Henrik Fisker flexes his muscles with the Rocket

It’s said that the first auto race took place shortly after the first two automobiles were built. It’s pretty certain that the modification and tuning business started shortly after that first race. And when you’ve got a car as immediately popular and successful as Ford’s Mustang was at its introduction, it’s no surprise that the first tuning efforts actually preceded the pony’s release to the public on April 17, 1964: Ford, with the help of Holman and Moody, had been developing performance modifications for the Fairlane V-8, and raced them (along with improvements to braking and cornering) on the 1963½ Falcon Sprint that competed in European endurance rallies, while the Mustang was still in its final stages of development.

So it’s a matter of long-standing tradition that the all-new Ford Mustang for 2015 spawned a high-performance, low-production variant before the first factory models hit the dealerships: the Fisker Rocket 725. Introduced at the Los Angeles Auto Show in November 2014, the Rocket hopes to follow in the black stripes laid down by such legends as Jerry Titus, Steve Saleen and Carroll Shelby.

The two men behind the Rocket certainly have the credentials for the job. Beau Boeckmann is COO of Galpin Motors, whose Galpin Auto Sports division is handling production of the Rocket. Galpin’s involvement in motorsports extends back to 1960, when their NASCAR team with drivers Ron Hornaday and Eddie Gray took two consecutive West Coast division championships. And after Ford ceased production of Mustang convertibles in the 1980s, Galpin picked up the gauntlet and showed Dearborn how it was done. The pedigree and the passion are clearly there.

The other half of the team responsible for the Rocket has an equally deep automotive pedigree: Henrik Fisker, designer of such iconic vehicles as the BMW Z8, the Aston Martin DB9 and V8 Vantage, and of course his own Fisker Karma, of which approximately 2000 were produced by the company that once bore his name. It was while the Danish-born Fisker was design director of Aston Martin (from 2001–2005) that he first met Boeckmann; at the time, Ford owned Aston Martin, and Galpin Motors not only owned the world’s largest Ford dealership, but also an Aston Martin dealership in Los Angeles. The two men soon discovered they had a similar passion for cars that were beautiful, exclusive and fast.

In addition to the two men involved in the Rocket, none of this would have come about if not for the third player on this team: the 2015 Ford Mustang. At 435 bhp, the 5-liter V-8 in the stock Mustang GT would easily be more power than the average person needs, strictly speaking. But we aren’t average people, and neither are Boeckmann and Fisker, so the first mod they made to the Rocket was to supercharge it. The 67-percent increase over stock power brings it up to 725 bhp, significant because it’s 18 bhp up on the Hellcat. (The line for the comparison test between the Hellcat and the Rocket starts here. …)

Given Fisker’s skill at the drawing board, it’s the looks of the Rocket that are going to attract attention from across the parking lot or paddock. And there, Fisker has it where it counts. “I love the 1960s American muscle cars,” Fisker says. “My favorite Mustang is the 1968 Shelby GT500 that had this long hood and huge air intakes; it gave me butterflies the first time I saw it. We wanted to recreate that feeling with this car.”

The grille of the Rocket certainly echoes the hexagonal intake of the 1968 Shelby; a thin chrome strip across the middle of the grille (sporting a galloping horse like the 1960s Mustangs) hearkens back to the Shelby’s bumper treatment, splitting the enlarged air intake on the Shelby big-block powered muscle car. The Rocket’s intake is even larger, no doubt for the additional cooling requirements of the supercharged engine—making 725 bhp generates a lot of heat. (We haven’t yet been granted a peek under the hood, but hopefully those air intakes direct cold air to the supercharger’s intake, the way they did on the “Ram-Air” Mustangs of the early 1970s.) And true devotees of the original pony will no doubt also see visual references to the “Ram Air” hoods of the 1972 and 1973 Mustangs in those on-hood air intakes. There’s a lot of heritage and history in this design—yet it’s also completely modern and fresh.

Other Fisker modifications to the stock Mustang sheet metal are extensive—in fact, practically the only parts of the car left in the original factory steel are the roof and floor pan. The rest is all carbon fiber, penned by Fisker and produced by GFMI Metalcrafters in Fountain Valley, California, that previously worked with another famous name from Mustang history: Steve Saleen. The Saleen S7 supercar is one of GFMI’s products, as are a number of concept cars from a wide range of automakers. The composite panels not only “add lightness” to the Mustang: Fisker’s attention to detail helped ensure that airflow over, under, around and through the Rocket keeps it planted, cool and composed. Those dual side scoops just behind the doors? They feed cool air to the Rocket’s 15-in. Brembo Grand Turismo brakes. And the carbon-fiber rear diffuser is meant to help extract air from under the car and contribute to stability at high speed—of which this car should certainly be capable.

Given Fisker’s skill at the drawing board, it’s the looks of the Rocket that are going to attract attention from across the parking lot or paddock.

Speaking of stability, the Rocket’s rolling stock is an upgrade from even the top-of-the-line Mustang’s gear: 21-in. ADV.1 wheels shod with Pirelli P-Zero extreme performance tires (up from 19-in. standard and optional 20-in. on the GT). This massive rubber, of course, gets mounted to the first fully independent suspension in Mustang history. The Rocket team describes the suspension as fully adjustable, and further suggests that owners can set up their car for “optimal street or track duty.” We were unable to confirm if this includes damping adjustments on the car (either electrically or by dialing in settings on the shocks manually), but it’s certainly promising for those who want to take the car to the track and really wring it out. We look forward to crawling around the Rocket’s suspension, and hope to have a functional and technical analysis (that is, both how it works and also what kind of geometry it includes) as soon as we can get our hands on one.

“Ford’s engineers and Moray Callum’s design team did an amazing job with the new Mustang,” says Fisker. “So good, in fact, I think the design additions and power upgrades we have made to the car help it play in a higher league, against much more expensive supercars.”

And that, in a nutshell, is what Shelby’s original modified Mustang was all about: beating the world with American muscle derived from a mass-produced family sedan, but put into a chassis that could handle the upgrade in power learned from years of hot-rodding and performance mods. Will the Rocket keep up the 50-year tradition of high-performance Mustangs? We can’t wait to find out.

I think the design additions and power upgrades we have made to the car help it play in a higher league, against much more expensive supercars.

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The Naming of ’Stangs

The Rocket 725 moniker, of course, reflects the horsepower of the supercharged Mustang. But Mustangs with numbers in their name go back 50 years. Mustang fans will no doubt recall the famous story of how Carroll Shelby came up with the name of his own modified Mustang, the GT-350. In order to produce the required 100 of these modified 1965 fastback Mustangs to qualify for Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) production category road racing, Shelby’s team had been concentrating on getting the cars built, not on nonessential things like names. According to legend, when the time came to name these cars, Shelby looked out the door of the office and asked legendary fabricator Phil Remington how far it was to the next building. Remington paced it off and came back with the answer: 350 ft. Presto: The GT-350 was born. At the end of the 1965 season, five of the six SCCA divisional championships went to the GT-350. Moral: The name really doesn’t have to mean anything if you’ve got what it takes.

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