In its stock form, the 1980 Mercury Zephyr is the official car of going to church every day and twice on Sunday, going slow as molasses in the dead of winter the entire time. It's not the kind of car that inspires most people to drive it quickly or even remotely exuberantly. But then again, most people aren't like Kevin Schweizer. Men who see a rickety old American barge on wheels and think it can run mid-eights at the quarter mile with the right amount of TLC.
But that's exactly what this proud Kentucky-based tuner did. With a fairly anemic starting point to work with, just about everything within the internals of this American wagon was going to need to go in the recycling for it to get to the point it is today. In its day, the Fox Body-based Mercury Zephyr five-door wagon left the factory with either a 200-cubic inch (3.3-L) Thriftpower straight-six, a 140 cubic-inch (2.3-L) Lima four-pot with or without a turbo, or one of two emissions-choked Windsor V8s in either a 255 or 302-cubic inch (4.18 or 5.0-L) of displacement. So, there's nothing that's exactly going to inspire confidence on a drag strip.
But with all the stock drivetrain components removed, this Zephyr's engine bay was well suited to hosting its new engine a 7.3-liter Ford Godzilla pushrod V8 crate motor. Mostly found in high-end, heavy-duty variants of contemporary Ford Trucks, a standard OEM power rating of around 430 horsepower is easily improved upon with a set of two Forced Inductions 72 mm turbochargers making 24 psi of boost. Other goodies include new, lightweight pistons and connecting rods, ported cylinder heads, beefy 2200 cc fuel injectors, and a Brian Tooley Racing intake manifold to make this ICE powerplant considerably better at the whole internal combustion schtick.
With all the mods working in harmony, dyno tests on this drivetrain leave the power figures well past the 1000 hp mark, or 1151 hp, to be precise. Because this beast is expected to travel a quarter mile at a time and not much beyond it, this custom rig's engine is paired with a General Motors Powerglide two-speed automatic transmission. It links to the back of the car via a Ford nine-inch rear end, as if anyone in their right mind would even consider using anything else. Thanks to a robust quad-link suspension in the rear and a UPR drag racing-optimized front suspension, this former church mobile squats off the line from a dig in a way only purpose-built drag cars ever should.
Pair that with the fully-stripped interior with its weighty bench seats removed and replaced with racing buckets and a roll cage, and this is pretty much just a race car at this point. Then again, it is still road legal. But considering where this build started, that's downright amazing. Check out Kevin Schweizer talking over his build down below.
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