On a sunny, late summer day, we called Charlie Watson at Beechmont Ford Performance (BFP) with a question: “Anything new?” He said yes, because he always says yes, following that with, “And I can probably get you a drive.”
Watson is the guy who, in 2016 while with Lebanon Ford, opened the gate to dealer-built and dealer-backed supercharged Mustangs with big power at unbeatable prices. The first builds in 2016 bolted on an Edelbrock blower to create a 727-horse Mustang for $39,995. The program has moved, switching from Lebanon Ford to Beechmont Ford about 30 minutes away in Cincinnati. It has expanded and contracted over eight years, adding a 725-hp supercharged F-150 in 2019 and making a foray into overlanding vans during the pandemic. The program’s ethos, however, hasn’t changed: You imagine, we build.
The superchargers and outputs have changed, too, which is what got us our ride-and-drive. The Edelbrock ‘charger package had turned into a 700-hp ‘Stang for $42,995 in 2019. In 2020, BFP switched to Roush Performance, offering a Mustang GT with 750 hp and 670 lb-ft priced at $44,994. Earlier this year, BFP jumped to Whipple. The reason: Ford Performance resumed its supercharged street truck game with the supercharged, 700-hp FP700 package for the F-150 pickup. At its heart, Whipple’s Gen 6 3.0-liter blower, representing a defection from Roush Performance and the 700-hp supercharger package Ford Performance announced for 2018.
When Ford Performance finally loosed the retail, 49-state-legal Whipple blower package, buyers could unlock up to 810 horses and 615 pound-feet from their 5.0-liter Coyote V8s for just $9,999, while being protected by a 3-year/36,000-mile warranty honored at any Ford dealer.
BFP still offers a Roush Phase 2 build with 750 hp and 670 lb-ft that costs $11,450 installed. BFP’s Ford Performance build with a Whipple adds 60 ponies but subtracts 55 torques and costs $12,600 installed. This kind of price/performance matrix strikes us as more about how you like your power delivered and where you want to spend your money. Nevertheless, Jeff Black, BFP’s point man guiding customers through their builds, indicated where the herd’s heading for now: “We are seeing a lot of excitement over the new Ford Performance/Whipple collaboration.”
One of Watson’s second-time buyers, a gent named Matt, was able to get one of the early Whipples. We drove up to Matt’s house for a quick spin in his 2024 Mustang GT convertible, meeting the kind of Mustang fan we’ve only read about.
“I’ve been a Mustang freak since I can remember,” he said. “I used to have posters of them up in my locker in grade school. I carried a picture from grade to grade for about four years, a ‘67 Mustang GTA. I had no idea what the GTA stood for, I just thought that car was cool. Then I moved to Fox bodies when I was able to drive. I started working when I was about 13 and saved up enough money to buy my first car, a ‘79 Cobra.”
The Cobra designation carried over from the Mustang II, but 1979 was the first year of the Fox Body. Buyers could either get a turbocharged 2.3-liter four-cylinder making 132 hp and 142 lb-ft. or a 5.0-liter V8 making 140 hp and 250 lb-ft. Matt got the five-oh and made a few mods to parts like the carb and rear gearing, establishing the template for the years ahead, which counted “13 or 14 Fox bodies” up to around 2008.
We asked why he cycled through cars. “It’s on to the next one, right? Or you’re driving down the road and you see one, and you’re like, ‘That’s cool.’ It’s a sickness.”
As fans of cars ourselves, we’d let him off the hook of “a sickness” and call it something like “an endless love.”
Eventually, life did what life does. “As I got older, the budget for those things kind of went by the wayside. I went a period of probably 10 or 12 years without one.”
The dry spell is surprising considering that Matt spent 25 years as a service department manager, 20 of those years at Ford dealerships. When he got back in the game, he bought his first Mustang from Watson, a 2019 GT hardtop with the Performance Package 2, a six-speed manual, and the standard Edelbrock blower package. He later upgraded to the Stage 2 kit that got him to 615 horses at the wheels. “But it was quiet,” he said. “I wanted to build a little bit of a sleeper, didn’t want to advertise that I had the supercharger. I just wanted it for some spirited driving and not to be embarrassed at a traffic light, in case the need ever came up. It was my favorite car I’ve ever owned.”
This time, the reason he let a Mustang go wasn’t to get into something newer, but something better.
“My brother had had an ’88 Fox body T-top since he was in high school — 32 years. One day, he called me and said, ‘If you still want to come get it.’ I did, and my family kind of looked at me, and they were like, ‘You’re putting a lot of money into Mustangs, right?’ I wanted to be a good steward, so I sold the ‘19 to put the money into the Fox body. I was going to do a Coyote swap, I had ordered the parts, I had big plans. And somebody stole that car from the repair shop. It’s never been recovered.”
He looked for another Fox Body, finding the used market the same minefield one encounters when looking for unmolested mid-1990s Japanese sports cars: “They were all junk. Everything out there was rusted out, or somebody turned it into a track car — put a cage in it, took all the gauges out, cut up the dash — and I didn’t want to go through that project.”
So he returned to the modern era. He checked out the S650 at an auto show last year, Watson had him in a 2024 GT convertible with the Performance Package in October. Issues that continue to vex the supply chain prevented completion of the first phase of this new build until a few weeks ago. That phase counts the Whipple unit, Steeda H-pipe resonator delete, Steeda progressive-rate one-inch lowering springs, and a brace of Steeda cosmetic products like that decklid spoiler. The droptop sits on custom RVRN wheels wearing Continental ExtremeContact Sport 02 tires. Changes ahead include driveshafts rated for 1,000 hp.
An afternoon spin on rural Ohio roads showed just how good the Mustang has become in the past decade. This writer was never a Mustang fan, the 2015 model with the independent rear suspension the first factory option I considered enjoyable on the roads I like. Ten years of chassis and suspension improvements have massaged the last pony car standing into a proper weapon to attack a rollicking stretch; we mean tarmac that gets as curvy as it is bumpy, narrow sweepers with granite slopes or ditches for shoulders, steep downhill esses, and those sharp blind crests that will divert any joyrider with a subpar suspension into a horse paddock. The kinds of roads tacked with a month’s worth of production of yellow warning signs.
Ford Performance knows what it’s doing (no surprise). Casual cruising mimics a stock GT’s character — there’d be no issue using this as a daily driver. The Whipple isn’t loud anyway, but the active exhaust and resonator delete keep the blower whine from getting much past the bulkhead no matter the speed.
When the Saturday morning blast beckons, a Dynojet run showed Matt’s car at 665 hp and 440 lb-ft at the wheel. Drop down to second or third gear around 45 mph, hit the throttle, the Whipple will tax the sticky Continentals just beyond their capability for a touch of sideways scoot, then the ‘Stang is down the road burning gas.
A huge shoutout to the Steeda springs, which soften the Magneride’s stiff tuning while letting the performance dampers do their job of disciplining body roll and maintaining the contact patch over ragged bits. The more pliant connection between wheel and body might also have eliminated the cowl shake our colleague experienced in the 2024 Mustang GT convertible on the First Drive. Or that previous tester might have been an early production outlier. Or the back-end trembles, like the supercharger whine, might also have been smothered by active exhaust. No matter the explanation, Matt’s setup is a win.
At $55,299 for an 810-hp Mustang that behaves like a pony around town and a Derby winner on-demand, there’s never been a better time to be in an endless love affair with the car. And Matt, having started his walk up Mustang Mountain with a 1979 Cobra, has every right to enjoy the view from this latest peak. His S650 is going to have competition eventually, though. He finally found a replacement Fox body, a 1988 with the telltale convertible mirrors denoting a late production build.
Asked about his plans for the old horse, he said, “It’s about 1,100 pounds lighter than [the 2024 Mustang], I want to be at about 500 wheel horsepower. So I’m not embarrassed at a traffic light, in case the need ever comes up.”