
“I wanted to keep it a simple non-metallic since I had minimal painting experience,” Putnam says about his choice of Competition orange for the car.
Before it became known as UPR Products, Unlimited Performance Racing had some of the fastest Mustangs in the land. True Street, Wild Street, or any other street/strip classes, UPR owned it with drivers like Willie Figueroa, Joe Mainiero, Bart Tobener, and Jeremy Martorella. For a time in True Street, or WFC’s Wild Street, if Figueroa was there with UPR’s ’95 GTS, everyone else was battling for second. Figueroa routinely ran mid to low 8’s, and this was over 14 years ago.
These days, UPR is still at it. The names have changed, but the cars are still fast. Case in point is UPR’s Bill Putnam, and his ’94 Mustang.
Putnam bought the ’94 V6 car as a roller, using a complete UPR Products suspension and LS adapter plates to get the car pointed in the right direction. “LS engines were very easy to find in decent shape and were known to handle a lot of power in stock form,” Putnam says. He found a 5.3 LS out of a Silverado, and built everything around it.
At first Putnam ran the car N/A with a Holley EFI standalone system to the tune of 11.40 at 117 mph. He then added nitrous, running a best of 9.85 at 134 mph. But then a nitrous backfire took out a few ring lands, and an LS6 intake. Putnam rebuilt the engine using ’05 LS rods and pistons, which have a full-floating piston and thicker rod construction, and added an Edelbrock Pro Flo intake in the process.
This time around, Putnam had picked up a Precision 88mm single turbo, and had TigVision build a turbo kit, and add a 10-point cage to the car, as well. He ran into a few new-combo bugs, and swapped out the initial Turbo 350 for a ‘Glide with a 1.80 first gear. It all came together recently with a stout 8.88 at 153 mph at Palm Beach International Raceway.
The color on the car is Competition orange, which Putnam applied in his garage. The color change caused UPR’s Sharad Raldiris to nickname the car, “The Great Pumpkin.” With a name like that, good thing it’s fast.