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e grew up as farmers. My
older brother had just gotten
his driver’s license and was
driving a 1958 T-Bird. I learned to
drive on a 1948 Chevy field car with
three-on-the-tree, It was a lot more
fun than hoeing corn.
In the summer of 1964, a sales-
man stopped by the farm selling
Hot
Rod
magazine. My brother and I con-
vinced our father to subscribe to it. I
still have those magazines. Reading
those articles, we discovered who Car-
roll Shelby was. He was building Co-
bras and he was going to make Shelby
Mustangs. It was the beginning of the
muscle car years.
We had a sawmill on the farm. My
brother Tom and I sawed the lumber
and built a 14´ x 28´ garage with a pit
under it. All of our motorhead friends
from town used it.
By 1965 I had already owned sev-
eral cars. When the GT350 Hertz
rental cars came out, I was too young
to rent one but I decided my goal was
to buy a ‘66 Shelby. We started street
racing, and then drag racing. We had
a good friend at the local Ford dealer-
ship, the owner’s son-in-law, Rick
Walker, so we started purchasing
Shelby parts and accessories.
Finally, in early 1967, I had accu-
mulated enough money from working
at a machine shop (at $2 an hour) and
working on the farm to buy a 1966
Shelby. We started the search and I
watched the newspapers and visited
dealerships and used car lots. One
evening we stopped at Schmit Ford in
Baltimore, Maryland and mulled over
about thirty 1966 Hertz rent-a-cars.
They were all black with gold stripes.
We lifted the hoods on every car; some
had 715 cfm Holleys and others had
Ford carburetors. Some had aluminum
hi-rise intakes and others had stock,
cast iron intakes. Those Shelbys had
come fromWashington, D.C. I was not
willing to accept a Hertz rental car.
I started to get desperate. I looked
at a black Hertz car in the nearby
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Spring 2019 58
And it’s a long one. JimWalsh bought 6S2335 in 1968 and it’s
been part of his life ever since. This is a story with a happy ending.
– Jim Walsh
W
Archway Ford in Baltimore had a selec-
tion of GT350s in 1966 and 1967.