Another highlight in Unique's...
Another highlight in Unique's history was the deal they made with Orange County Choppers. This is the chopper the Teutuls built on their show for Unique. Paul Teutul Sr. received the '67 GT500E Super Snake in trade for the Super Snake chopper.
Unique moved into this building in October 2003 and held a Grand Opening car show that included Carroll Shelby, Chip Foose, Courtney Hansen (then the host of the TV show Overhaulin'), and even the king of the customizers, George Barris. In typical Unique style, the event was a grand affair that cost upwards of $30,000. At Unique, they don't do anything halfway.
With five times the space of their original shop, Unique continued to expand its lineup and hire more employees to supply the demand. That October, Unique was ready to start production of its first non-Eleanor. Continuing the relationship with Shelby, it looked at the hottest of the collector Shelby Mustangs of the '65-'70 era and decided to create a continuation of the competition '65 G.T. 350 Mustang, dubbed the R-model by the hobby. Unique and Shelby called this new G.T. 350 the SR, which stands for street and race. Instead of making an exact replica of the original R-model, they built a 21st century edition with a hotter engine (410-horse 347), Tremec five-speed, and a raft of features to surpass the classic in handling. Unique put the G.T. 350SR into production with a limited run of 40 cars as a tribute to the 40th anniversary of the original Shelby Mustang.
Unique sold this '65 GT350SR...
Unique sold this '65 GT350SR at Barrett-Jackson in January 2006 for $307,800.
The next addition to the Unique line was an Eleanor convertible. Their first car, Pure White with Argent Blue stripes, set the auction world on fire at Barrett-Jackson's 2005 Palm Beach sale where a collector paid $550,800 for the G.T. 500E ragtop.
Toying with the idea of expanding into other car lines apart from Mustang, Hasty wondered if there was a Carroll Shelby of Camaros and Chryslers. Discovering there was no charismatic Shelby-type in either the Chevy or Mopar ranks, he thought outside the box. His answer was Chip Foose, the cool-dude designer on Overhaulin'. Tune in and you'll see him customize cars, old and new, starting from scratch with his racy sketches.
Television exposure has been part of Unique's success. Rides did a feature on Unique in a step-by-step build of a G.T. 500E in July 2004. Six months later, Unique got more exposure on perhaps the most watched hot-rod show of all, American Chopper, starring the Teutul family. Basically, the Teutuls built a theme bike in the motif of a '67 Shelby G.T. 500E. The build covered two shows, with the last scenes shot in Las Vegas at the SEMA show. There, the show's patriarch, Paul Teutul Sr., received a '67 G.T. 500E Super Snake in trade for the chopper.
The preproduction Foose Stallion...
The preproduction Foose Stallion prototype sold for $85,320 during the Barrett-Jackson auction in West Palm Beach, Florida, in April. The production car, which will be available from Ford dealers, has a special interior, two-tone paint, 20-inch custom Foose wheels, 330-horse engine, upgraded coilover springs, and Baer brakes.
For Unique, Foose first applied his styling skills to a '69 Camaro. Then he put pen to paper to customize a new '05 Mustang. In August 2004, Unique had a prototype of the Foose-designed '05 Mustang Stallion.
The Foose partnership brought another company into Unique's sphere. Tecstar, a top OEM supplier and manufacturer in Troy, Michigan, handled the engineering, validation, and assembly of the new Stallion. Unique Performance and Tecstar have formed Unique Performance Concepts to manufacture limited-edition, high-performance vehicles.
This past January at the Barrett-Jackson auction in Arizona, a collector bought the preproduction Foose Mustang for $167,000.