The AC Cobra Mark III started life as a British roadster body flown to Los Angeles with an empty engine bay, and ended up as the car that forced a national government to invent a speed limit. Along the way it collected a Jaguar differential, an MGB steering rack, a Volkswagen steering column, and a Ford 427 side-oiler that made 425 horsepower. One example later sold for $5.5 million. Read on for how a hurried eleventh-hour decision produced all of it.
Posts Tagged: Shelby
A manual Shelby GT500 built to roughly 650 horsepower squares off against a factory-rated 707-horsepower Hellcat Charger in this drag strip grudge match, and the comments section is split on who actually deserved the win. Between a missed second-gear shift and near-universal praise for the Hellcat’s supercharger whine, this race turned into a real debate about whether raw power or clean execution matters more at the line. Watch the full race and judge each launch for yourself.
This 1967 Mustang fastback isn’t a real Shelby GT500 — it’s something arguably more interesting: a meticulously built tribute running a 390 V8, five-speed Tremec, correct Shelby wheels, and a documented Marti Report confirming its original California sale. Every detail, from the subframe connectors to the fiberglass Shelby hood, was chosen to replicate the real thing without the real-thing price tag. One viewer called it a screaming deal even years ago. Watch the full test drive and walkaround to see why.
Classic Recreations, the only shop officially licensed to build continuation Shelby Mustangs, just did something purists never saw coming: it dropped a turbocharged EcoBoost engine into a car built to honor Carroll Shelby’s big-block legacy. Owner Jason Engel says the move isn’t about abandoning tradition, it’s about keeping a niche, hand-built business alive in markets where displacement taxes make a big V8 impractical. Read on to find out how a turbocharged Shelby continuation stacks up against the original.
Ford’s 1967 Mustang Fastback topped out with a 390-cubic-inch V8, and the 460 did not exist in any Ford product until the following year. This custom build drops 7.5 liters of 385-series big block into a shell wearing Bullitt-style fastback proportions and Eleanor-style silver paint, riding on chrome Cragar S/S wheels. Read on to find out what has to change to make that swap survive.
A 1969 GT500 that surfaced in Detroit in 2015 turned out to be far more than a rare production car — research confirmed it as the literal first Mustang built at Dearborn specifically for conversion into a Shelby prototype. Only four such prototypes were ever ordered. Read on for how three collectors pieced together nearly fifty years of hidden history.
This compilation strings together real quarter mile drag races between the modern muscle car era’s biggest names — Hellcats, Camaro ZL1s, a Shelby GT500 Super Snake, a Corvette ZR1, and more — with results that do not always match what the spec sheets promise. One Hellcat driver appears to fall asleep at the line and still nearly catches a Super Snake by the finish. Watch to see which factory-built legend actually comes out on top.
A camouflaged Mustang mule caught testing on public roads turned out to be hiding a supercharged version of Ford’s 5.2 litre Voodoo V8. Three years later the production Shelby GT500 landed with 760 horsepower, no manual gearbox, no convertible and no sunroof. Here is what the spy shots were actually pointing at, and why Ford made every one of those decisions on purpose.
The most expensive Mustang ever sold was never meant to be sold at all. Shelby American built it to destroy experimental Goodyear tires at sustained triple-digit speeds, and when a dealer tried to turn it into a fifty-car production run, exactly one buyer showed up. Five decades later Shelby built a 50th Anniversary Super Snake to mark the occasion. The gap between the two cars says everything about how legends get made.
A 1965 Shelby GT350 was built to win races, not flatter showroom shoppers — and this 2016 GT350R from The Brothers Collection is the rare modern Shelby fans say actually lives up to that history. No turbo, no supercharger, just a flat-plane V8 that would rather rev than lean on boost. Black satin paint, red pinstripes, and carbon fiber wheels round out a car commenters are calling the best Mustang ever built. What is it about this specific combination that keeps convincing longtime skeptics?
Carroll Shelby’s original pitch was simple: take a British roadster nobody in America had heard of, drop in a big V8, and build something that could embarrass cars costing three times as much. Ford said yes after Chevrolet turned him down, unwilling to create a rival for the Corvette. Only 126 Mark I Cobras were ever built, split almost evenly between two different V8s. Here’s the story behind the bloodline that started it all.
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.
Most concept cars end up crushed or crated. The first 2007 Shelby GT ever built spent years as a working development mule instead, wearing a Whipple supercharger, Baer brakes, and 20-inch wheels while Shelby figured out what customers would eventually be able to order. It showed up at Barrett-Jackson Las Vegas as Lot 737 with 9,360 miles on it. Here is why that particular Mustang mattered more than its horsepower number suggests.
Shelby American built only a handful of genuine GT350 convertibles in 1966, and they were never meant for the public at all. That scarcity is what makes a carefully assembled tribute car so compelling: start with a real 23,000-mile C-code Mustang convertible, add every genuine Shelby Hi-Po component available, and chase a car that almost nobody alive has ever seen in person. Read on to find out what separates the real four from everything built since.
Walter Banks parked his 2016 Shelby GT350 Mustang in the shade at a small-town cruise-in, right alongside rat rods held together by rust and freshly restored muscle cars that still smell like new paint. That mix of eras and budgets is exactly what keeps local cruise-ins packed year after year. Read on to find out why events like this one keep drawing bigger crowds than formal concours shows.
