GT500 Super Swap Is The Complete Opposite Of A Facelift

Botox. Plastic surgery. Facelift. The things we do to stay pretty and young, hoping that the world will keep noticing us just a little bit longer. Car companies do the same thing with their products, giving them facelifts so they can keep selling new models with slightly tweaked features that are fresh and more head turning. BMW calls it Life Cycle Impulse, or LCI, which is the mid-cycle face lift applied to cars before a new platform completely takes over.

What Dan Burback did with his 2012 Shelby GT500 was perhaps the complete opposite of Botox, Plastic Surgery, or Facelift. He completely gutted the sheetmetal of the 2012 Shelby and transformed it into a 1967 Mustang Fastback. According to HotRod:

Burback cut away the stock 2012 body, replacing all of the exterior panels with Dynacorn ’67 replacement panels. While there’s more than enough 1967 Mustang to get the Shelby retitled, Burback said that he hasn’t had a chance to do that yet because he’s still making payments on it. It takes plenty of skill and confidence to cut up a new car you haven’t paid off yet.

It wasn’t all a cut and paste job, though. Burback had to do plenty of fabrication work to meld the two Ponies together. He had to account for a difference in track width, since the new Mustang is substantially wider than the ’67. Every body panel on the SuperSwap required some kind of massaging in order to get all of the proportions to look right.

First of all, it’s such a gutsy move to be ripping apart a car that you haven’t completely paid off yet. And second, we were completely wary of the potential results because the proportions of a car from the 2010’s matching up with the proportions of a car from the 60’s is highly unlikely. As we are all very aware, cars have steadily increased in size throughout history, and what Burback did to his Shelby was basically trying to fit a tiny shell over a gigantic frame. Somehow, the end results look quite amazing as seen in this time lapse video of the transformation.

The first thing you notice about the SuperSwap as you approach it is that it seems a little “off” compared to your average ’67 Mustang. If you’re looking at the back, you’ll notice the huge diffuser poking out from underneath what looks like a fairly stock looking ’67 Shelby. As you get closer to the car, it’s the fit and finish that really begins to shine. Everywhere you look, the details are just right.

So it doesn’t look 100% right. That was not the point. The point was to blend modern engineering and power of the GT500 Shelby with the classic and quintessential classic Mustang Fastback look. We think Mr. Burback did awesome here, and he will surely turn heads everywhere he goes.

(Source: Hotrod)