Ford Mustang 1966 – Shelby Hertz GT350 Tribute

In the winter of 1965, Hertz partnered with Carroll Shelby to rent out 1,000 specially built GT350 Mustangs — the GT350H — for $17 a day at locations across the country. Each carried a Shelby-tuned 306-horsepower 289 V8 capable of 0-60 mph in about 6.6 seconds. High repair costs ended the program by late 1966, but the surviving cars are now some of the most sought-after Mustangs in the collector market.

This is an absolutely beautiful black and gold 1966 Shelby Hertz GT350!!

Renting a race car for seventeen dollars a day sounds like a marketing gimmick that could never have actually happened — but in the winter of 1965, Hertz and Carroll Shelby made exactly that deal, and the result became one of the most legendary partnerships in American car culture. A thousand black-and-gold Mustangs, built to Shelby‘s own performance specification, went out to rental counters across the country with a 306-horsepower V8 under the hood and a story that’s still being told sixty years later. What could possibly go wrong renting a race-bred Mustang to the general public — and why did it end almost as fast as it began?

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A Thousand Race Cars, Rented by the Day

The idea started as a way to give Hertz’s underperforming Sports Car Club a real four-seat performance option, and Shelby American pitched Hertz on a batch of GT350s finished in the company’s signature black-and-gold livery. What began as talk of 100 or 200 cars ballooned into a firm order for 1,000 units by the time the contract was finalized, with deliveries running from late December 1965 through May 1966. Demand was high enough that Hertz ultimately split the run across all five colors Shelby offered on the retail GT350 — Wimbledon White, Candy Apple Red, Ivy Green, Sapphire Blue, and Raven Black — rather than sticking to black and gold alone.

306 Horsepower for $17 a Day

Under the hood sat a Shelby-modified version of Ford‘s 289 V8, rated at 306 horsepower and 329 lb-ft of torque, good for a 0-60 mph run in about 6.6 seconds — genuinely quick for a rental car in 1966, or honestly, for a rental car in any year since. Renters over 25 could book one for $17 a day plus 17 cents a mile at more than 60 cities nationwide, a price point that turned an ordinary business trip into a chance to drive a factory–built race car. High repair costs eventually caught up with the program and it wound down by the end of 1966, but Ford and Shelby bought back the surviving cars, resold them, and inadvertently created one of the most collectible Mustang variants ever built.