While drifting was once an Asian car dominated sport, Formula Drift star Vaughn Gittin Jr. and multiple other drivers have been imbibing the sport with a very domestic flair—drifting Mustangs, Vipers, Corvettes and other US metal around the drift course. Vaughn has been successfully flinging Ford’s Mustang mere inches from retaining walls for several years now and is darn near a household name, whether you follow drifting or not. Vaughn’s foray into domestic drifting started with an S197 Mustang, flying Falken Tire livery, and made a huge leap last year to a purpose built ’10 Mustang with ultra-light chassis, supercharged Ford Racing power, and more to darn near dominate the sport. At last year’s SEMA show Vaughn unveiled his RTR series ’10 Mustang, a custom designed package that you can find at your local Ford dealer by the time you read this. Vaughn wanted to take his RTR brand styling full circle to a classic street/drift machine and has partnered with several sponsors to build a ’69 Mustang Fastback that he hopes to debut at this year’s SEMA show. Titled RTR-X, the ’69 is a dream of Vaughn’s and will be one of the drivable cars in an upcoming version of Electronic Arts’ Need for Speed video game franchise.
The RTR-X began life as a Dynacorn reproduction body shell and has been extensively modified by Steen Chassis with a Art Morrison subframe up front to give the Drift King an amazing 50-60 degrees of steering angle, not to mention a place to call home for the Ford Racing 5.0L “Coyote” Four-Valve from the ’11 Mustang, which will be backed by Ford Racing’s new Boss 302 R1six-speed transmission. Brakes will be Wilwood with Work wheels wrapped in Falken rubber (natch) at all four corners. The interior will feature a mix of classic race car and some modern touches like leather and alcantera. Diamond pleated upholstery and toggle switches get the classic retro nod while on the modern side of things a Motec SDL digital dash display and Ford GT supercar style seats will be found. The Team Need for Speed Mustang RTR-X is currently under construction as we write this at Steen and the project will also be getting some major assembly support from the crew at Twins Turbo. The project is being updated by Vaughn on the www.speedhunters.com site, which is one of his sponsors. You can find out more about the project there, as well as the RTR package for the ’10 Mustang at www.mustangrtr.com. To check out the latest Need for Speed games hit www.needforspeed.com.