CarBrandLogos archive · Shelby · 1965
Ford needed a Mustang that could race. Shelby handed one back in months.
Discover the storyPhoto: Sicnag · CC BY 2.0
The story
Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Shelby Mustang GT350, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.
01
The Mustang sold in astonishing numbers from its 1964 launch, but Ford had a problem it could not fix with advertising: the car had no competition record and no credibility with people who cared about handling. Ford handed the job to Carroll Shelby, whose Cobras had just proved what his shop could do, and asked for a Mustang that could win in SCCA B-Production.
1968 Shelby GT500 conv right · Herranderssvensson · CC BY-SA 3.0
02
The 1965 GT350 was the answer, and it is closer to a race car with number plates than anything Detroit had sold in years. Shelby American in Los Angeles took Mustang fastbacks in Wimbledon White, fitted the high-performance 289 with a high-rise intake manifold and a large four-barrel carburettor, added side-exit exhausts, Koni dampers, a relocated front suspension pickup, a heavy front anti-roll bar and override traction bars, and threw out the rear seat so the car could be homologated as a two-seater sports car. The stripes were an option, not a standard fitting, whatever memory says.
1968 Ford Shelby GT350 Convertible - fvl · Rex Gray from Southern California · CC BY 2.0
03
It worked immediately. The competition GT350R took the B-Production championship in 1965 and repeated it for the following two seasons. In 1966 Shelby built a run of black and gold cars for Hertz to rent, the GT350H, some of which returned from weekends with roll bars fitted and brake pads worn out. From 1967 the cars grew larger, gained fibreglass nose and tail panels and, in GT500 form, big-block engines, and the balance shifted from racing towards American road-car muscle. Production moved to Michigan in 1968 and ended in 1971.
1968 Shelby Mustang GT350 Fastback · Sicnag · CC BY 2.0
04
Ford revived the name twice, and the 2015 GT350 was the more serious effort: a 5.2-litre flat-plane-crank V8, magnetorheological dampers and aerodynamics developed for track work, a car built on the original brief rather than the badge. The first-year 1965 cars remain the ones collectors chase, because they are the ones that were actually built to go racing.
At a glance
Produced
1965–1971Designer
John ChunTechnical specification
Contemporaries from the 1960s
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