ILikeBond

Category: Exterior - Body Parts
Price: $200
Private or Vendor Listing: Private Listing
Part fits: S197
Location (State/Prov): CA
Item Condition: Used

I have since sold my 2005 Mustang GT, but a decade go, I had this idea to do a 1967 350 GT tribute, and wrote a blog about it. One part I found was this hood, which I am now selling. I’m pasting below material from the blog because it has the best info about it. I need to get rid of this fast, as I am moving and don’t have room or a need for it. For anyone interested, I think this is a great deal. I have some other NOS parts for S197 that mimic 350 GT features, like quarter window louvres, a grille, and more.


The actual hood I am selling.






The Proglass Mystery 7 Hood

The hood you are looking at above is 1 of only 2 that were ever made. There is a reason for this.

For a short while, there was a company making aftermarket mustang parts called Fang Performance. One thing they made was a hood they called the "Mystery 7," which was based on the style of the 1967 Shelby GT hoods.

As the Fang Performance guys began to design this hood, there was a division among some of the decision-makers and craftsmen. One guy wanted to make the hood with "notches" that were typical of the 1967 Shelby hoods. Some of the other guys thought that, even though this would more closely mimic the style of the 1967s, it simply didn't go well with the lines of the 2005+ Mustang (btw, this body style is called the "S197," so now you'll know that if I ever say that - easier to say than 2005+, or 2005-2009 Mustangs or whatever). Well, the pro-notch guy was the one in charge, and his opinion eventually prevailed, and Fang started making these hoods with the notches. They didn't sell very well, and Fang eventually went out of business, selling a lot of the mouldings for their parts to a new company called Aeroform.

As you can see, the notch-lines really break up the flow of the car, and are distracting. It looks far better on the S197 with just the straight hood lines, like every other hood that goes on these cars. (BTW, if you're interested, here's a a guy who put the Fang Mystery 7 on his car made.)

Well, one of Fang's fiberglass workers, who's very well known for his fiberglass skills, a guy in Indianapolis named Terry DeLong, left Fang and struck out on his own (either forming, or working for an outfit called Proglass, I'm not exactly sure). I guess he felt passionate about the notchless hood, because he created a moulding for one, and ultimately fabricated two hoods, giving them (from what I understand, at a very fair/low price) to two guys he knew, Chris (the sonic blue mustang above), and another guy, Tom. Soon after that, Terry began doing other things with his life, took up other interests, and stopped working with fiberglass. So long story short, only 2 of these notchless hoods were ever made.

When I came across Chris' posting, I thought, "I have to have that hood!" But given Chris' story and the fact that only 2 were ever made, I pretty much knew I was out of luck. Nevertheless, I wanted to do more research, so I googled "Proglass Mystery 7 hood," and found some other postings Chris had made on other websites. In one, I saw that he mentioned the 2nd hood was for sale (!!). However, I was looking at the end of November, 2008, and Chris' post had been from the previous August, so what were the chances it was still available?

Well, I send Chris a personal message over that mustang forum, and he told me he wasn't sure what the current status was, but suggested I contact Terry. He had posted some contact info for Terry, but I had tried it and found the numbers disconnected, and he had since left Proglass. After a little while of some deep searching, I found an email address for a Terry DeLong outside of Indianapolis that tracked to a machine shop. Hoping this was him, I shot him an email, and soon heard back from him, saying that the hood was, indeed, still for sale, and that a buddy of his, Tom, currently had the hood.

After our brief email exchange, I called Terry and talked to him on the phone. He told me that Tom had had to sell his Mustang, and had returned it to stock, and had a bunch of left-over pieces, including the hood. Tom had tried to sell the hood on ebay, but was unsuccessful. Terry told me Tom was actually considering just throwing or giving it away, but that Terry had admonished him just to hold onto it for a while and see what happened. Wow, good advice, Terry! He must be prescient.

Here are a couple pictures of the actual hood I've purchased. These pictures were taken by Chris, with the hood on Tom's Torch Red convertible (btw, I don't think this looks as good on the convertible as it does on the coupe for some reason).

The second picture, btw, shows the functional "ram air" - it may be a little hard to make out, but there is actually a tunnel from the open "nostrils" of the scoop over to that cut-out square on the right, which, when the hood is closed, goes right over the air intake.

So Terry said he would contact Tom, ask what he wanted for the hood, and help out shipping it. He did that, came back to me shortly with a very fair price (several hundred dollars below typical aftermarket hoods), and I accepted. Shortly after that, I spoke with Tom on the phone, got information on how to paypal him, and did so. I'm currently waiting for the hood to be shipped.

Why I Like the Mystery 7

What I like about the Mystery 7 hood is that it has an aggressive look, but is still pretty subtle. The scoop is much lower profile than almost every other scoop out there. And, the hood extends 3 inches beyond the factory hood, kind of giving a "bite" to the front end, which you can see in the profile pictures of Chris' car below:

Because the hood extends, there are some additional pieces that go with the hood to make the exension look right, which you may have noticed, for instance over the headlight in the above picture (I call this the "eyebrow"). Here are some close-up pictures of those extensions.

From what I heard from Chris, and from Terry himself, the fit and finish on this hood is impeccable, A+. This is important because aftermarket fiberglass hoods often need a lot of work to get them fit appropriately on a car. Without that work, they can be warped, leave large gaps, etc. Not good. So the fact that this hood was hand-made by a fiberglass craftsman who really knows his stuff, and has already been successfully installed on a Mustang, is all good news for me.

This has been particularly key because there have been a few guys who have installed the notched Fang version on their cars and found the work to be very substandard.

Combine all these things with the fact this this hood is truly one-of-a-kind (ok, two of a kind!), and I'm really excited about it. I think its going to be a really special thing to have for my Mustang, and will help set it apart and make it unique again.

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dllord

do you still have this?