My Favorite Shelby Story

One day, Charles Fox, author of “Shelby’s Folly and the Riverside-to-Riverside Madcap Midnight Mambo”  was driving the car seen below.
In 1967 some genius at Goodyear thought there was a market for a whitewall (!) tire that could be driven safely on the street at 200 MPH.  Shel was Goodyear’s west coast race tire distributor, so they asked him if he’d build a one off test vehicle, and offered to pay him to do it.
Shelby was building the 1967 Mustang based GT 350 with the 289 small block, and the GT 500 with the 428 big block at the time.  The 427 race engine used in NASCAR and the LeMans winning GT 40 was available and bolted in.  With a little love it could make close to 500 HP.  Ol’ Shel hisself drove the car at Goodyear’s test track in Texas and it got close to 200 MPH.  Shel got to keep the car, and loaned it to the writer knowing he’d “test” it and write about it.
I once owned a supercharged 1967 GT350 that would clear 140 MPH.  One early morning I drove from Battle Mountain, Nevada, slowing for the town of Carlin, to Elko in 45 mins.   That’s 100 miles, a lot of it on 2 lanes. There were no speed limits outside of towns (wouldn’t wanna break no laws) and premium fuel was 30 cents a gallon.

One thought on “My Favorite Shelby Story”

  1. ha ha…nice story. Once made 26 mile trip, town to town on I65 in 13 1/2 minutes in 65 Mustang. No 140 for me, naturally aspirated 289 with 3.00 gears topped out 125-127 depending on going down hill or not. Pulled onto interstate and mid 70s Corvette pulled around me and hammered it. I pulled up on him and we headed off about 120+. About 3 minutes later a totally blacked out Vette pulled up beside me, matched my speed for a few seconds, and then stomped on it, easily pulling away from both of us. Guess he must have hit 140 or so as fast as he was disappearing. He then slowed down to let us catch up and I followed the 2 of them at about 120 until I reached my exit.

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