is a lucky guy. Why? He drives a 1966 Ford Mustang with gorgeous paint, righteous Pro-Street stance and one of the best street machine engines in the land. If that sounds like a big call, listen to this. Tony’s ’Stang runs a Windsor V8, just as Henry intended, but this is no ordinary 302. It’s been built to look and sound fantastic, make damn near 700 horsepower and be a reliable as a Daihatsu Applause – all on pump gas.

First published in the December 2002 issue of Street Machine

Tony bought the ’Stang as a $6000 left-hand-drive import and as you can imagine, it needed a bit of work!

“When it rolled off the boat, I discovered the car had no floor pan left in it, it was completely rusted out,” he says. “I made many trips to Mick O’Sullivan’s (a mate who does Mustang conversions) and bought a couple of floor pans off him. I bought a welder and came home to the realisation that it was all too much for me to do, so I decided to have a go at the steering conversion.”

Despite having no panel-beating experience Tony persevered with the grinder and welder for month after month so it was only a matter of time before the conversion was complete. The car was then handed over to the M&D Wolrich Restorations to have the floor pan replaced and the body massaged into shape. She was soon as straight as a die and only had to have the rear tubs fitted before it could be painted.

This created major problem number two for Tony as when the car came back from having the tubs fitted, the cutting and welding had buckled the rear quarters which created a stack of work for the beaters to rectify.

While they were at it, they modified the front supports for the massive alloy radiator, and after repairing the quarters and blocking down the shell had it ready for paint. Like all good jobs it took some time and M&D had the car for close to two years before returning it to Tony as a fully-painted roller, minus the front-end sheet metal for the fit-out. It took three months just to get the boot looking factory again after all the cutting, welding and grinding that had taken place over the years.

In six months Tony had the driveline fitted to the car and after having the car rewired with all the front-end wiring obscured under the guards, took the Muzzy back to M&D to have the front guards and bonnet fitted and the whole car buffed. In case you haven’t picked the colour yet it’s BMW Avis Blue, creating a strong contrast to the polished alloy yet complementing the arrow-straight lines of the car.

The interior got pumped with the usual bits like Shelby-replica steering wheel, Auto Meter gauges, Kenwood stereo with Kenwood amp hidden in the boot, B&M Pro Ratchet shifter, modified standard rear seat and re-trimmed front factory buckets.

The inside of the boot is just as meticulously prepared with a massive alloy fuel cell, battery and fuel pump tucked away neatly. Everywhere you look you find unique touches that reflect care, thought, practicality and a unique Pro Street image.

For a while, Tony drove the car with a normally aspirated 302 under the bonnet. In this guise, the car was a pure street animal, with a PB of 11.5@118mph. Tough enough from most, but not for Tony, who wants to put the car into the nine second zone. What he didn’t want, was a grumpy, un-streetable mess, so he opted for a clever combination of old-school forced induction and programmable electronic fuel injection. The best of both worlds!

The heart of the matter is a 302 Windsor, built Ford tough by Fabietti Race Engines. Maurice and the team stroked the motor to 328 cubic inches with a Crower crank, then added JE pistons, Eagle rods, a roller cam, custom headers and Dart II aluminium heads.

The real story begins with the 6/71 huffer, mounted on a suitably modified Victor Junior inlet manifold. Up top is an Enderle bug catcher, converted to run in EFI mode by Geoff Ramsey, starting with eight fire-hose-sized injectors mounted on custom fuel rails. The babies are kept happy with a steady supply of premium unleaded thanks to a Bosch Motorsports fuel pump. Spark is provided by a beefy Accel unit. Taming the beast is a top shelf Autronic programmable computer system.

The masterful keyboard work was performed by Horsepower Research and Development. The blower is 20 per cent underdriven to produce 9psi of boost, yielding 688hp at 7400rpm and a stomping 580Nm of Titanic-towing torque.

Backing up the Windsor is AJ Dominello-built C4 with 4000rpm converter. Heading towards the rear of the car is a Ford nine-inch with Spax coil overs, four-link and all the usual tuff stuff inside the diff including an SVO Motorsport housing, 4.32:1 gears and 31-spline Straightline Engineering axles.

Towards the sharp end the suspension was rebuilt with Bilstein adjustable shocks and urethane throughout.

After six years Tony finally got his wish; to be able to go cruising with his wife with the baby seat lashed in the back. And it’s on the road that this car makes its mark. Totally aside from the gob-dropping, lip-smacking appeal of the car the Muzzy is an absolute joy to drive or cruise in.

The Autronic computer provides military-tyre precision when it comes to standing on the loud pedal, cruising or idling in heavy traffic and as a total package is what you’d come to expect from a factory-built car.

Quality suspension and the four-link rear makes for comfy cruising and if you want to tip the car into a corner, set yourself up for a great ride as the car turns in well, stays flat through the corner and exits like a scalded cat amid tyre smoke and big rpm.

Tony’s long-term plan is to fit a stout roll cage and hit the strip in search of those nine-second time cards. For now, he loves every minute of cruising the Sydney CBD and southern suburbs, getting a handle on the combination and lapping up the attention that only a blown muscle car can bring.

Mustang savvy

The Ford Mustang had been such an incredible success in its inaugural year that understandably Ford was reluctant to make many significant changes to the 1966 model. The changes that were made were slight and included a single horizontal bar grille as a backdrop for the galloping horse, the decorative body scoops were touched up with wind splits, name-plates were revised and wheel covers were restyled. Inside, the simplistic gauge cluster was replaced with the five-gauge instrument cluster and engines were reduced to four basic packages; 200ci OHV six and three optional 289 Windsor V8s offering 200, 225 and 271hp. A total of 35,000 fastbacks, 70,000 convertibles and nearly 500,000 hardtops were sold for the year.

Tony Di Mattia
1966 Ford Mustang