The Mustang had just been rolled off the trailer, still warm, still dusty, still smelling like fuel and rubber. Ford Fest had wrapped up, the crowd had thinned out, and this black ’85 Fox Body finally had a quiet moment to itself. No rounds that weekend, no numbers on the board—just a car, a dad, and a son standing behind it, talking through what came next.

That’s kind of how this whole thing started.

Cole Knieriem didn’t grow up watching this car get built. He grew up watching it sit. Covered. Parked. Waiting in the corner of the garage for 15 years while life happened—school, family, work, junior dragsters. The Fox Body had already lived a full life before Cole ever strapped into it. “My dad used to race it when I was a baby,” Cole says. “All I really knew was that it was always there, sitting under a cover.”

Cole is the fourth-generation car guy; his great-grandfather started Harry’s Auto Parts & Machine, an auto parts and machine shop in Okolona, KY. It’s since evolved into Knieriem Racing Engines, run by Cole’s dad, Tim. In 1996, Tim bought the Mustang from a customer and drove it on the street for a while, then slowly turned it into a serious heads-up car. True Street racing. Nitrous. A hard life. A couple of wrecks. A couple of rebuilds. Then life got in the way, and it got parked.

“Between raising a family and money, it just made sense to step away from it for a while,” Tim says. “That ‘while’ turned into a lot of years.”

Fast-forward to Cole aging out of junior dragsters, already carrying a résumé most racers twice his age would envy. He’d won just about everything there was to win in juniors, including several local championships and the Jr. Dragster Race of Champions, featuring the best junior racers in the country, one winner, $10,000 on the line. He’d also been trusted to drive other people’s cars, even hopping into unfamiliar equipment and winning at NMCA events in a COPO Camaro.

But this time, it was different. This one was theirs.

Over roughly a year and a half, Tim and Cole dug the Fox out of the garage and rebuilt it piece by piece—not to chase heads-up glory again, but to build a bracket car they could load up, take anywhere, and win with. “We wanted something reliable,” Cole says. “A car we weren’t constantly thrashing on. Just something we could go race.”

Under the hood sits a naturally aspirated Windsor combo that reflects that thinking. It’s a 434-inch small-block built around an aftermarket Iron Eagle block, Callies rotating assembly, Brodix 15-degree heads, and a custom-ground solid roller cam spec’d in-house by his dad. No nitrous... for now.

“It used to be a nitrous car when I raced it,” Tim says. “But for what we’re doing now, keeping it naturally aspirated made sense.” Out back is a nine-inch with a fabricated housing, Strange internals, and suspension hardware that’s more straightforward than flashy. No four-link. No wild geometry. Just parts that work.

That theme carries inside the car, too. The original dash is still there. The interior is intact by race car standards. And front and center is where things really clicked for them: data.

The Fox runs a Racepak Sportsman data logger tied into an MSD Grid, with sensors monitoring everything from driveshaft speed to engine vitals. Cole says the data was the biggest reason they were able to make progress so quickly. Instead of guessing, the Racepak showed exactly what the car was doing on every pass. “Having the data made a huge difference. We weren’t just guessing at stuff anymore. You could actually look at what the car was doing and make changes based on that.” Early in the season, that meant finding shift points and launch RPM. Later, it turned into fine-tuning vacuum, consistency, and repeatability—the things that actually win bracket races. The results showed up quickly.

In its first full season, 2025, the Mustang ran consistent 5.60s to 5.70s in the eighth-mile at over 120 mph. More importantly, it went rounds. Cole won the NHRA Division III Race of Champions in Super Pro—the kind of win that puts your name on a list every bracket racer respects.

For Tim, the wins matter—but not the way you’d expect. “I’m proud of what he’s done on the track,” he says. “He’s won at every level he’s been in. But off the track, it’s the same thing. He’s just a good person.” Cole recently graduated with a degree in CAD drafting and is actively involved in his church, helping with youth ministry and volunteering wherever he’s needed. It’s part of his life, but not something he wears on his sleeve at the racetrack. “I just try to do everything with purpose,” Cole says. “Racing included.”

For Cole and Tim, standing behind the Fox Body at Ford Fest, that purpose feels clear. This isn’t a comeback story about an old car or a hype piece about a young driver. It’s a working relationship—between a father and son, between experience and opportunity—built around a car that refuses to stay parked.

The plan moving forward is simple: keep racing it. Keep learning. Maybe add nitrous down the road. Maybe chase a faster class. After all those years under a cover, this Mustang finally has somewhere to be. And judging by how quickly it’s found its rhythm again, it doesn’t plan on sitting still any time soon.