Do you know E.C.D.? Yeah, you know E.C.D. But wait a second—doesn’t the “D” stand for “Defender,” as in the Land Rover SUV? Well, not anymore. What was once East Coast Defender is now E.C.D. Automotive Design. Keep up, pal.
The pivot away from the “Defender” part of that branding is no accident. While E.C.D. is still very much in the business of building and restoring old Landies, it’s also branching out. This 1967 fastback, better known as “Ghost,” is the first customer car in a new line of Ford Mustang restomods the company is now bringing to production. While it appears to be a relatively lightly modified example from the outside, there’s a whole lot more going on here than meets the eye.
This particular car didn’t start life as a fastback; it left the factory as a notchback. I’d say E.C.D. performed a frame-off restoration and retrofit, but that’s not entirely accurate. The body did indeed come off the frame; it just never made its way back on. Only the factory bumper, core support, and body (usually, anyway) are retained in E.C.D.’s conversion.
The rest of the old ’67 underpinnings get thrown out in favor of a Roadster Shop RS Spec chassis, which is engineered to deliver modern road manners under the sheet metal of an original Mustang. There are other variants of this chassis available, but in this case, you get an independent front suspension with Fox fixed valve shocks, a 9-inch Ford rear end, 11-inch Baer brakes at all four corners, and a parallel four-bar rear setup with adjustable upper A-arm eccentric mounts. The rear frame is also narrower than the factory one, allowing you to tub out the body somewhat for wider tires.
And before you ask, yes, it has a V8. In fact, this is where we get to introduce another key player in this effort: Roush. The Michigan-based manufacturer offers an entire range of small-block Ford V8s for use in vintage builds, and E.C.D. lets its buyers treat it like a buffet line. The options range from a carbureted, dual-plane 347 making 410 horsepower and 400 lb-ft of torque, to a 588-cubic-inch, A460-based monster cranking out 700 hp.
The customer who spec’ed out the Ghost went with the 347 IR, a Dart Sportsman 8.2-inch 289/302 block punched out to 347 cubic inches and fueled by an “8-stack” EFI setup that looks absolutely badass and sounds even better. It doesn’t make any more power than a modern Coyote in this configuration—a modest 465 horsepower and 425 lb-ft—but nobody will mistake it for the modern dual-cam 5.0 when you turn the crank.
The inside is a similar blend of modern touches and vintage aesthetics. Ghost’s center-console-mounted infotainment system clashes mightily with the aluminum dash and old-school, keyed ignition switch, but bear in mind that you can spec these cars out virtually any way you like, from a comfortable daily driver to a time-attack vehicle, and just about everything in between. And while we’re on the subject, Ghost was built with an automatic transmission—another nod to convenience.
Slipping into Ghost’s leather-covered driver’s seat reminded me why I ignored the Mustang until the S550 shipped with a tilt-and-telescoping wheel. Old-school cars mean old-school ergonomics. To reach the gas in this fastback, I basically have to sit on top of the brake pedal. But one blip of the throttle wiped away any sense of superiority I felt for waiting until 2015 to buy my first pony car. Even if it was preparing me for a retirement job as a contortionist, Ghost’s charm far outweighed its frustrating anachronisms.
My seating position was not only awkward (my fault; I’m short) but low. That part’s not so bad. Sure, the hood creeps into your vision and you’ll spend each red light staring at the spare tire of whatever pickup truck is in front of you, but even my personal sedan, a CT4-V Blackwing, feels like it’s on stilts by comparison. If you miss the days when cars felt properly low, this will be right up your alley.
And then there’s the brakes. Unlike the hair-trigger setups you’ll find in modern sports cars, Ghost comes with an old-fashioned, unboosted setup. That’s not a limitation of the chassis—Roadster Shop will let you spec it however you like—but it’s certainly a choice, and one I noticed even more when I set off for home in the Caddy and nearly slammed my face into the steering wheel at the first stop sign.
Ghost wasn’t meant to be an all-out bruiser, and in this case, that’s for the best. Since it was a customer car in the final stages of quality control, I couldn’t have pushed it even if I’d wanted to, but my brief excursion featured some pretty gnarly southeast Michigan road surfaces. Doing its name justice, Ghost floated right through like they were barely even there, all the while offering commendable feedback through the wheel without any of the vagueness one typically associates with older, more-compliant suspension designs. It’s the perfect cruiser—just silly enough to giggle over without attracting all the wrong kinds of attention. And near Roush’s operations in Plymouth and Livonia, a hot Ford is a crowd-pleaser.
So, what’s the catch? Well, at the risk of underselling it, E.C.D.’s services are not cheap. This Defender is about $249,000. A glance at their turnkey selection shows that their finished projects range from pricey to eye-watering, and no, this pony car’s humble origins don’t earn it special treatment. The base Mustang package starts at $279,999; Ghost rings the till at $362,000—enough to scoop up the Rolls-Royce of the same name.
You could easily spend the base MSRP of a new 2.3-liter Mustang just on customizing a Roadster Shop chassis, and Roush doesn’t even list prices for its crate engines online; however, Dart’s bare block prices start at $2,700. Roush certainly isn’t paying sticker, but it doesn’t take much imagination to guess where that money’s going, and that’s all before you even get to any custom body, paint, and interior work—which, let’s be honest, you wouldn’t be buying one of these if you’re not.
What you really get for this price is exclusivity. The muscle car boom has come and gone, and parading around in a numbers-matching, one-of-one factory build only carries so much cachet these days. But a catered build process and a fully customizable product? That’s a winning formula, and one E.C.D. learned well while cleaning up dusty old British tractors—so well, in fact, that it has not only expanded to Mustangs, but also to Jaguar E-Types, Classic Toyota FJs, and, soon, Porsche 911s.
So if you’ve already got one of everything you want and still have mad money burning a hole in your pocket, E.C.D. will be more than happy to hook you up; just be sure to swing by your local car meet so we all get the chance to appreciate it.
A premium ride with a premium price tag, but man does that V8 sound good.
Got a tip? Email us at tips@thedrive.com
Byron is a contributing writer and auto reviewer with a keen eye for infrastructure, sales and regulatory stories.
