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When Carroll Shelby’s partnership with Ford ended in 1969, Ford quietly re-tagged leftover 1969 Shelby Mustangs with 1970 VIN plates under FBI oversight, creating a strange final chapter for the GT350 badge. Only 789 of these “1970” cars exist, and just 10 convertibles combined a 4-speed manual with air conditioning. Read on to find out how a leftover-inventory loophole became one of Shelby history’s most talked-about footnotes.
Tim Allen played a horsepower-obsessed sitcom character for eight seasons, and off screen he built an estimated $20 million muscle car collection to match. Inside it are two cars that tie the fiction to reality: a custom roadster nodding directly to Home Improvement, and a Camaro pushing roughly 505 horsepower. Take the rare tour of a private collection most fans never get to see.
Hertz rented these Shelby Mustangs by the day back in 1966, and this Candy Apple Red GT350H is proof the “Rent-a-Racer” program wasn’t just a black-and-gold gimmick. Under the hood sits a Shelby-modified Cobra 289 making 306 horsepower, numbers no rental car company had any business handing over to weekend customers. What started as a marketing experiment between Hertz and Carroll Shelby became one of the most legendary programs in muscle car history.
This vintage road test puts Ford’s flagship 1968 Shelby GT500KR — the “King of the Road” — through its paces, complete with a narrator whose catchphrases are still being quoted in the comments decades later. Viewers reacted to a 6.2-second acceleration figure with genuine disbelief, while others noted the era’s characteristic brake fade after repeated hard stops. One commenter even claims The Doors’ Jim Morrison owned one. Watch to hear “happy time” for yourself.
This 1969 Shelby GT350 keeps its factory body and interior exactly as they left the assembly line, while a 408 stroker motor quietly replaces the original 351 under the hood. American Legends Hot Rods in Phoenix built the swap specifically to balance driveability with visual originality, a philosophy that divides collectors but keeps cars like this one on the road instead of in a trailer. The burgundy paint without stripes is a deliberate departure from the expected Shelby look. Watch to hear what a 408 stroker sounds like in a fifty-year-old body.
The 1970 Shelby GT500 is the rarest single model year in the nameplate’s history, and the reason is one of the strangest stories in Ford’s performance past: there was never really a 1970 production run at all. Just 286 GT500s wore 1970 VINs, and they were applied to leftover 1969 cars under federal supervision. Here is how it happened, how to spot a genuine one, and why Carroll Shelby had already walked away by then.
This 1967 Ford Mustang GT Fastback started life as a documented S-code 390 California car before a ground-up rebuild pushed it to Shelby GT500 specification inside and out, right down to the correct wheels and fiberglass hood. Backed by a Marti Report and sold through Fast Lane Classic Cars, it offers genuine Shelby presence at a fraction of what a real 1967 GT500 now commands at auction. Watch to see the build up close.
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.