1968 Ford Mustang - Miller Time - Featured Vehicle

The parachute is removable. Check out the huge 4-inch pipes.

A lot of people ask us, "What do you look for in a feature car for HOT ROD?" The answer to that question is tough, since there are so many things to consider, but also so many things we don't even know to look for. Some cars are just so different that they scream out to be shown. Others have an intangible cool factor that makes them stand out from the crowd, but it's not something you can describe without having the car right in front of you, and often you can't build for it. It just exists. Like pornography or fine art, you know it when you see it.

Then there's a car like Jack Miller's Mustang, which looks pretty much like a run-of-the-mill restored fastback with fat tires. In fact, that's basically what the car is, so why does it deserve a feature in HOT ROD? Because it hits on all eight cylinders, and we're only partly referring to the engine. Other than slightly stretched rear wheelwells to accommodate big meats and the requisite 'glass hood, the body is stock. But it's nice, and it's devoid of any "look at me" gimmicks that would otherwise take away from the car's purpose. The interior is nothing to shake a stick at-it's mostly stock, but with lightweight buckets, just enough gauges to get the job done, a racy shifter, and a rollcage that appearancewise has seen better days. It's function over form, without throwing the form completely out the window. A tinned interior wouldn't work in a car like this; any carbon-fiber anything would be just plain wrong.

Where the car deviates from most others is under the hood. If one is good, then two must be twice as good, goes the thinking, so Jack's engine wears a pair of Paxton Novi 2000 superchargers. And it's not a cookie-cutter Windsor or a common 460-based engine either; it's an FE, correct for this ride but not often the first choice when building a fast car. How fast? Jack's Mustang regularly runs in the high to mid-eights at 160 mph. Combine all of the above with the fact that this is a legit, no-B.S. street car, as proven at both the HOT ROD Pump Gas Drags(tm) and Drag Week(tm) events, and the sum total is a car that fits anyone's description of a totally bitchin' hot rod. And that is why you're seeing it in HOT ROD.

We first saw Jack's Mustang when he applied for the '05 Pump Gas Drags(tm). We immediately liked the car, so he was invited, but that event didn't go well for Jack. A few weeks beforehand, he had a full 'cage welded in the car but left the F.A.S.T. EFI controller hooked up, which fried some of the firmware in the computer. When he got to Memphis, the car would start and run fine, but at anything over 1,800 rpm it shut off four of the injector drivers. Jack couldn't figure it out in time to contend for the win, but with 35 pounds of boost and a very aggressive tune-up, the car still managed to run a few 9.50s at 147 mph, completely destroying four of the pistons while doing it. We invited Jack's car back for '06, and while we watched him run in the eights during the test and tune, the race result wasn't much better than the previous year. He admits to overspeeding the blowers, and an overrev in the burnout box was more than the passenger side Novi 2000 could take as it came apart in dramatic style.