Dennis Hilton has led a life of mechanical discovery, and that’s what helped him build an impressive 1965 Mustang. His mechanical curiosity began in the mid-1960s when his older brother John came home with an MGA. Together, they proceeded to tune the car.
“We were always fixing things, and we had a lot of fun hot rodding that MGA,” Hilton says. “It was such a light car, and handled so well.”
Born in Vernon, B.C., Hilton moved with his family to Kitimat and then to North Vancouver. He’s lived there ever since, and it’s where he raised his own family.
As a young man, when Hilton got involved fixing a friend’s motorcycle in 1969, he found himself at Honda Centre on Robson Street in Vancouver buying parts.
“There was a sea of motorcycles there, and I said ‘Wow, you’ve got a lot of repair work here.’” Hilton recalls. “He asked if I was a mechanic and I soon found myself with a job. I had a steep learning curve, but I was curious and persistent.”
After being a motorcycle mechanic, Hilton trained to become an industrial arts teacher, then bought and ran a full-service gas station from 1978 to 1983. It was while operating the station that Hilton purchased a customer’s ’65 Mustang.
“It needed a lot of mechanical work, but I drove it for a while,” he says. “I knew how cars should handle, and the Mustang didn’t.”
However, the Mustang always followed the Hiltons as they moved from house to house in North Vancouver. In 1992, Hilton had a neighbour down the street who owned an autobody shop. He offered to restore the car, and Hilton took him up on the opportunity.
“They fixed all the sheet metal and painted the car,” he says, and adds, “but it was still a horrible car to drive.”
That’s when his brother took the Mustang and installed a 1994 Mustang rear end, five-speed transmission and disc brakes. What happened next? You guessed it. Hilton drove the car and said, “It was better, but it still didn’t handle.”
Finally, in 2004, Hilton decided it was time to fix the Mustang’s handling woes.
“I tore all the sheet metal off the front of the car only to discover the front frame rails were rotten,” he says.
Working in a friend’s automotive fabrication shop, Hilton removed the rusted frame rails and then built up a new, and much stiffer, square tube chassis subframe. On the new tubes, Hilton hung a Mustang II front end with power steering, coilovers and Wilwood disc brakes.
“In the process of tightening up the front end, I decided I needed a new engine,” Hilton explains.
So, he bought a 302 cubic-inch engine block from a 1994 Ford truck, and built it to displace 347 cubic-inches. New Renegade cylinder heads were sourced from Air Flow Research, or AFR, and a Borla throttle body induction system topped them off.
“There are all kinds of trick pieces inside the engine,” Hilton adds.
He was able to drive the car home from that shop, but then the project faced a few hurdles. In 2012, Hilton began constructing a new duplex so he and his wife could live on one side, while his daughter’s family could live next door. And then, Hilton had to overcome a few health issues, including heart surgery and a knee replacement.
When he was once again fit, Hilton got to work installing the finishing touches, such as an active hood scoop to feed fresh air to the airbox and throttle bodies. A set of Wilwood control pedals went in the cockpit; these allow Hilton to fine tune the Mustang’s brake balance from front to rear. Hilton also made a custom dash with a full complement of AutoMeter Sport Comp instruments to replace the original gauges.
And, although the car had previously been restored and painted, there were a number of dings and scratches on many of the panels from years of storage. Hilton had the car repainted, and it finally returned to the road in 2020.
“We dyno tuned the engine, and the furthest I first drove it was from home in North Vancouver to Mission to spend a day on the track at Mission Raceway. I wanted to do some shake down runs on the track and feel how the car handles at the limit before I really put it on the road,” he says, and concludes, “I’m thrilled with the power and the car finally handles now, it carves like a pair of really good skis.”
(Greg Williams is a member of the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada. Have a column tip? Contact him at 403-287-1067 or [email protected])
