How to Apply Show-Winning Paint to a 1990 Fox Mustang (Hot Rod)
Over the last few years our Week to Wicked project builds have become more ambitious. Nothing wrong with that, really, as we strive to go bigger, badder, and bolder with each build. Truth be told, as successful and fun as these five-day builds are, there truly is a limit to just how much you can honestly tackle in five days and have a running, driving car or truck at the end of the week. As such, a few small liberties are often taken but nothing that we feel honestly would cheapen the experience for our fans. The one area that obviously must happen in advance is paint and body work.
When we sit down and consider what our next build will be, there are many factors at play, including what is trending or what people are asking to see (our Gen 3 Coyote-swapped 1967 Mustang fastback build in 2018, for example). For the Mustang guys it was a given after two classics and a S197 Week to Wicked build, we'd do a Fox Mustang. The Fox generation is now old enough that most of them require paint and body work before we make them "wicked," and there's no way to do a proper paint job for a build like this in five days, which then wouldn't leave us time to do any of the other upgrades. So painting the car in advance has become the norm for any of our Week to Wicked builds on older platforms.
The original color of our Fox Mustang is Medium Cabernet, a dark, nonmetallic burgundy hue. We special-ordered the color when the Mustang was purchased new to stand apart from the typical bright red, gray, white, or blue Mustangs on the road at the time. Trouble is, these early solid colors from Ford were single stage back then and the Florida sun just destroyed the surface. We're talking way past the "patina" stage. So, we wanted to refinish the car in a more modern base/clear two-stage paint system, and we also wanted to stay in the burgundy color family and also add some pop. We went straight to the king of color "pop" for our refinish materials: House of Kolor.
(photo credit: Mark Houlahan - Hot Rod)
