Paul Svinicki is the definition of dedication. Whether it’s dedication to his family, his friends, or finding innovation with his Ford-powered rides, he has spent his lifetime building a remarkable legacy – and he’s nowhere near done yet.
Growing up in small-town Michigan, Svinicki, now 67 years young, got started wrenching in the garage with his grandfather, Steven Kakuk, when he was practically a toddler and would often go to the races with a neighbor. Having found his passion with building speed, Svinicki raced everything and anything he could get his hands on; to fund his fervor, the enterprising adolescent fixed up bicycles to sell, mowed lawns, and even took a job mucking out a neighbor’s horse stalls in exchange for a 1968 Ford Mustang.
When he got older, he bought a home and built a 40×60-foot pole barn out back with his brothers. By then, Svinicki had already garnered an admirable reputation for being able to make just about anything run better and go faster, and his services were in high demand. He made things official in the early 1990s when he started Paul’s High Performance, was one of the first to purchase a Dynojet dynamometer, and his career rapidly accelerated.
In 1996, Svinicki relocated Paul’s High Performance to a dedicated shop facility in Jackson, Michigan, and has remained there ever since. His “housewarming” party for the business, though, pivoted his professional life in a direction he never could have imagined.
“I hosted a Ford motorsports enthusiasts club meet up,” recalled Svinicki, “and Jerry Green from Ford SVO was there. He ran his car on my dyno and was skeptical of the numbers, but I proved they were accurate, and he called me the next day asking that I come into the Dearborn office.”
At that fateful meeting, Svinicki struck up a relationship with Ford executives that spanned several decades. He was welcomed into the inner circle of Ford Motorsport (now Ford Performance) and took part in the launch of the Mach 1, Marauder, SVT Cobra, and Cobra R models. Svinicki was involved with special Ford events and proving grounds test sessions, and his enthusiasm and professionalism were always appreciated by the Blue Oval leadership.
“In the late 1990s, SVT (Ford’s Special Vehicle Team) would bring pre-production cars over to us, so I had worked with the Cobra R and loved the idea of a 5.4-liter, six-speed, independent rear suspension, road race-type car,” Svinicki shared of what would become an exclusive, limited production model for Ford.
The famed SVT Ford Mustang Cobra R was officially released in 2000 with only 300 units made. Available only in Performance Red Clearcoat, it was the fastest factory-produced Mustang ever made. With 385 horsepower on tap to run the quarter-mile in 13.2 seconds at speeds of 170+ mph in the quarter-mile, the lightweight Cobra R was stripped of any stock feature not needed for track use and also had upgraded, vented Brembo disc brakes that could bring it to a full stop from 60 mph in just 127 feet.
Ford’s New Edge-bodied 2000 Cobra R models were equipped with specially modified MacPherson struts and Bilstein dampeners in the front, and aluminum lower control arms, Eibach springs, Bilstein shocks, a beefy 26mm tubular stabilizer bar, and more in the rear.
Additionally, attractive 5-spoke cast aluminum wheels wrapped in custom BF Goodrich rubber compounded specifically for the Cobra R, Recaro racing seats, side-exit dual exhausts, front air splitter, racy high-mounted rear wing, and more special touches made it an instant success with enthusiasts.
“I had been to the track a couple of times with the group, and as the program started to come to a close, I kept bugging [SVT Chief Engineer John] Coletti about the couple cars I knew were sitting over where Roush and SVT were stationed at the time,” laughed Svinicki. His inquiries were brushed off, so he was shocked when he was walking by Coletti’s office one day in the late 2000s and was called in. “He asked me if I had brought my truck that day, I said ‘yes.’ Then he asked if I had my trailer, and I said ‘no,’ and he told me to run back to my shop and get the trailer and ‘don’t forget to bring a dollar.’”
That day, Svinicki became the proud owner of a rare 2000 SVT Mustang Cobra R.
He had put together a program to adapt the road course-focused SN95 to the dragstrip instead, and quickly found a home for the missile in the Mod Motor category at Fun Ford Weekend, Ford World Challenge, NMRA, and other events.
Always one to find ways to improve the performance of his vehicles, though, Svinicki wasted no time in modifying the Cobra R more to his liking. “I worked with Chris Alston’s Chassisworks to develop a roll cage to fit the new chassis and body and Wilwood helped out with the brakes,” Svinicki noted. He grabbed a set of WELD Racing’s latest design for wheels, too, and received a ton of flack from his friends about the gold color he selected, but Svinicki stands by his choice and likes how they look even so many years later.
“A good friend of mine, Al Enbody, did all of the tin work with a kit from Chris Alston. Al was a great fabricator and every piece fit together perfectly, with rivets and sharp edges and rounded corners, it’s like art,” stated Svinicki, whose friend of more than fifty years passed away in 2023.
As a lifelong fan of naturally aspirated engine combinations, Svinicki’s primary goal for the SVT ride was to wind the engine up to 9,000 rpm while racing. “We knew pretty quickly that the Ford processor was too limited to do it, so we started looking around and went through a lot of parts to make it happen,” he said.
Svinicki started with about a dozen of the spray bore, DOHC 5.4-liter V8 powerplants, but only has two remaining – one currently in the car and one as a spare. When something would let go, the engine would explode and “ruin everything.” Bent valves, connecting rods kicking out the side of the engine block, and more, were all unfortunately common occurrences.
Svinicki didn’t quit, though. He pegged an oil pump issue and set about developing his own external wet sump system as a solution. He developed custom camshafts and valve springs, custom timing chain components, and even solid lash adjusters.
“But then we had a problem with spark and running a two-step, so we developed a distributor drive system to use our own distributor,” he continued. Svinicki spent more than 300 hours developing his system, as there were no belt drive systems available at the time, and his skills as a journeyman tool and die maker were put to good use. “At that same time, we wanted to run fuel injection so we reached out to Accel DFI and put that on with the Mallory ignition, wired it up, and it made all the difference in the world.”
With more than 200 cars regularly attending events, Svinicki got to enjoy the peak of Ford-focused drag racing. And, of course, he found himself proudly standing in the winner’s circle more often than not. “We were doing a lot of traveling and a lot of racing, going through tires like crazy,” he fondly reminisced. “We runnered up with the championship one year by, like, two points, but got nearly 200 wins with the car – it’s very lightweight and very reliable, especially after we got the engine figured out.”
Fortunately, Ford was very good to him at the time and supplied Svinicki with lots of parts, as long as they were able to autopsy the failed components. Ron Robart at Fox Lake Power Products, too, worked on more sets of FR500 cylinder heads (complete with custom COMP Cams titanium retainers, Ferrea stainless valves, custom cams from Ford, and more) than Svinicki can count.
“At one time, I had a shelf of custom camshafts from Ford’s Baja race truck program that we were using to learn on,” he noted. “The crankshaft we ran was a Ford Racing Kellogg forged crankshaft that had been knife-edged, lightened, and hardened. The timing chains are polished Cobra pieces, and we didn’t have custom sprockets back then so I’d cut the keyways out and move the cams around with shims to get the timing right.”
With a set of flanges and boxes of tubes from his late friend and industry legend, Darryl Bassani, Svinicki handcrafted a set of custom headers. He also crafted many other custom components such as a radiator fed through an electric Meziere water pump.
Joel’s on Joy was responsible for building the bulletproof Powerglide transmission, and Anthony Jones at AJE Suspensions provided the lightweight K-member and steering rack. Custom front coilovers from Strange Engineering valved specifically for the Cobra R were coupled with custom, high-end Penske shocks with titanium bodies and remote-mounted reservoirs.
Inside, Svinicki added a set of Racetech seats to replace the OEM units. He outfitted his cockpit with an array of gauges from Ford Racing and Autometer, and removed whatever unnecessary weight he could find. Any superfluous nut, bolt, or tab was cut off, the doors were hollowed out, and everything behind the dashboard was stripped out. As a result, with him strapped in behind the wheel, Svinicki’s SN95 weighed in at a shockingly scant 2,600 pounds.
By the mid-to-late 2000s, though, Svinicki’s naturally aspirated Cobra R racing endeavors slowed down – although the car itself had only ever gotten quicker and faster, having dipped down into the low-9-second zone at nearly 150 mph with its all-motor, 600-crank-horsepower 302 cubic inch engine.
Ultimately, his focus shifted to other projects at Paul’s High Performance, and the SVT Cobra R got some time out of the spotlight as it slept on one of the shop’s lifts. Svinicki never forgot about it, however, and briefly assembled a new 5.4-liter, naturally aspirated engine built around a Ford GT aluminum block. “We made an intake and headers, and custom cams, but never got it to the track… although we did run it on the dyno,” he affirmed.
Most recently, Svinicki has been busy campaigning his incredible, 7.3-liter Godzilla-swapped and nitrous-assisted 2010 Ford Mustang Cobra Jet in NMRA Open Comp and the Cobra Jet Showdown. With the stock engine, he was the first to reach the 10-second, 9-second, and 8-second zone.
However, when the NMRA 25th Anniversary Ford Homecoming was announced to be held in June of 2023 at Summit Motorsports Park in Norwalk, Ohio, Svinicki knew it was the perfect time to put his prized possession on display in the UPR Products car show as a historical showpiece for his fellow Ford fans to enjoy.
“I had saved all of the pieces from it, all the wiring, ignition system, oil drive system, everything – and I was proud of what we had done with it, so I always kept it lubed up and ready to go,” shared Svinicki. Not wanting the SVT Cobra R to go to waste or to rot in place, he’d make sure to rotate the engine every once in a while, and put oil pressure to it. “Well, we put it back together, and it fired right back up after all these years with no problem whatsoever. That’s how good the quality of the parts was!”
After the NMRA gathering, Svinicki did take his Cobra R to Milan Dragway in Michigan in 2024 for a quick sprint down the quarter-mile and while it ran okay, he didn’t push it too hard. “All of the parts are unobtanium at this point,” he laughed. “And we didn’t have the right converter in it, but it still went low 11.10 at 126 mph.”
One of the very first cars that he built at Paul’s High Performance along with his wife’s cousin, Scott Baumgartner, the rare Cobra R was even featured on the cover of MotorTrend magazine back in 1999. Now, 25 years later, it’s still in cover-worthy pristine condition. “So many people who helped build this car are no longer with us, so it’s a tribute to them in a lot of ways,” he concluded.
Although it’s now semi-retired from racing, Svinicki’s rare 2000 SVT Mustang Cobra R holds a special place in his heart as a “real-life model car.” It’s the epitome of cool, and the pioneering work he did in perfecting it at Paul’s High Performance ultimately yielded dividends for enthusiasts all over the world who also benefitted from his developments.