When it comes to shoehorning a new, bigger engine into the framerails of a Fox Body Mustang, the stock hood becomes as useful as Superman without his superhuman strength and ability to fly. The simple solution is to find an aftermarket hood that will accommodate the increase in engine size. However, finding a company that not only makes a hood big enough for your car, but also offers a product that will fit your car correctly, can be a difficult process.

We found a company that could meet all of our demands, and that company is Cervini’s Auto Design.

Cervini’s makes hoods for many popular applications, including our favorite – the Fox Body Mustang. They have a total of four different hood options for the Fox, depending on what you are looking for. These include a Ram Air Hood, the Stormin’ Norman Hood, a 2.5-inch cowl, and the one we went with – the 4-inch cowl.

We spoke with Jim Frie of Cervini’s Auto Design and asked him to tell us about their hoods. “Every hood we sell is 100% hand-laid fiberglass,” explained Frie. “This allows us to control things such as weight and design much better.”

Our hood measured out to thirty-one inches at the base of the cowl and twenty-seven inches at the top. This is going to give us plenty of room to fit the 427 cubic inch engine that we have lined up for this car (and any other monster size engine that we could dream of). It even has two large screen air vents in the back, which allow air to pass through, but keep external objects out of the engine compartment.

With all of this, the hood still only weighs about twenty-four pounds. Additionally, under hood temperatures have been known to drop when swapping out the stock hood with a cowl induction. As the heat rises, it can be flushed out the back of the hood, leaving the cold air to be picked up by the engine.

“We pride ourselves on making a product that is lighter and stronger than the OE version, but will fit just as well,” says Frie. Cervini’s designs their hoods to use the OE hood latch and arms, so you can still retain the hinged operation of your stock hood. However, you can special order a lift-off version (just like the type that racers use) that drops the weight down to eight pounds.

While Cervini’s hoods work with the OE latch system, we wanted to run hood pins on the front of our car. Therefore, we drilled two holes in the hood and welded two posts to the front of the chassis where the hood came down – it was very simple. We then lowered the hood one more time to check our fitment and it was still spot on.

All of Cervini’s hoods come 100% finished on the outside, but our car isn’t white so we needed a paint job. To that end, we turned to local paint and repair shop 1st Class Collision, in Murrieta, CA. They handled the job of scuffing, prepping and painting our car’s hood.

The team at 1st Class started out by lightly scuffing the surface of the hood. After only a few minutes, they were loading the hood up onto a hood stand and rolling it into the paint room.

It took two coats of primer, followed by three coats of paint, to get the job done.

One of the reasons we went with 1st Class is the fact that they are one of the first shops in California to adopt the new “waterborne” paint laws here in the state. While it may not seem like a big deal, some painters are struggling to adapt to the new paint and we didn’t want to have this hood painted twice.

Once the hood had dried, it was a quick drive back to the PowerTV garage where Project 666 eagerly awaited the arrival of its new hood. We attached the arms in the rear of the hood and lowered it down.

That’s it! Cervini’s hoods do not require any cutting or trimming in order to fit correctly. This is a major plus, as it saved us time while keeping the quality of the hood intact.

You can check out all of the different hoods that Cervini’s offers for the Fox Body Mustang (or any other car) by visiting their website, www.cervinis.com.