American cars in the late-’70s through mid-’80s were rubbish. They were rubbish long after the mid-’80s too of course, but even the iconic Ford Mustang was a throughly mediocre specimen in its early-’80s guise.

Base on Ford’s then-new ‘Fox’ platform, the third-generation ‘Foxbody’ Mustang could be had as a prosaic coupe, a dreary hatch-back or a lacklustre convertible, and was powered by an array of engines ranging from an inline-4 that produced no horsepower whatsoever to a 5.0 V8 that produced no horsepower whatsoever.

Getting with the times however, and Ford did add a 4-cylinder turbo, which did produce some horsepower – briefly – before it broke.

You may have guessed we’re not fans of Ford’s third-generation ‘stang, and we’re not. Until that, is comes to its 1986 facelift.

Adopting Ford’s ‘aero’ design, the Foxbody instantly went from dreary to desirable, and even the engines got a glow-up, with the 4-cylinder breaking the 100bhp mark (up from a miserly 88) by the early-’90s, and the 5.0 V8 surpassing 200bhp.

This excellent Model Team recreation of the Foxbody Mustang captures the facelift’s sleek exterior brilliantly, and comes from previous bloggee Szunyogh Balázs (aka. gnat.bricks). There’s an opening hood (under which can be slotted both a V8 or 4-cylinder engine as Szunyogh has created both), opening doors and trunk, and a superbly life-like interior.

There’s more of the model to see at Szunyogh’s ‘Lego Mustang – Foxbody’ album on Flickr, and you can take a look at the moment when America’s automotive malaise era finally ended via the link above.