Ultra-Rare Barn Find!!: 1968 Shelby GT500KR Convertible

Nelson Bandy spent years trying to buy a 1968 Shelby GT500KR convertible from the young couple who owned it in Lobelville, Tennessee, before finally closing the deal in the summer of 1978. He has driven it so rarely since that it spent the last 30 years hidden inside a pair of storage containers. Read on to find out what makes this one of just 318 GT500KR convertibles built, and why Bandy still cannot decide whether to restore it or just get it running as-is.

Nelson Bandy spent years of his life trying to buy a car he did not own, stopping the same young couple on the streets of Lobelville, Tennessee, every time he saw them driving it. He finally got his chance in the summer of 1978, when the owner named a price he assumed would end the conversation for good. It did not. Bandy went to the bank the next morning, came back with cash, and drove the car home, then parked it before the year was even over and, by his own account, has not put it back on the road since. What has been sitting in storage for the better part of four decades is one of just 318 examples of one of the rarest Mustangs Ford ever built.

A Persistent Buyer Finally Gets His Car

Back in the 1970s, Bandy was a longtime antique and vintage-car collector who already knew exactly how rare this particular 1968 Shelby GT500KR convertible was. “I would stop them and try to buy the car every time I saw them driving around town,” he says of the young, recently married couple who owned it in Lobelville, Tennessee. His persistence paid off in the summer of 1978, when the owner finally named a price. “I think the guy thought he would give me a ridiculous price and I would go away,” Bandy says. “I went to the bank the next day and showed up with the cash and bought the car.”

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Nearly Sold, Then Hidden Away for Good

Bandy rarely drove the Shelby after buying it, and given its rarity, he chose to park it before the end of that same year. He came close to letting it go in 1980, listing it in Hemmings at what he now calls a very cheap price by today’s standards. Nobody bought it, and Bandy changed his mind. In early 1987, he purchased a pair of moving and storage containers and hid the car inside them, where it has remained for the past 30 years, out of sight and off the road.

What the Data Plate Reveals

According to its data plate, this Shelby was assembled on June 20, 1968, at Ford’s Metuchen, New Jersey, assembly plant. It left the factory in Highland Green with a deluxe black bucket-seat interior, power steering, power brakes, a tilt steering column, rear bumper guards, a four-speed manual transmission, and a white power convertible top with side stripes. It was sold new through George Busby Ford in Nashville, Tennessee, and never left the state during Bandy’s ownership or, as far as the record shows, before it.

The Engine Ford Built to Save the GT500

The GT500 launched with either a 427 or 428 Police Interceptor engine, but by early 1968 the 428 was not selling the way Shelby and Ford had hoped. The fix was a set of real performance upgrades: compression bumped to 10.6:1, NASCAR-spec 427 cylinder heads, a special alloy intake manifold, and a 735-cfm Holley four-barrel carburetor. Horsepower jumped considerably as a result, with figures reputed to exceed 400, though Shelby officially advertised a more insurance-friendly 335 hp under the 428 Cobra Jet designation. That engine became available in the GT500KR series starting in April 1968, with KR standing for “King of the Road,” a name muscle car buyers embraced immediately.

Heavy-Duty Hardware Under the Skin

The GT500KR came standard with genuine performance hardware, not just badges. Front brakes were 11.3-inch ventilated discs, backed by 10×3-inch self-adjusting drums at the rear. The Ford 9-inch rear axle used a Traction-Lok differential with 3.50:1 gears on manual or automatic cars, dropping to a 3.00:1 ratio, and an open differential, on cars ordered with both air conditioning and an automatic transmission. Manual-transmission buyers could also order 4.11:1 or 4.56:1 performance gearsets at no extra charge, paired with either the standard 15×6-inch wheels or optional 15×7-inch, 10-spoke Shelby aluminum wheels wrapped in Goodyear Speedway 350 tires.

Inside the 1968 Shelby Cabin

All 1968 Shelby Mustangs, including the GT500KR, were equipped with the Deluxe Mustang interior in either black or saddle upholstery, featuring woodgrain trim, a console with Stewart-Warner gauges and a Cobra-embossed console lid, and inertia-reel safety harnesses attached to a padded roll bar. Buyers could also add air conditioning, tinted windows, which became mandatory on air-conditioned cars, and fold-down rear seats on fastback models. The convertible Bandy owns skipped the fastback-only options but carried every other piece of the Deluxe package standard.

A Short Run That Ended Abruptly

The GT500KR name lasted only through the 1968 model year, dropped for 1969 just months before Carroll Shelby’s agreement with Ford Motor Company came to an end entirely. Ford revived the nameplate exactly 40 years later on the fifth-generation Mustang, where the 2008 GT500KR arrived with a 540-hp, 5.4-liter V8. Of the 4,451 total Shelby Mustangs built for 1968, only 318 were GT500KR convertibles like Bandy’s, rarer than the GT500KR fastback, of which 933 were built, and every other 1968 Shelby body style except the single GT500 notchback prototype.

Nearly 50 Years, Still Undecided

As Bandy’s Shelby approaches its 50th anniversary alongside his own 40th year of ownership, he is candid about not having settled on a plan for it. “I have no intentions of selling the Shelby, and I really need to make the car a higher priority and either get it running or totally restore it,” he says. “Just owning and managing to keep this one of only 318 produced 1968 Shelby GT500KR convertibles for almost 40 years is amazing. The barn-find cars are really hot now, so I’m thinking I will get the car running as-is and attend a few of the local car shows.”

Provenance That Collectors Rarely Find Intact

Whatever Bandy ultimately decides, the car’s significance is already secure. A genuinely unrestored, single-family-owned GT500KR convertible with this level of documentation, from its original data plate details to a clear ownership chain stretching back to a Nashville Ford dealer in 1968, is the kind of provenance collectors spend years searching for and rarely find intact. Whether it eventually rolls out of storage as a driver or a full restoration, it remains one of the most complete surviving examples of Shelby’s short-lived, high-compression answer to the muscle car wars of the late 1960s.

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