What were you doing when you were 23 years old?  Maybe installing a nitrous kit, swapping in a new engine or changing a set of cylinder heads?  How about seamlessly grafting ’68 Mustang body parts onto your brand new Mustang with craftsmanship mirroring famous car builders three times your age?  Well, that’s exactly with Nebraska farm boy John Heermann was doing this year.

Starting January 15th with 1,500 miles on the car, the cutting began.  “”I went to college at the University of Nebraska and was working at a local paint and body shop.  Growing up on a farm, I had to learn welding and other mechanics at a young age and then I was able to learn metal work very fast,” Heermann said.

The replacement ’68 Mustang metal would come from Dynacorn, including fenders, door skins, fastback quarter panels and decklid.  Also, there are some ’69 model year parts that include lower valance, rear valance, rear bumper.  The hood is the original 2011 aluminum hood that has been modified to fit.  The headlight buckets were made from hand along with the rear quarter panel extensions.

“The whole build took me nine months and 1,800-2,000 hours,” said Heermann. “While the beginning of the build was going somewhat slow, I heard in July that I could possibly have the car at the SEMA show, which is when I kicked it into high gear.  I lived in my shop (literally on a cot) for about three months and worked until I was physically exhausted every day.”

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The rear taillights are actually three 05-09 Mustang talights that were cut, melted, and formed in place. The sequence function of the factory taillights still work as well.

Naturally, being placed in the Dynatech/AFCO booth it did have a set of Dynatech headers on the car, along with a JLT intake and SCT tune. The paint is not actually paint but sealer and it turned out so well that they decided to leave it as is.  Needless to say, we were extremely impressed with the craftsmanship of this 2011 Mustang.