The King Of Car TV Finally Builds His First Car.
Like most of you reading this, Bud Brutsman was a 15-year-old kid who wanted nothing more than a hot rod of his own to cruise for girls. He would devour HOT ROD and all the other car magazines he could get his hands on. Then, on Christmas morning in 1985, thinking that he'd already opened all his presents, his dad called him over to the window and pointed in the direction of their barn. Bud instantly recognized the taillights of a '69 Mustang and lit out the door, sprinting through the Wyoming snow in his pajamas and bare feet. As he got closer, the realization that it was a Mach 1 made him nearly hyperventilate with excitement. But when he got around to the passenger side, he noticed it wasn't as cherry as he'd hoped. "It looked like it had been hit by a train."
Instantly deflated, he moped back to the house wondering why his dad had played such a cruel trick on him. What he didn't realize was that his dad bought the car as a father-son project with the hope they'd rebuild it together into a presentable street machine over the following spring and summer. "I was such an ungrateful 15-year-old," Bud says. "I didn't know what a father-son project was all about, what it meant. I just wanted to go run around. I'm bummed about it now, but I didn't want anything to do with it." The Mach 1 still sits beside the Brutsman family barn, having not moved since December 25, 1985.
Fast forward to 2004. Bud is enormously successful as the creative force behind Overhaulin', the show that makes people's dreams come true by tricking them into thinking their prized car has been stolen, only to reveal to them a finished Chip Foose custom "overhaul" of the car a week later. HOT ROD had done a big story on Bud that proclaimed him the King of Car TV; he was making bank, and he was on a big roll-until Christopher Titus called him a hypocrite.
"It was on the '04 Power Tour(tm)," Bud says. "I'm standing there with Kevin King [of Year One] and a bunch of people, and Titus walks up and calls me a hypocrite. I asked why, and he said 'You're in HOT ROD and everybody thinks you're a car guy, but you don't even own a hot rod.' I thought about it, and you know what? He was right."
On the spot, King said he could build a car for him at Year One's shop and Bud bit. After a few months of trying on different body styles, Bud realized he needed to build a '69 Mustang fastback just like his "first" car. King found the car and Year One's Phil Brewer came up with a rendering that showed the Mustang with black paint, black trim, black wheels, black interior-black everything. The name given to the concept was Blackened, an homage to the only color you'll ever see Bud wear. He instantly fell in love with the concept and gave them the go-ahead to build it.
Over the course of the next year, Bud learned what it was like to have a car done for him, as opposed to doing it for someone else for the sake of a TV show. He and the Year One guys e-mailed back and forth to decide on different parts and pieces to use, and they hashed out what to do in different areas of the car. Bud had some custom stuff he wanted done. "I never liked the way the front driving lights looked," he says, "so we changed them. And the bottom of the rocker panels always bugged me so we cleaned those up too."
It's Bud's car so you know it had to have some sort of Chip Foose influence. "Chip and I were both at Year One for an event, and we were looking at the car trying to decide what to do with the sidescoops. Before I knew it, Chip was doing his thing with some tape and cardboard and he redesigned them. He also redid the front spoiler to make it look better, so it's nice to be able to say that I've got some Foose work on the car."
Of course, the real credit for Blackened goes to Brewer, who spearheaded the project and made it happen with a crew of five guys. They created custom touches for the car, which included building those sidescoops, the custom front valance with functional brake cooling and intercooler ducts, the hoodscoop, the rear valance, the rocker-panel extensions, the LED taillights, and the front and rear bumpers. Since Year One's main business is to sell parts, the company wisely decided to use the car to develop the hoodscoop, front spoiler, dash insert, front valance and taillights. You can buy the same parts from the Year One catalog.
Brewer also got the job of making the '03 Cobra motor fit, which required the removal of the stock shock towers. That was made easier with a Martz tubular front subframe with tubular control arms and Mustang II-type spindles. Unique Performance subframe connectors tie front to back, and Unique's coilover rear suspension was used as well. Steering is via a Flaming River rack-and-pinion and column. The wheels came from Foose Designs, and they're Foose-sized-20s in back and 19s in front. Stainless Steel brakes were used, and the sizes are backward, with the rears an inch larger to better fill the openings of the taller rear wheels.
Cobra Misano seats were recovered in black leather by Jeff Henderson, and the interior has all the toys, from a Vintage Air system to a full-tilt stereo and video system. | 
Unique Performance's trick coilover rear suspension is available for all early Mustangs. The tailpipes were really tricky to fit with this setup. | 
Foose provided the wheels. These are the 20s in back, showing the 14-inch SSBC brakes and e-brake caliper. |