SEMA: Ice Nine Group Behind Monster Fusion, Shelby Tribute Mustang

One company that Ford Motor Co. trusts to collaborate with for custom work would be the Ice Nine Group based out of Detroit. They’ve had a strong presence at SEMA the past few years and have been mentioned in an impressive amount of magazines and publications. Now they’ve become Ford’s “wingman” for custom builds. They also do prototype work and builds for private clients.

Last year at SEMA, the largest aftermarket trade show held in Las Vegas, they were responsible for the Bosch Iridium RTR Mustang with Vaughn Gittin Jr. For this 2012 SEMA show they brought it with a 2013 Monster-themed Fusion and a widened Shelby GT500 Tribute Mustang honoring the man himself, Carroll Shelby.

As just mentioned, as a tribute to the auto legend they revealed a wide-body ’13 Shelby GT500 with a 5.8-liter V8 engine mated to a 4.0-liter Whipple supercharger. Stopping power came from big Wilwood brakes while added rumble and airflow comes from a Magnaflow exhaust setup. The craziest thing about it, is this group built this car in only 17 days!

“We’ve been talking to Ford about building this thing since last January at Scottsdale Barrett-Jackson and it finally came through right after July. It started out as a ’13 stock GT500 when we rolled it into our shop and seventeen days we drove it out,” said Keith Strong, owner of Ice Nine Group.

That’s not too bad considering that the car was stock, completely gutted down to the dashboard and rebuilt in less than a month. It takes a true team to be able to do something that complicated in such a short amount of time.

Ice Nine Group’s facility is completely full service, meaning that they do 100% of all work inside one location from design to finished product. These guys are capable of such amazing builds and to be able to do them in short periods of time is quite impressive.

“Every one-off custom car has a special color that comes along with it, kinda helps set us apart from everyone else”, says Keith.

One huge hit at the Ford booth came in the form of a Monster energy themed “Green Pearl” Fusion. This thing was nice to look as well as super high performance. It’s sporting the 1.6-liter EcoBoost complete turbo work with blow-off valve, a lowered suspension, roll cage, Recaro seats, MCE cold air intake and exhaust, 19-inch Ford Racing wheels and many 3dCarbon exterior parts covered with the BASF custom paint. This project was inspired by the Australian V8 Supercar Series. You’ll be able to see this car in person at Monster events all around. However, as soon as it’s done making it’s Monster tour, there are some big plans for this little green machine.

According to Keith, future plans are to upgrade to a rear wheel drive supercharged V8 out of a GT500 Mustang. Can’t wait to see that good stuff!