WILY COYOTE

A BEAUTIFULLY RESTORED XT UTE WITH THE GRUNTY HEART OF A MODERN MUSTANG – THAT'S BRUCE STEPHENS'S IDEA OF A PERFECT WEEKEND CRUISER

- KIAN HEAGNEY

IT'S EASY in this ultra-high-tech age of car modification to get lost in a world of four-figure grunt, single-digit timeslips and billet everything. Bruce Stephens wasn't interested in any of that malarkey when creating his dream classic Falcon cruiser. He simply took an XT ute shell, pilfered a 5.0-litre Coyote from a Mustang and enlisted Robi Fekete of Fekete Fabrications in Central Victoria to put the two together.

“I inherited a different XT ute shell, but it was pretty rusty, so I then got word of a rust-free shell locally, which I didn’t really believe,” Bruce says. “But we went and checked it out, and it was solid, so I took that to Robi and the build started from there.”

Robi Fekete was a wise choice on Bruce's part; not only does he go above and beyond to build cars to an unbelievably high standard, but he does so while ticking every box necessary to make them 100 per cent legal and engineered in the state of Victoria.