ECD Automotive Unleashes ''67 Ghost' Mustang - A Redefined, Bespoke Classic
ECD Automotive Designs, the company known for its reimagined Land Rovers and Jaguars, has branched out into the muscle car realm with the "'67 Ghost." This 1967 Ford Mustang Fastback is a restomod take on Ford's classic icon, with some touches that may impress or mortify, depending on how you like your classic cars.
Not only is this the first Mustang that ECD has built entirely in-house, but it also marks the beginning of their custom Mustang lineup, offering bespoke builds across the 1965 to 1970 model years. With a claimed focus on "period authentic engines and modern luxury craftsmanship," ECD decided to stick to gas and worked exclusively with Roush Performance on a refined small-block Ford V8 for the '67 Ghost. The ROUSH 347 IR V8 makes 465 hp through a set of deep, throaty exhaust pipes.
"We're not following the crowd," said Elliot Humble, CTO of ECD. "Everyone else is swapping in modern powertrains. We're doing something far more special - taking original Small Block Fords and making them better with Roush. Paired with the RS Spec chassis, these cars are fast, comfortable, and totally reimagined for how people want to drive today."
The interior is where this restomod may start to fall apart for some, including yours truly. While the brushed aluminum dashboard and gauges fit the look of a classic Mustang, the black leather heated Recaro front seats with tan diamond-stitched inserts do not. The same goes for the black center console and the unfortunate inclusion of an Alpine touchscreen with Apple CarPlay and JBL audio. Even the rearview mirror has been swapped to a live-feed digital rearview mirror, which, despite bringing a modern touch to the cabin, takes away from the overall feel of a classic Mustang.
The Mustang rides on a Roadster Shop RS Spec chassis, with a body finished in High Gloss Mineral White with Santorini Black Metallic rally stripes. The rest of the body remains true to the 1967 Mustang's image, with the glaring exception of those 17" Rambler chrome wheels. In my mind, a muscle car needs big rubber to get the V8's power under control at all times, and the skinny Nitto tires on the big chrome wheels just don't fit that look. At least there are 11" drilled & slotted rotors behind them with four piston red calipers.
ECD claims it has multiple Mustang builds already underway, with some inspired by Shelbys and Boss-era styling. According to the company's website, a Mustang build starts at $279,995, which...isn't cheap, to put it mildly. Whether or not a six-figure price tag is worth it for a modernized 465 hp V8 Mustang is entirely up to the prospective owner, but at least ECD didn't make it electric. That's one thing we can all be happy about.
Copyright 2025 The Arena Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Toyota makes a tariff move customers are going to hate
Toyota makes a tariff move customers are going to hate originally appeared on TheStreet. While President Donald Trump's social media posts make it seem as though his tariff moves are executed at his whim, it is clear that at least some industries have a seat at the negotiating table. The auto industry's top executives have said they are in close contact with the White House and have even praised the president and his White House team for hearing their concerns. However, it is also clear that Trump's interest in protecting the auto industry's bottom line is Stellantis, and General Motors — America's Big 3 automakers — have all said that Trump's tariffs will cost them billions, and they've pulled their guidance due to a lack of visibility. Trump has made it clear to every industry that he doesn't want prices to increase, even going as far as telling companies like Walmart to just 'EAT THE TARIFFS.' So, every time the auto industry has been observed raising prices in recent months, it has denied that it has anything to do with tariffs. Others, like Mazda, have indeed eaten the tariffs, with the Japanese automaker sending a letter to its U.S. dealers informing them that it would not raise its sticker prices or tack on import fees for any vehicles already on dealership lots or that will come into the country before May 1. Toyota is the latest Japanese automaker to make a pricing move, but it isn't blaming the move on tariffs. Toyota sold over 2.3 million vehicles in the U.S. last year, a 3.7% year-over-year increase. Between April 2024 and March 2025, the company built 1.96 million units in the U.S., according to Statista. So, despite a U.S. production capacity that can handle nearly 2 million vehicles a year, Toyota still ships in nearly half a million vehicles from overseas to sell in the U.S. On June 21, Toyota said that prices for several Toyota and Lexus brand vehicles will rise by an average of $270 and $208, respectively, starting in July, according to an email seen by Bloomberg. While the price increase could be seen as a response to the 25% duties Trump has placed on auto imports, Toyota insists that the move is just part of its regular price review April, fellow Japanese automaker Mitsubishi said it would hold its vehicles in port for the foreseeable future instead of offloading them and being forced to pay duties. "We have sufficient stock on the ground at dealers for the moment to not impact customer choice," the company said at the time. While it was unclear how much cargo was in the ports, Mitsubishi's 330 U.S. dealers sold 109,843 vehicles in the U.S. in 2024, a 25.8% year-over-year increase and the brand's best performance since 2019. Earlier this month, the company announced that it is raising prices on three models, also saying that the move was just a regular adjustment and not a reaction to tariffs. Japanese car companies aren't the only ones afraid to pin their price increases on tariffs. In May, Ford sent a notice to dealers saying it planned to raise prices on the Mustang Mach-E electric SUV, Maverick pickup truck, and Bronco Sport SUV by as much as $2,000 on some models. Those vehicles are made in Mexico. More Automotive news Toyota makes surprising move to beat Tesla in key market A Ford spokesperson confirmed that the price increases will be seen on vehicles built after May 2. Those vehicles will start arriving on dealer lots in late June. The company emphasized that its employee pricing promotion remains for all of its vehicles through the July 4 weekend. Just like Mazda and Toyota before it, the company says the increase was due to its usual midyear pricing actions, but it was also "combined with some tariffs we are facing. We have not passed on the full cost of tariffs to our customers."Toyota makes a tariff move customers are going to hate first appeared on TheStreet on Jun 22, 2025 This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Jun 22, 2025, where it first appeared. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Scientific American
2 hours ago
- Scientific American
Can Tesla's Cybercab Share the Road with America's Myth of the Highway?
In the American psyche, the automobile—that great democratizer of distance—has always been about more than transportation. It's freedom incarnate: the ability to leave and become someone new three states over. It's James Dean smoking a cigarette, leaning against a fender—masculinity codified in chrome and horsepower, sexuality expressed through gear ratios and exhaust notes. It's Thelma and Louise escaping not just their dreary lives but all that's wrong with their culture. We've had the Corvette, the Mustang, the Charger, the Eldorado, the Camaro, the Thunderbird—and soon we will have the Cybercab. Elon Musk revealed the Cybercab prototype last October, with production targeted for 2026, and today a convoy of 10 to 20 Model Y robotaxis has begun paving the way for its launch, testing the safety of Tesla's autonomous driving tech on a geofenced loop in Austin, Texas. But the Cybercab stands out in the emerging genealogy of robotaxis. Whereas the motto of Amazon subsidiary Zoox's robotaxi—which resembles a cross between an art deco toaster and a subway carriage—is 'It's not a car,' the Cybercab, for all its streamlined science-fiction minimalism, remains squarely in car territory: a sleek two-seater with butterfly doors—the unmistakable hallmarks of a glamorous ride. Yet there's no wheel to grip, no gas pedal to stomp to the floor. The shape of the car says you can still escape your life, but now AI does the driving. The promise might seem seductive: all the mobility; none of the responsibility. More than a century after the first Model T shipped for $825 in 1908 (nearly $29,000 today), we've forgotten how quickly and profoundly car ownership changed American culture. In 1900 fewer than 1 percent of American households owned cars. By 1913 Henry Ford's moving-belt assembly line cut build time to 93 minutes, and cheap Texas oil kept the tank full, turning personal mobility from luxury to the default setting. A 1927 survey found that 55.7 percent of American families owned at least one car. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. Not until 1926, however, did the American myth of the highway truly boot up, when Route 66—John Steinbeck named it the 'Mother Road' in The Grapes of Wrath —linked Chicago and Santa Monica, Calif. In the book Hip to the Trip, historian Peter Dedek called the route 'a pillar of mid-twentieth-century automobile culture,' a corridor where vacationers, beatniks, cowboys and Okies fleeing the dust bowl contributed to myths of freedom and transformation. Photographer Robert Frank revealed in his 1958 book The Americans how windshield glass turned travelers into both spectator and exhibit. The cars that Frank famously depicted were as much social containers as machines. Robin Reisenfeld, who curated the Toledo Museum of Art's exhibition Life Is a Highway: Art and American Car Culture, argued in an interview with Antiques and the Arts Weekly that 'the automobile has defined our society' and been used as 'a means of self-expression and status and identity.' After World War II, the G.I. Bill financed suburban mortgages, so millions fled dense cities. And in 1956 the Federal-Aid Highway Act funded 41,000 miles of interstate—an asphalt backbone justified as civil defense infrastructure but experienced as a coast-to-coast permission slip for self-reinvention. The tail fins and chrome of the late 1950s signaled cold war optimism, while Jack Kerouac's 1957 novel On the Road and Chuck Berry's 1958 song 'Johnny B. Goode' hard-coded the romance of endless motion into the culture's firmware. Yet the myth of the open road has always been about who's in the driver's seat. The driver is king: one hand on the wheel, eyes on the horizon, free to turn down that dusty side road on a whim. Control over one's vehicle equated to control over one's destiny. Cars changed the sound of our music, with rock guitars emulating the roaring of engines, and they changed how we courted, providing not just a means of transportation but also a destination, allowing couples to get away from 'porch swings, parlor sofas, hovering mothers, and pesky siblings,' as historian David L. Lewis explained in his Michigan Quarterly Review article 'Sex and the Automobile: From Rumble Seats to Rockin' Vans.' A number of films, such as Drive-In (1976), Grease (1978) and American Drive-In (1985), depicted cars as popular places for trysts. The highway lore, however, was never without critics, and the choice of the word 'king' (followed by 'of the road,' for example) was not accidental. Men were predominantly at the wheel, and even as highways offered freedom, they carved concrete canyons through neighborhoods, separating communities. Public transportation didn't keep pace to help those without cars cross ever larger distances between home and work or to accommodate those with disabilities or older people. Studies have since revealed the scope of corporate efforts to dismantle public transit systems and thus encourage car ownership. In 1998 architecture critic Jane Holtz Kay wrote in the book Asphalt Nation that 'mobility has vanished completely for the third of the nation that cannot legally drive—those 80 million Americans who do not operate automobiles because they are too old, too young, or too poor.' A 2012 Brookings report found that in the 100 largest U.S. metro areas, the typical job could be reached by transit within 90 minutes by only 27 percent of workers. In many ways, debates around robotaxis have flipped the narrative. Critics say they reduce personal agency while writing us into an information network against our will (though simply carrying a smartphone does this well enough), whereas defenders argue that autonomous vehicles could offer freedom to the very groups who benefitted least under the car kings of yore. Those with disabilities and older people might find work and community more easily, or they might simply experience more: stare out at that far highway horizon and go wherever. A 2017 report estimated that autonomous vehicles could allow two million individuals with disabilities to enter the workforce, and it highlighted a potential annual savings of $19 billion in health care expenditures as a result of fewer missed medical appointments. Robotaxis could even offer freedom from the grueling commute, the exhausting hours spent jockeying in traffic, and allow naps or Netflix bingeing, time to answer e-mails or—for a couple or a parent and child—time to talk and connect. A 2023 study in Frontiers in Future Transportation and another from 2020 in Sensors recorded lower stress levels in autonomous vehicle passengers. One might argue that ride-sharing already provides similar freedoms to those offered by robotaxis, but drivers for hire can be tired, cranky or in a rush, and there's a social dynamic and a rating system, which can limit other freedoms—even one as simple as the desire to be quiet with one's thoughts. The Cybercab may look like a miniature sportscar dipped in sci-fi, but the engine's roar has been replaced with silence, and the inside is spacious. There will no doubt be glitches and accidents heaped with media coverage. Yet the car will likely obey speed limits, never get drowsy or drunk and never rubberneck or give in to road rage. With robotaxis, more teenagers may arrive home safely and more grandparents may set out on the adventure of a lifetime. As for design, there will always be disagreement; the very concept of aesthetics invites debate, and our sensitivity to fashions are often deeply entwined with the politics of change and the people in power. The greatest challenge facing autonomous vehicles, however, will likely be public opinion. A recent poll of 8,000 Americans conducted by the market research initiative Electric Vehicle Intelligence Report found that 71 percent of the respondents were unwilling to ride in robotaxis and that 43 percent thought they should be illegal. Yet recent research shows different numbers after people have ridden in autonomous vehicles. A 2021 report on a pilot of an autonomous shuttle service in Utah found that 95 percent of surveyed riders had more positive views toward the technology and that 98 percent said they felt safe. And as adoption rises, prices are anticipated to fall. Whereas Goldman Sachs Research estimated that the driving costs of robotaxis were $3.13 per mile in 2024, it expected that number to drop below $1 by 2030 and to reach 58 cents by 2040. A 2022 McKinsey & Company analysis expected a more than 50 percent drop in robotaxis' costs per mile between 2025 and 2030. Though robotaxis are currently more expensive than traditional ride-hailing services in the U.S., last year a Chinese state media outlet reported that a robotaxi available in Wuhan, China, could be up to 87 percent cheaper than a standard hailed ride. As for the myth of the highway, if you're craving the freedom to outrun a thunderstorm or race through an amber light, take an impromptu detour down a country lane or make an unplanned stop at a 'last chance' diner, conventional cars will remain part of American culture as a hobby, just as people still ride horses for pleasure. But we may see new narratives arise. The road trip movie of the future may feature two friends in a Cybercab arguing over which streaming service to watch until they realize the true meaning of their journey. And maybe the next Kerouac will write a novel on their laptop as an autonomous car carries them across the continent. With its wide windshield, the Cybercab appears suited to the highway, and it may end up being as much a means of transportation as a destination. In brief, the car itself may become the drive-in theater.
Miami Herald
6 hours ago
- Miami Herald
What If Ford Revived The Flex As A Maverick-Based Compact 7-Seater?
Years ago, Ford offered the Flex–a unique, box-shaped seven-seater that was either a station wagon, an SUV, or a minivan, depending on who you asked. Sharing its platform with the Ford Taurus, the Flex offered buyers an affordable option for a seven-seater family car that wasn't a massive, gas-guzzling, body-on-frame off-roader. Despite occupying a niche segment, the Ford Flex proved to be relatively popular, selling over 300,000 units during its 11-year production run. Even with consistent year-over-year sales figures, Ford decided to discontinue the full-size crossover after its 2019 model year with no direct replacement. These days, it's incredibly difficult to find a seven-seater vehicle capable of hauling a large family, along with their luggage and some trinkets, that isn't either an expensive, less-than-attractive minivan or a gargantuan SUV. One example that does spring to mind is the Mercedes-Benz GLB-Class, which offers the seating capacity and aesthetics of the much larger GLS-Class, without the massive proportions and eye-watering price tag. If Ford were to revive the Flex, perhaps taking on a similar approach to the GLB-Class could be a fitting, modern take on the original Flex. By downsizing the model and optimizing the Ford Maverick compact pickup truck platform to accommodate a third row of seating, Ford could offer North American buyers a budget-friendly alternative to the more luxurious and more pricey Mercedes-Benz GLB-Class. Perhaps a performance variant akin to the Mercedes-AMG GLB 35, based on the Ford Maverick Lobo street truck, could make an appearance in the Ford Flex model lineup as well. Considering the Ford Maverick is roughly 2 feet longer than the Bronco Sport it shares its platform with, the Maverick offers an excellent foundation for a compact seven-seater SUV. The third row of seats could sit where the pickup truck bed would otherwise be found, with the ability to stow them away for bountiful cargo space. Keeping things frugal, the revived Ford Flex could share the same powertrain options as the Maverick pickup, including a 191-horsepower 2.5-liter hybrid four-cylinder engine. For buyers who want a bit more pep in their step and the added confidence of all-wheel drive, the 2.0-liter EcoBoost four-cylinder that produces 250 horsepower and 277 lb-ft of torque could make for an excellent optional upgrade. Trim levels could mirror those of the Maverick as well, including a sub-$30,000 base model XL trim, the mid-level XLT trim, and the well-equipped Lariat. For those who desire a bit more uniqueness, the Lobo package could offer a standard EcoBoost engine, sport-tuned suspension, tweaked steering and brakes, and cosmetic enhancements such as rally-inspired 19-inch alloy wheels and a unique grille, just like the Ford Maverick Lobo. A premium, off-road-focused Tremor package could pair the same standard 2.0-liter EcoBoost engine with an off-road-tuned suspension, a locking rear differential pulled from the Bronco Sport Badlands, and chunkier all-terrain tires. Compact yet spacious 7-seaters have come and gone from the North American market. Examples such as the Mazda5, the seven-seater variant of the Volkswagen Tiguan, and the Mercedes-Benz GLB-Class have offered plenty of families all the seating they need in a vehicle without the unnecessary cost and burden of a much larger SUV. For some reason, however, many of these vehicles seem to have disappeared from the North American market altogether. Now, the resurgence of compact pickup trucks that blend basic utility with compact convenience may offer manufacturers the opportunity to create family-focused variants that leverage their longer wheelbases compared to their crossover SUV alternatives. Based on the foundations of the Maverick pickup truck, a revived Ford Flex could serve as Ford's entry-level seven-seater family crossover. With frugal hybrid powertrains, street performance variants, and an off-road-focused Tremor package, an updated Ford Flex would surely earn its keep within Ford's model lineup in no time. Although this idea is purely hypothetical for now, it wouldn't surprise us if Ford decided to create new models using the same platform shared between the Maverick, the Bronco Sport, and the Escape, that are purpose-built to attract more specific buyers, such as families looking for affordable seven-seater utility, or perhaps even a small delivery van. For the time being, though, families looking for a smaller way to get their hands on three rows of seating will have to look towards the capable and practical Mercedes-Benz GLB-Class. Copyright 2025 The Arena Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
