Review the Only Factory Convertible 1967 Shelby GT 500 Mustang

Shelby never officially built a 1967 GT500 convertible — except, according to owner and Shelby historian Brian Styles, this one. Backed by his own research group dedicated to documenting that exact model year, Styles walks through the paper trail behind a car that reportedly sold for $775,000 at auction, stunning a room that expected far less. Watch to see the evidence for one of the more compelling ownership stories in Shelby history.

Shelby historians have spent decades cataloging exactly what left Carroll Shelby’s shop and in what configuration, which makes it genuinely rare for something to still be considered a mystery. Yet for years, one specific claim about a single 1967 Mustang kept resurfacing among serious collectors: a factory-built Shelby GT500 convertible, despite the fact that Shelby never officially offered a drop-top GT500 that year. The owner who eventually tracked the truth down did not just buy an interesting car. He became the reason the story finally got settled.

A Story Shelby Historians Said Should Not Exist

The car is a 1967 Shelby Mustang GT500 convertible, and according to owner Brian Styles, it is the only factory-produced example of its kind, a claim that sits in genuinely rarefied territory given how thoroughly the 1967 Shelby lineup has been documented over the decades. Styles and his wife Samantha showed the car at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals in Rosemont, Illinois, where it was filmed for the “My Car Story with Lou Costabile” YouTube channel on November 18.

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The Man Making the Claim Also Wrote the Book on It

What separates this claim from the kind of unverifiable “only one built” story that circulates around plenty of overhyped collector cars is Brian Styles’ own credentials. He is the founder of the 1967 Shelby Research Group, an organization built specifically around documenting and verifying the production history of that single model year, meaning the man making the claim about this car’s uniqueness is also one of the people other collectors would normally turn to in order to verify or debunk exactly this kind of claim.

What Ford and Shelby Actually Documented for 1967

Shelby American officially built the 1967 GT500 exclusively as a fastback, powered by a 428 cubic inch Police Interceptor-based V8 topped with dual four-barrel carburetors and rated at 355 horsepower, a genuine step up in both displacement and torque from the smaller-block GT350 that Shelby continued alongside it. A factory convertible built outside that documented production run would represent either a prototype, a special order fulfilled through channels the official records never fully captured, or some combination of both that Shelby historians have pieced together only through paper trails and physical evidence on the car itself.

A $775,000 Result That Caught the Room Off Guard

According to a comment left by a viewer citing auction results, this exact car sold for $775,000 plus buyer’s premium at a prior sale, a figure that reportedly stunned attendees who had expected a result closer to three or four hundred thousand dollars before bidding actually opened. That gap between pre-sale expectation and final hammer price is often the clearest signal in the collector car world that a piece of documented, verified rarity is worth pursuing specifically because so few buyers fully understood what they were bidding on until the numbers started climbing.

Interview as Detective Work, Not Just a Car Tour

The video itself leans heavily into that documentation angle rather than simply showing off the car’s condition or driving dynamics, with Styles walking through the specific paper trail and physical evidence that support the convertible’s factory origins. Commenters repeatedly praised the depth of that research, with several noting they had never encountered this level of detective work applied to a car’s history outside of a dedicated marque-specific book, and that the interview added genuine information not available in any of the numerous existing Shelby reference texts.

Why Documentation Beats a Good Story Every Time

That distinction matters enormously in a hobby where “rare” gets applied loosely to justify inflated asking prices. A car with a single owner’s unverified story is worth exactly as much as buyers are willing to trust that story; a car backed by the founder of a model-specific research organization, cross-referenced against Shelby’s own incomplete factory records, occupies a fundamentally different tier of credibility, the kind that survives scrutiny from other serious collectors rather than collapsing under it.

Rewriting What “Complete” Means for 1967 Shelby Collectors

For Shelby enthusiasts specifically, a documented one-off convertible reshapes what “complete” means for a 1967 model year collection. Where the accepted history for decades held that no factory GT500 convertibles existed, a verified example forces a quiet revision to reference books, auction house cataloging standards, and the mental checklist every serious Shelby collector carries of what actually left the factory that year, which is a rare thing for any sixty-year-old car to still be capable of doing.

Why 1967 Was a Bigger Redesign Than It Looked

The 1967 model year holds particular significance in Shelby history as the first substantial redesign of the Mustang-based Shelby cars, moving to a larger body that gave Shelby American room to fit the bigger 428 engine and reshape the front fascia with the now-iconic fiberglass nose and integrated driving lights. That redesign is precisely why a convertible variant would have required genuinely different engineering work rather than a simple trim substitution, adding weight to the argument that a factory-built example would have been a deliberate, resource-intensive decision rather than an easy afterthought.

The Small Detail That Backs Up the Big Claim

One commenter also pointed out a detail worth noting for anyone trying to verify similar claims independently: the absence of side marker lights on the car, a federally mandated feature that did not appear until the 1968 model year, which they cited as supporting evidence the car is genuinely a 1967 rather than a later car retitled or misidentified, the kind of small period-correct detail that separates real documentation from wishful thinking in the collector car world.

A Car That May Matter More as a Reference Than an Asset

Whatever the car eventually sells for the next time it changes hands, its real long-term value to the hobby may end up being informational rather than financial. Cars documented this thoroughly by a specialist historian tend to become reference points cited in future books, appraisals, and authentication disputes for decades, which means a single convertible discovered and verified today could quietly reshape how the next generation of Shelby researchers understands what actually happened on the factory floor in 1967.

Hit play on the full video and share your take in the comments below.

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