The life of a movie star car is not glamorous. Not in the least. Sure, on the silver screen, the paint is miles deep, the engine roars like a Barbary lion, the powerslides are enough to make a Japanese drifting legend shed a tear of joy, and everything looks auction-perfect. That's the beauty of Hollywood, you can make anything look good. But the truth behind the movie magic is that most screen-used vehicles are bashed together quickly enough so that they will work, have just enough appearances that the camera can make them look right, and have anvil-simple mechanical bits so that when the inevitable breakdowns occur, the mechanics can spin a few wrenches and get the car back in the action. After the movie has released and the novelty wears off, many movie cars wind up as museum pieces, or are sent to movie car shops where they get re-hashed for their next use...if they are lucky.

In the case of the 1967 Mustang that the YouTube channel "B is for Build" has built, all is not what it seems. The story starts in 2014 with the movie "Need For Speed" an adaptation of the popular video game franchise. In each movie, there are multiple vehicles that are used so that there is no downtime. In the case of one particular "Bugatti Veyron", that scene involved getting punched in the side by a Dodge Charger police car during a pursuit. The good thing? No Bugattis were harmed making that scene...something about purposely crashing a supercar that still has a resale value seven figures deep gives movie producers night sweats. Instead, a tube-frame chassis with a Bugatti-approved fiberglass skin and an LS engine were used. After the stunt was performed, the movie was wrapped, and the DVDs were released, it was just another prop. Having served its purpose, the prop car was sold off and after changing hands a couple of times, wound up in the B is for Build shop.

Having arrived minus just about everything that made it look like a Bugatti (or, for that matter, a complete car), the group decided to take the chassis, complete with the LS3 and Porsche transaxle, and put it to use building a mid-engine 1967 Mustang. Initially meant to look like a standard 1967 Mustang and meant to replace a previous, infamous build the channel is known for, the Mustang project took a sharp turn when they found artist Karan Adivi's idea for a widebody 1970 Ford Mustang and got permission to bring the rendering into real life. Over the course of 2022, the team focused on getting the car buttoned up and the body built. They even brought the car out to LS Fest West 2022 and ran the car down The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Using replacement Mustang sheetmetal and untold hours of fabrication work (combined with the deadline that invariably comes with a SEMA build), the Mustang came together. If you look over the build, you can see plenty of Holley parts throughout, from the 12.3-inch digital dash to the MSD spark plug wires that fire off the LS engine. For something that was hastily slammed together just to get crashed for one scene in a movie a few years ago, the end result is stunning, with a feature under the lights in Holley's booth at SEMA 2022. How's that for a Hollywood ending?