After a long recovery from a major accident in 2013, Brett Winberg built the beautiful 1967 Ford Fairlane you see here. Brett was racing his 2004 Ford Mustang at a track in Wyoming when he got loose on the big end and barrel-rolled several times before finally coming to a rest upside down.

“It was an eighth-mile track in Wyoming — I was making a single pass trying to get the track record. I broke my neck and got a helicopter ride to the nearest hospital in Utah. I was laid up wearing a neck brace for a few months as I went through physical therapy,” he explained. “The wife was tired of me sitting around and told me to get my ass up and start building a new car.”

So that’s exactly what Brett did. He found this ’67 Fairlane in Houston, Texas in 2014 but realized it was not the best choice for a race car, so he hired Dean Averett of DA Race Cars in Riverton, Utah to help with the design and chassis. Dean also built the headers, and they included a passenger seat in the car — “just in case we use it to go get groceries, the wife needs a place to sit,” Brett says with a laugh.

After the chassis work was done, Brett took the car to Tidwell Customs for paint and body work, where they also made him a custom one-off steel extended-cowl hood, since one was not available for this car. Tidwell got the Fairlane’s body lined up nice and straight and shot it Sonic Blue from an ’04 Mustang paint code. Once the chassis and bodywork was finished, it was left up to Brett, his son Travis Gaylord, and his good friend Nick Dameron to install the powerplant from the wrecked Mustang into the new Fairlane, which was “a true team effort,” Brett shared.

To keep some people guessing, Brett says the car made over 1,500 horsepower on the chassis dyno before the straps let loose. “The engine is all-Ford, top to bottom. It’s a 638-inch big-block Ford with C-Ford cylinder heads done by Charlie Evans, and an F3 ProCharger. We use a BigStuff3 and a Racepak.”

The Fairlane uses a Monster Glide transmission from Mike’s Transmission, and a Moser rear-end housing with gun drilled 40-spline Mark Williams floaters that put the power down to the ground through a set 34x17x16 Hoosiers.

“My kid Travis is an awesome driver — he can drive anything, so we decided to build this Fairlane so the both of us can have some fun driving it in Top Sportsman and in some grudge races.” Brett said. “We’ve done some eighth-mile shakedown passes to test the suspension and fuel system, but the track got too cold to do a complete quarter-mile pass.”

Brett says the plan for 2018 is to run a local Top Sportsman class, as well as the Top Gun shootout in Boise, Idaho, along with other events in the Western states. Brett extends a special thanks to his wife, Carrie, Dean Avert, Travis Gaylord, Nick Dameron, Heath Besner, Willis Billbrey, and Mike Tidwell for their support in making his project a reality.