Police Mustang Rides Blaze of Glory Through Hoonigan Burnyard
Formerly a Porsche-hunting, law-enforcement machine, this Fox Body Mustang SSP now lays down the law of burnouts with 550 horses.
Back in the ’80s, every car manufacturer was shaking off the cobwebs, once again flexing their muscles after a decade of kicking back on the portable couch of personal luxury. The Mustang was among those finding its hooves again, just in time for more than a few police departments around the country to recruit it to hunt down Porsches, Ferraris, and Corvettes on the highways and byways of America. These titans were known as the Mustang Special Service Package (SSP).
By the mid-Nineties, most of these special Mustangs were put out to pasture, some of them living new lives on the quarter-mile, thanks to the beefed-up suspension and frame providing the proper foundation for a drag car. One of those ponies, owned by Kevin “Pitbull” Torres, recently visited the Hoonigan Burnyard to smoke up the place, and then some.
“This is my baby, the first car I ever bought,” said Torres. “I’ve had it for six years. 1992 Ford Mustang. It’s actually a Special Service Police, SSP. On the pink slip, it says that it was a prior police car.”
Torres adds that the Mustang SSP existed because the Crown Victoria couldn’t keep up with the Porsches and other high-performance machines running away from the law on the highway. Thus, the pony was used to run them down until the big sedans caught up.
331 Stroker Upgrade
“It’s still a stock 302, but I stroked it to a 331 stroker,” said Torres of the Mustang’s V8. “I got it sleeved… Everything’s forged, aluminum heads. I was talking the beginning about the dyno. It kept on having problems reading off the graph, just slipping around the 450 [horsepower] range. Honestly, you don’t know what it’s making.”
Hoonigan Hertrech Eugene Jr. believes Torres’ Mustang is packing “at least 550” horses under the hood, thanks to the size of the motor, and the supercharger mounted atop to pump more power into the block. Fellow Hoonigan Jon Chase adds that he’s amazed by how polished everything is under the hood, even the heads.
“The first thing I remember when I got this car, my passenger seat, when I would punch it, all the notches would break off,” Torres said. “The first thing I ever did was probably get these seats. After four years, they got pretty faded. Other than that, I wanted to keep the car looking like a street car.”
The Mustang has a new black dash from another Fox pony, plus controls to roll down the windows to replace the manual window cranks the SSP version had. Meanwhile, he’s got a booming speaker in the trunk, plus a box for his battery, with just enough space for a backpack full of whey protein for Torres’ trips to the gym. Underneath all of that, the 8.8-inch rear is reinforced to handle the power of his upfitted stroker V8.
With the formalities out of the way, it was time for Torres to let his Mustang gallop around the Burnyard. And gallop it did, the rears smoking all the way through the course. The tires weren’t the only thing smoking, though, for at the end of show, the pony was on fire.
The fire first began in the rear just after where the mufflers would have been, then worked its way up to the firewall. Chase off-handedly mentioned in the video that it may be a spark plug or two that overheated. If we had to guess, we’d say it’s a combination of that, melted wiring and probably a mass of fumes with unspent fuel vapors just hanging out in the exhaust manifold that got ignited. And as such, V8 motors (especially older ones) get hot. Very hot. So it’s no surprise this happened, but at least they doused the flames in time before any real serious damage took place.
Covered in fire extinguisher powder, this Mustang will be back on the road soon enough. After Torres gives it a thorough detailing, of course.
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