Regular readers of Mustang Monthly and the viewers of this site most likely know Gateway Classic Mustang (GatewayClassicMustang.com, GCM) as the builders of bitchin' Mustangs for street and track use, as well as the purveyor of trick performance suspension parts for Mustangs and more. If you've been to any Ford event that has some sort of action, GCM was most likely tearing up the pavement in their familiar yellow 1968 Mustang hardtop.
GCM is made up of Jason and Lonnie Childress, who came from the Monster Truck world (Lonnie drove the famous Big Foot monster truck for eight years and Jason drove Grave Digger and debuted the Batman truck). They opened GCM in 1999 in St. Louis, MO (hence the company name) with the motto of "bringing performance to classic and modern Fords" and started building world-renowned cars, including Mustangs for Sammy Hagar and a Bullitt clone for Chad McQueen. So yeah, they're known for cool and fast Mustangs, but behind the scenes they were working on Lonnie's next big passion, the 1967 to 1972 Ford F100 "bumpside" pickups. Lonnie said, "I have loved that body style forever. I bought one in the '90s but didn't know anything about it, I just loved the way it looked."
After a chance sighting during a family holiday, Lonnie saw this '69 F100 sitting with a "for sale" sign in the window a short walk from his parents' house, and he bought it for a mere $400 saying, "It was rough. I wanted to do a 'patina' truck but they had already stripped it, so I went ahead and built it nice."
He worked on the truck here and there for about four years but not with any kind of urgency until he saw Gas Monkey Garage on TV where they slipped a Crown Vic chassis under an F100, and the spark was lit. "Trucks are super-hot right now, and I give 100 percent of the credit to Aaron and the guys at Gas Monkey. I saw the Crown Vic idea and that's what started the fire under my ass to do a truck again."
He's referring to the truck's chassis that is comprised of a stock frame with a late-model Crown Vic front suspension grafted on with GCM's coil-over kit designed for the Crown Vic using JRi parts, which GCM offers now in either non-, 1-, or 2-way adjustable configuration. The 3-link rear suspension is a bolt-on to the stock frame, with Lonnie saying, "You just have to knock the factory brackets off and drill a few holes, but it's very easy to install. There's only one measurement to take to set the front torque arm crossmember." The torque arm plants a 9-Inch Factory rear.
He went on to say, "The torque arm works phenomenal in the truck because there's no weight over the rear, with the bed there. We're picking the truck up under cab on acceleration, applying the force to the rear tires. It's the opposite under braking because it pulls the middle of the truck down and stops better. It works the same way in a car but it's more noticeable in the truck."
