Ford Mustang 1966 – Shelby Hertz GT350 Tribute

For a few months in 1966 you could walk into a Hertz counter, hand over a driver’s license, and drive away in a Shelby GT350 built to Carroll Shelby’s own specification. A thousand of them went into the rental fleet in black and gold. The stories that came back are the reason the program did not last. This black-and-gold 1966 is a tribute to those cars, and read on for why the originals are so hard to find intact.

Handing the keys to a race-bred Mustang to whoever walked up to a rental counter with a credit card sounds like a story somebody invented after the fact. It is not. For a stretch of 1966, Hertz did exactly that, and the cars were not softened for the occasion. They carried the same 289 High Performance V8, the same suspension work, and the same intentions as the Shelby GT350 a customer would have paid a premium for at a Ford dealer. A thousand of them went out in black with gold stripes. What came back is the reason nobody has attempted anything like it since, and it is also the reason these cars are worshipped sixty years later.

Renting a Race Car From an Airport Counter

Picture what actually arrived at the curb. A GT350H was a fastback Mustang with Shelby’s fiberglass hood and functional scoop, side scoops feeding the rear brakes, a fifteen-inch steering wheel, and a rear axle located by traction bars. The 289 High Performance V8 breathed through a Holley four-barrel on an aluminum intake and exited through side-exit exhaust on the earliest cars. Interior sound deadening was minimal by design. A renter expecting a nicely trimmed Mustang got something that idled unevenly, steered heavily at parking speed, and made a noise in second gear that no airport shuttle has ever made.

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A Struggling Sports Car Club and a Thousand-Unit Order

The idea began with a problem rather than a promotion. Hertz ran a Sports Car Club that was not performing, and Shelby American saw an opening. The pitch was a batch of GT350s finished in Hertz’s black-and-gold corporate livery, available to club members at rates that put a genuine performance car within reach of an ordinary weekend. Early discussions involved a hundred or two hundred cars. The order that was finally placed came to roughly a thousand, which more than doubled Shelby’s planned GT350 production for the model year.

Seventeen Dollars a Day, Seventeen Cents a Mile

The advertised rate has become part of the legend, and it holds up: seventeen dollars a day plus seventeen cents a mile. Adjusted for inflation it is not the giveaway it sounds like, but for a car with a 306-horsepower rating, a limited-slip differential, and a suspension set up by people who raced for a living, it was extraordinary value. The GT350H was, for a brief window, the cheapest way in America to find out what a proper competition-derived Mustang felt like.

Black and Gold Was Standard, But Not Universal

Most of the fleet was black with gold LeMans stripes over the top and gold rocker stripes down the sides, and that combination is what everyone pictures. It was not universal. A minority of GT350H cars were delivered in other colors, including white, red, blue, and green, all wearing the same gold striping. Those non-black cars are considerably scarcer today and frequently get mistaken for repaints by people who only know the standard livery. The gold striping itself was applied as paint on the earliest cars and as tape later in the run, which is one of the small forensic details specialists use when assessing whether a car is what its owner believes it is. Rocker stripes on a genuine car also carried the GT350H designation rather than plain GT350, a distinction that has been reproduced on countless tributes since.

The Clutches That Forced a Switch to Automatics

The mechanical story took a turn almost immediately. The first cars went out with four-speed manual transmissions, and clutches began failing at a rate that made the program financially untenable. Renters were not gentle. Hertz switched the balance of the order to the C4 automatic, which required Shelby to fit a different intake and carburetor arrangement and drop the output slightly. The manual-equipped GT350H cars, built in relatively small numbers before the change, are the ones collectors chase hardest.

The Return-Counter Stories Nobody Can Fully Verify

Then there are the stories, most of which are impossible to verify and too consistent to dismiss entirely. Cars returned with roll bars still bolted in. Cars returned with different engines than they left with. Cars returned with brake pads worn to the backing plates after a weekend that was definitely not a drive to the airport. Whether every anecdote is true matters less than the pattern: enough renters treated the GT350H as a rental race car that Hertz’s maintenance costs went somewhere no fleet manager had budgeted for.

Why So Few Originals Survived Intact

The program wound down after the 1966 model year. The cars came back to Ford, were reconditioned, and were sold into the used market, often with their Shelby-specific parts quietly replaced by standard Mustang components to make them easier to service. That refurbishment is the single largest reason genuine, unmolested GT350H cars are so difficult to find. Many were sold to people who had no idea what they were buying and treated them as used Mustangs for the next twenty years.

What Building an Honest Tribute Involves

Which brings this black-and-gold 1966 into focus. It is presented as a tribute, and there is no dishonesty in that. Building one means starting with a 1966 Mustang fastback and adding the Shelby fiberglass, the side scoops, the Le Mans stripes, the correct wheels, and a period-appropriate 289 with the right induction. Done well, it looks exactly right and drives close to right. Done well and represented honestly, it is also a car an owner can drive to a show without insuring it like a house.

Documentation Is the Only Real Difference

The gap between a tribute and an original is documentation, not sheet metal. Real GT350H cars carry Shelby serial numbers and paper trails that specialists can verify, and the market prices that verification accordingly. What a tribute delivers is the experience: the shape, the stripes, the sound of a Hi-Po 289 with headers, and a story that starts every conversation in the parking lot. For most people, that is the version of this car they will ever get to spend a weekend with, and there is nothing second-rate about it.

Share your thoughts in the comments below. Would you rather own a real GT350H or a tribute you can actually drive?

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