Color-Changing ‘Mystic’ 1996 Ford Mustang SVT Cobra Is Today’s Bring a Trailer Pick
The 1996 Ford Mustang SVT Cobra was the first production car with optional color-shifting paint, which relies on tiny prisms that catch light and refract it.
The technology was originally developed to prevent counterfeit banknotes, meaning this Mustang’s paint is related to the ink found on the 1990s $100 bill.
This example is up for auction on Bring a Trailer until May 22.
In the early 1990s, Baden Aniline and Soda Factory—better known as BASF—was interested in printing money. The company had just harnessed a new technology that contained a suspension of tiny platelet prisms, ones that would split light into multiple colors depending on the angle. BASF sold the tech to the U.S. Treasury Department as an anti-counterfeiting measure for the just-redesigned $100 bill. Then BASF stopped thinking about Benjamins and started thinking about Mustangs.
You can see the shimmering result in this 1996 Mustang SVT Cobra, up for sale on Bring a Trailer (which, like Car and Driver, is part of Hearst Autos). The ’96 Ford Mustang SVT Cobra is the first production car to feature color-shifting paint, which Ford called Mystic.
Only 1999 Mustang Cobra coupes sold to customers were painted Mystic, although there are officially 2000 out there since the press car found its way into private hands. That makes this a fairly rare car, but the appeal is really more in the way the color-shifting paint gives it a unique 1990s appeal. It should be noted that Ford also produced a later color-shifting paint for the early-2000s-era Cobra, though that was a DuPont formula named Mystichrome.
This version’s the real deal BASF formula shared with the $100 bill. This example has decent mileage at 69K miles shown, and it has been modified. Still, let’s not get precious about those mods as it’s a mid-’90s Mustang, not a 1960s Porsche 911. It has an aftermarket X-pipe, headers, and a Flowmaster exhaust to let that modular 4.6-liter V-8 grumble a little more authoritatively. The FR500-look wheels are also not the factory five-spokes, but they suit the car.
That 4.6-liter was factory rated at a respectable 305 horsepower, sent rearward through a five-speed manual transmission. The engine here has been rebuilt, with a new clutch and flywheel, as well as replacement of various other items like a new A/C compressor and radiator. It looks mechanically sorted.
