The SEMA Show always brings the craziest builds out of the word work, and Jacob Griffin’s latest project is one of them. You might be familiar with a few previous builds that have rolled out of Griffin Design in Valley Center, California. He has been building project cars for the SEMA Show for the past few years and has contributed to Battle of the Builders and Young Guns competitions.

This year, he’s building an SN95/1965 Mustang hybrid for Young Guns, and it is WILD. The build is to be completed in just five weeks, and being about three weeks into the build, we thought we should relay what he’s been up to.

The 1999 Mustang GT belongs to a customer who is the owner of a barber shop, leading the pair to decide on the project name “Straight Razor.” While the internals – the 2-valve 4.6L mod motor and T-45 manual transmission – will remain intact and untouched, the body is undergoing a complete transformation.

“Everything is functional, and is staying in the car,” Griffin told us. “This is a body build.”

When we inquired about a rendering to include in this story, Griffin let us know that one doesn’t actually exist.

“I’m just going with it,” he said.

The windshield will be modified to new age style. In other words, the paint will meet the glass, with no rubber or chrome in between for a modern appearance.

The plan for the car is relatively straightforward: complete the body’s transformation and paint it in house. However, Griffin says they still need to decide on a color for the Mustang.

In the end, the plan is to paint it a sky blue color with pearl. But for SEMA, it will be silver or black.

A set of 18-inch US Mags wheels wrapped in Nitto tires (295/45/18 in the rear) will complete the look. A 12-inch wide tire in the back is able to fit because of the intensive body modification.

It goes without saying that the 1999 Mustang and the 1965 coupe are different sizes. Therefore, a lot of magic has to happen to make this project work.

So far, they have removed the roof of the 1965 and graphed it to meet what’s left of the now cut up 1999 body. They then sectioned the quarter panels to stretch them nine inches, in order to achieve a wide body appearance, and cut and stretched them to make them wider to fit the larger tires. The front fenders were attached and sectioned to match the rear quarters. Basically, the entirety of the sides of the car had to be widened to fit properly.

The wheelbases of each Mustang vary as well, so they had to move the wheel openings of the 1965’s fenders back about seven inches. Wheel lips were added for stock 1965 appearance.

Of course, then the front end had to be stretched to fit as well. So as you can tell, this project is super labor intensive. Basically, every aspect of the car will require custom modification to make it work.

However, at the end of the day, Griffin will have created a 1965 Mustang clone with all the creature comforts and reliability of a late model street car.

Check out a gallery of Griffin’s progress below, and check back in a few weeks to see the finished product!