Shelby GT 350 Mustang 1966-images

Hertz rented race cars in 1966 — literally. Shelby built roughly 1,000 GT350H Mustangs for the ‘Rent-A-Racer’ program, and the black-and-gold color combo everyone remembers almost didn’t happen. Here’s the real story behind Shelby’s strangest, most famous customer.

The Shelby GT 350 is the moniker adopted for the 1966 Mustang models Carroll Shelby modifies. There were initially 252 units of ’65 Mustang ‘K’ code fastbackÂ delivered to Shelby American and the entire production of the Shelby GT 350 reached 2,378 for the ’66 model year. The battery is no longer mounted in the trunk, the factory side extractor vents are replaced with quarter panel rear windows, scoops for brake cooling are added to side panels and there is a larger array of colors to choose from. The Paxton Super-charger, `a Selectshift 4-speed automatic are optional equipment and the over-rider traction bars from last year are not available. The fold-flat rear seat back., which is standard fare on the factory produced Mustang is an option on the GT 350, but the dual exhaust pipes are a part of the package.

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By 1966, Carroll Shelby had already built a reputation for turning Mustangs into something closer to a race car with a license plate — but nothing tested that reputation quite like the phone call from Hertz. A rental car company wanted a thousand of these things, ready to hand the keys to anyone with a credit card and a driver’s license, and Shelby said yes. What came out of that deal became one of the most famous rental cars in automotive history, and the story behind its now-iconic black-and-gold paint job is stranger than most people realize.

When Hertz Started Renting Race Cars

The ‘Rent-A-Racer’ program put GT350H badges on Hertz’s fleet lots nationwide, and Shelby ultimately built somewhere around 1,000 to 1,003 of these cars specifically for the rental giant. The plan started with the first 100 cars finished in Raven Black with gold Le Mans stripes, but once the full 1,000-unit contract was locked in, Hertz decided the build should be split across all five retail GT350 colors — Wimbledon White, Candy Apple Red, Ivy Green, Sapphire Blue, and Raven Black. In practice, black-and-gold still ended up dominating the lineup at roughly three-quarters of production, which is exactly why that color combo is what everyone pictures when they hear ‘GT350H’ today.

The Transmission Swap Nobody Saw Coming

Here’s the twist most people miss: the first 85 GT350H cars were built with the full-tilt 4-speed manual, same as any retail GT350. Then Ford and Hertz got a look at how renters were actually treating these things and decided that a self-shifting transmission might keep more cars in one piece — so the remaining 900-plus cars were switched over to the C-4 Cruise-O-Matic 3-speed automatic. It’s a small footnote that says a lot about the gap between what Shelby wanted to build and what a rental fleet could survive, and it’s part of why a manual, black-and-gold GT350H is one of the most sought-after variants in the entire Shelby lineup today.

Why the Registry Number Still Matters Today

That 85-car split is exactly why GT350H build sheets and Shelby American Automobile Club documentation carry so much weight in the market today. A manual, numbers-matching GT350H isn’t just rarer than its automatic siblings on paper — it’s rare enough that SAAC’s own Hertz Registrar tracks these cars individually, and a seller without a clean paper trail on a claimed manual example is asking a buyer to take a serious leap of faith.

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