Inside The 1,000-Horsepower Carbon Fiber 1967 GT500 From Classic Recreations

Shaving weight off a vintage muscle car while quadrupling its factory horsepower output is a recipe for a wild street machine. Classic Recreations showed off that exact formula at the 2026 SEMA Show by parking its officially licensed GT500CR in the FuelTech booth.

Marking the builder’s first Las Vegas appearance under Velocity Restorations ownership, this carbon fiber 1967 GT500 tribute swaps heavy vintage sheetmetal for aerospace-grade composite panels coated in slick BASF Glasurit paint.

Heart surgery comes courtesy of Wegner Automotive, which assembled a Gen 4X Coyote V8 crowned with an inverted 3.0-liter Whipple supercharger and a custom front drive system.

Producing a full 1,000 horsepower, the blown four-cam mill sends power through a beefed-up Suncoast 10R80 10-speed automatic transmission and a Panhandle Driveline carbon driveshaft into a Ford 9-inch rear housing running a Gear FX 8.8 centersection.

Because raw power means nothing without traction, Director of Production Cody Dabney points out that a glove box-mounted FuelTech FT700 standalone electronic control unit (ECU) and a Vaporworx fuel controller manage both the engine calibration and integrated traction control.

That electronic brain lets the Carbon Fiber 1967 GT500 meter out torque smoothly instead of overpowering the Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires wrapped around Forgeline Carbon Grudge wheels.

Cornering and stopping hardware match the straight-line grunt. Detroit Speed supplied the Aluma-Frame front clip and Quadra-Link rear suspension, which work with Nitron Elec-Tron electronic ride-control shocks to keep the chassis flat through hard turns.

Brembo CCM-R carbon-ceramic discs measuring 380 mm at all four corners rely on six-piston front and four-piston rear calipers to haul the car down from triple-digit speeds.

Exhaust gases flow through DEI-wrapped stainless pipes, Spintech mufflers, and titanium tips, while a Wizard cooling package handles heat soak.

Slipping into the cockpit reveals Scheel-Mann seats, Dakota Digital instrumentation, an ididit column, Vintage Air conditioning, and a Mosconi-amplified Focal K2 stereo run by an Alpine head unit.

Building a 1,000-horsepower Carbon Fiber 1967 GT500 with standalone race electronics sets a high bar for limited-production Shelby restomods.