Stage 3's 2012 Mustang GT 5.0L Project Build

This 2012 Mustang GT was picked by Lou, one of our sales guys, as his 1989 Saleen Build Stagnates out in his driveway. Why pick up another car while your current "big project" goes to general waste? Because reasons. Regardless, we here at Stage 3 now have a fun new toy to mess around with that has a big V8 and not a whole lot else. We're not complaining, since we're going to be throwing a ton of performance parts and hardware at this car in pretty short order.

This 2012 Mustang GT base came relatively bare-bones, except for its upgraded Brembo brakes, which oddly enough, weren't accompanied by the rest of the Performance Package. The car has an Ingot Silver Paint job, manual 6-speed transmission, and not a whole lot else, which is why it's perfect for our nefarious purposes over here at Stage 3 Motorsports. We have some big plans in store for this car that includes more power and a total suspension overhaul to turn it into an absolute weapon.

More Horsepower and Torque with the Basics

While over 400 thunder horses at the crankshaft is all fine and dandy, nothing quite beats even more horsepower and torque. To squeeze a bit more performance out of our 2012 Mustang's 5.0L Coyote V8, we started where most new owners being: with a few basic bolt-ons and tuning. To that end, we grabbed a JLT cold air intake, BBK throttle body, and an SCT X4 tuner and got to work on our Pony. Your rear all the juicy details right here.

Driveline Improvements and Security

Swapping out the stock driveshaft provides the 2012 Mustangs with improved power, better acceleration, and a ton of room to grow when it comes to other performance modifications and potential racing applications. Since we have pretty big plans for this car, we went ahead and grabbed ourselves a lightweight one-piece aluminum driveshaft from Dynotech and a single front safety loop from our friends over at BMR. The combination gained us both performance and security for our car, and you really can't beat that. You read more details about them both by clicking here.

Suspension and Braking Upgrades

With our Mustang churning out more power than stock and with its driveshaft not going anywhere, we needed to turn our attention to its suspension and braking systems to help keep this bad 2012 Mustang GT under better control. Lowering springs helped improve cornering, a panhard rod helped keep the rear suspension geometry in check, a set of lower control arms kept the rear tires in check and putting power down to the pavement, and a full set of brake rotors and pads gave our car the extra stopping power it needed for some aggressive driving. You can read all of the details over here.

A Few Exterior Parts & Accessories

We done a good job of addressing the functional aspects of our 2012 Mustang GT build's overall performance, but have yet to do much about form, other than the coincidental things like wheels and lowering springs. So we went out and grabbed ourselves a few aftermarket exterior styling parts so we can add a more aggressive look while keeping the stock lines and overall shape of our Pony. All of the exterior parts we grabbed offered up subtle changes that lets everyone know that we have something different going on, while still keeping a pretty clean and mean look. You can read more over here.