We’ve been busy….
Over the last few years, humans have had to become much more familiar with the concept of change. That is true on various levels, and it’s no different at the company level. Ridetech came under new ownership in 2019 when we joined the Fox Factory group as one of their on-road performance suspension brands. If that wasn’t different enough, shortly after that everyone the world over was affected by the pandemic. And like many of you, we hunkered down and focused forward on our core business fundamentals.
Fast forward to today, now that some time and distance have occurred from both of those events, like most of you reading, we’ve slowly been getting back to some of the things we enjoyed before the world shut down. Lately we’ve been getting back into the R&D lab and have been wrenching on a new car of our own. Just like our customers, Ridetech has enjoyed developing project vehicles over the years, campaigning them at various events around the country. It gave us an opportunity to hang out with our enthusiast friends and family, and continues to be helpful for customers as they can reach us onsite at some of the most popular events in the country, i.e., LS Fest, Good Guys, etc. We’re eager to get back to that too!
Since Ridetech began, the team has built some wildly capable cars, some on air suspension, others on conventional coilover setups, and they never cease to impress. From Chevelles to Camaros and Corvettes to one-off Factory Five ’33 Fords, you name it, we’ve had a blast building them out and burning up autocrosses and road courses with them. However, this time around, we wanted to build something a bit different. We wanted to take a vehicle typically associated with mostly straight-line performance and develop it for the turns. Some of our uber-fans may already know the vehicle I’m referring to, but it’s more likely that most reading this will be intrigued with curiosity at this announcement.
Additionally, we wanted to highlight our continued dedication to innovation. Our Ridetech engineering team’s capabilities continue to radically improve upon desirable older vehicle platforms, giving them modern handling technology that blows old suspension tech out of the water. I could go on, but before you decide to click ‘back’ and take your eyeballs elsewhere, allow me to introduce you to “Project Fox Body,” Ridetech’s 1985 Ford Mustang. If your lack of patience already caused you to skip ahead, you will have already noticed the FIA certified 6-point roll cage and fire suppression system. Both are indication enough that this Fox is being built out for serious track duty.
Background: When we acquired this car it was more accurately described as a shell. Intended for fit-check duties, it was never really meant to find its way back onto a track near you, or anywhere for that matter! It was a four cylinder car from the factory, and after a while it became tempting to build the vehicle out and use it to promote some of our developing suspension components for the Fox Body Mustang platform. As time progressed the car has evolved into the all-out track weapon you see teased in these images and it’s now 95% of the way complete.
First things first, don’t worry your little heads, we kept a Ford powerplant. Yes, GM LS engines are so popular they’ve had events across the country named after them for well beyond a decade, but that doesn’t mean that we decided to take the easy route and commit Blue Oval sacrilege. This Fox is powered by a high-revving SPEC Racing Engines built 358 CI engine. It features a Roush R452 block paired with Yates C3 cylinder heads, generating 800 horsepower at the crank, pulling hard all the way up to its de-tuned redline of 8,000 RPM. And while horsepower and RPMs are mainstays of going fast, it’s always better if you sound cool while doing it, so we opted for a Engler stack injection setup complete with a custom designed intake manifold sporting the Ridetech and Fox Factory logos!
Fox Body Mustangs are most commonly seen at drag strips, as they were plentiful vehicles and easy to go fast in. The platform was also campaigned with success in various road course sanctioned series including some SCCA Trans Am and IMSA series back in their heyday. Outside of trying to sell vehicles, one of the reasons they were used to such success is because they’re light! Our car weighed in at around 2800 pounds before we started tearing into it and you can rest assured, we’re keeping it light. We’re only adding pounds in areas that will end up being a force multiplier for performance. Lastly, and it should be obvious, this Fox Body project is going to be completely decked out with Ridetech suspension, some of which you may not have even seen, considering some of the components aren’t yet on the shelf. More to come on that soon!
So that is it! We hope you’re as excited to hear the news of our new development vehicle as we are to share it! It’s going to be primarily road course and autocross focused, and it’s going to have the commensurate power-to-weight ratio to hold its own no matter what event it’s participating in. While this announcement doesn’t go much into the specifics, subsequent updates certainly will! We’re sure you have plenty of questions (feel free to ask them in the comment section below), but it’s more fun to share additional details in stages. We hope you keep coming back as these articles are going to live here on the Ridetech News Blog. We’ll share teasers with links to additional articles via social media and hope you click over to see what’s happening next.
We’ll catch you on the next installment!
