1999 Ford Mustang Drop-Top GT - The Heartbreaker

One way or another, everyone wants to stand out from the crowd. Within the realm of hot rods and building fast cars, the result everyone strives for is to end up with a car that is so different or so wickedly fast that everyone wants it for their own. Whether it's the Pro Street fad, the Pro Touring craze, or something in between, each and every one of us puts a bit of personality in our rides. Jazmin Newton and her killer-looking Mustang is another awesome example of someone who made her car stand above the rest.

After four years of ownership, Jazmin has a Stang that most would kill for. "My parents helped me get the car when I was 17," Jazmin says about the beginning of the odyssey that is her '99 drop-top GT. "I always wanted a Mustang ever since I was a little girl. My family has always been into cars, and they have had, or do have, Mustangs, Camaros, and Corvettes."

Jazmin stayed away from the Bow Tie brigade, picking up the project GT with a mere 8,500 miles on it. The Stang was no sooner parked in her driveway before she got her hands dirty, styling it her own way. "After I got the car, I knew I wanted to make it stand out," she says.

With limited cash in hand, Jazmin began with the basic bolt-ons, swapping out the stock rims and tackling the sound coming from the tailpipes. Dumping the stock exhaust system, she sprang for a set of Ford Racing 151/48-inch headers mated to a MAC H-pipe and a MagnaFlow exhaust system. With the restriction of the stock pipes gone, it was time to get rid of the restriction on the inlet side, too.

A MAC cold-air kit made sure fresh atmos-phere got into the stock 4.6 mod mill, and a pair of underdrive pulleys freed up some power. After hooking up a Nitrous Express wet kit with a purge system and fuel cut-off switch, Jazmin dropped the car at Cerra Racing in Rock Island, Illinois, to give the factory ECM a custom tune.

For the time being, she was happy with the increased power the motor provided, and work started on the outside of the car. She bolted on a Black Widow body kit and Cobra R rear spoiler, and had Dahl Ford of Davenport, Iowa, take care of the bodywork and paint. The crew at Dahl sanded the GT to bare metal before shooting it with Sikken's primer. With the kit mocked up and ready to be painted along with the rest of the car, three coats of Sikken's E-9 Laser Tint Red paint was applied. After the clearcoat went on, the car was almost finished, save for the 18x9 front and 18x10.5 rear chrome Cobra R rims complete with Nitto 555 tires on all four corners. The stock cloth interior was gutted and redone in leather, and a tonneau cover finished the look.

Jazmin was happy with version one of her GT, and started taking it to the track. Unfortunately, after a 13.59 best in the quarter-mile, she got too happy with the 100hp shot of go-juice, and the laughing gas caused the internals of the engine to scatter on the strip.

Knowing she needed new motivation for the Pony, Jazmin started looking around for the perfect candidate, which she eventually found in the form of a barrel-rolled '03 Mach 1. "It was perfect," she says. Her husband, Chad, helped perform the swap, which included the Mach 1 engine/trans combination and wiring harness. "The wiring was a little difficult because there weren't any Mach 1 convertibles," Jazmin says. The pair also added a Steeda quadrant, an adjustable clutch cable, and a Pro-5.0 shifter to make gear selection easy.