Ford Mustang GT500 Super Snake

The first Shelby Super Snake was a 600-horsepower one-off built to promote Goodyear tires, and Ford turned down the chance to put it into production. Four decades later, Shelby brought the name back as a real conversion program, and this Las Vegas-built GT500 is one of the results. Here is the story behind the badge.

The car starts as a Mustang Shelby GT500, and then is brought to the Shelby American Motorsports Factory in Las Vegas Nevada for customizing to become a “Super Snake”. The car then receives special engine components, exhaust, suspension, interior, and special badging making it an unbelievable Mustang.

The original Super Snake almost never existed at all. Carroll Shelby built it as a one-off favor for Goodyear, chasing a tire promotion rather than a production car, and when Ford took a look at what it would cost to build, they said no thanks. That prototype ended up sitting on a showroom floor before two airline pilots bought it for a fraction of what it cost to create. Forty years later, Shelby brought the name back for good, and this Las Vegas-built car carries that legacy forward. What actually happened to the original, and what does earning the Super Snake badge take today?

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Built to Chase a Tire, Not a Sales Target

The whole thing started in 1967 when Goodyear asked Carroll Shelby to help promote its new Thunderbolt tire, and Shelby’s chief engineer Fred Goodell answered by tearing into a white GT500, chassis number 00544, and rebuilding it around a 427 racing engine. This wasn’t a mild upgrade, it got aluminum heads, an aluminum water pump, a forged crank, Le Mans-spec rods, and the same “bundle of snakes” exhaust system used on the GT40 Mk II, all built to survive sustained 6,000 RPM running.

170 MPH and a Pass From Ford

Out on Goodyear’s high-speed test track near San Angelo, Texas, it hit 170 miles per hour, producing around 600 horsepower. Shelby pitched it to Ford as a possible production model instead of the 428-powered GT500s already on sale, but Ford passed, and only that one prototype was ever built.

The Nameplate That Wouldn’t Stay Dead

Shelby revived the Super Snake name in 2007 for the 40th anniversary of the original, this time as a factory-supported conversion program rather than a one-off. Owners of 2007-2009 GT500s could bring their cars to Shelby for the treatment, choosing from supercharger options along with upgraded exhaust, intake, and drivetrain components to push output well beyond stock. That’s the program this particular Las Vegas-converted car belongs to, a genuine Shelby American build carrying real engine, suspension, interior, and badging work rather than a dealer-lot decal package. It’s a direct descendant of a car Ford never wanted to build in the first place.

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