Project 50/30 is unveiled at SEMA 2014

SEMA 2014

After nearly a year of incredibly hard work, the CJ Pony Parts team is proud to show you the finished Project 50/30! Our custom 1965 Mustang fastback made its public unveiling at the SEMA show in Las Vegas, and now we're proud to share it with the world.

Project 50/30 began as an idea almost a year ago. You may remember our old project car, the Forgotten Fastback, which we had done some work on during 2013. However, with some other projects coming into the shop, we forgot about it once again, and it spent much of the summer of 2013 sitting in the corner. That was until our team went to SEMA 2013.

At last year's show, Bill and Josh, who is on our Product Development team, were inspired to create CJ's own SEMA show car. After the initial plans received the full support of CJ's ownership, these ideas gradually grew from daydreams to drawings, and finally to getting to work on the formerly Forgotten Fastback, which soon received its new name: Project 50/30.

The History

The name's origin is pretty simple. Project 50/30 commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Mustang and the 30th anniversary of CJ Pony Parts. We couldn't think of two better events to inspire the name of our first SEMA show car.

The Build

Our goal was to use the 1965 Mustang fastback formerly known as the Forgotten Fastback, and give it completely modern engine, the latest technology and an eye-catching design, complete with a fully custom CJ Pony Parts-inspired look. The project included a brand new "Coyote" 5.0L V8 engine with Vortech supercharger, a Ridetech air ride suspension, some newly released TMI interior products, and much more! CJ Pony Parts partnered with many of our vendors to help make this happen.

This project was possibly the biggest build the CJ's team has tackled to date. On this car, nearly every one of the products we wanted to install needed to be customized in order to fit properly. That translated into hundreds of hours of hard work through the year, which continued right up until the day Project 50/30 left for SEMA.

Bill and Josh were the leads on the project, but they couldn't have completed it without the help of many others on the CJ's team. They especially had a lot of help from RK and Jeff, who are the two service technicians in our shop. Both of these guys stepped up and lent their years of experience to customize and fabricate many of the  parts that needed to be installed in order to make Project 50/30 a reality. In truth, without any of the four primary builders - Bill, Josh, RK, and Jeff - Project 50/30 wouldn't be looking nearly as great as it looks on the SEMA floor today.

Many others on the CJ Pony Parts team stepped in to help as well. This project was meant to be a team effort all around, so Bill & Josh scheduled numerous work nights for the CJ Pony Parts team to put their stamp on the car. Many partook, and others had hoped to, though it just never fit their schedules. Either way, without these team members' "off the clock" contributions, Bill, Josh, RK, and Jeff would have had a lot more work on their hands.

Another unique thing about Project 50/30 is that the large majority of the work happened after hours. Bill, Josh, RK, Jeff and others on the CJ's team each gave up many of their nights and weekends to work on the SEMA Mustang, so we'd be remiss if we didn't thank each of them for their sacrifices over the last several months.

The Parts

When the Forgotten Fastback was chosen to become the new Project 50/30, it was basically a shell. Hundreds of new parts needed to be installed to transform it into the completed Project 50/30. We mentioned it before, but it's worth mentioning again: Nearly every part on Project 50/30 needed to be modified in some way, shape or form in order to fit. That's simply because a build of this caliber hasn't been done too often, and many of these parts are more designed for stock Mustangs, not custom SEMA cars. We're immensely proud of our team for making everything work so well together, and for how amazing the finished product looks.

Here are many of the vendors who stepped up to help us out with parts:

Many of the parts these vendors provided are new to the public, so you've probably never seen them before, at least not before we installed them on Project 50/30. They'll be showing up on our website soon, so you can order them for your Mustang, and perhaps even make your own Project 50/30.

The Future

We're not done with Project 50/30. Not by a long shot.

Now that it's been officially unveiled, we're going to be doing many more videos and projects on the car. First, we have to show you all of those new parts that we were the first to install on Project 50/30. We also have big plans to install more parts on the car, so the Project 50/30 videos are nowhere near done. Check out our Project 50/30 YouTube Playlist to see the hard work behind this project.