The Shelby American (Summer 2022)

n interesting photo (a digital JPG file) was shared with me several years ago that lit my fire. Brant Halterman sent me the scan of a picture showing rows of white Mustangs parked behind the hanger at the Shelby American LAX facility. They were obviously in the process of being converted into 1966 GT350s. My curiosity was piqued and further investigation was clearly in order. After all, I own a white 1966 GT350 (6S087). Maybe one of the cars in this picture was mine. Okay, it’s a long shot but you can still dream. Here are the results of my observa- tions and research into that photo. • Some of those cars have their rear seat on top of the car. Since ‘65 GT350s were built without rear seats, it’s ob- vious these are 1966 models. • The rear vent louvers are missing on the front car, and some of the other cars are missing their interior quarter trim panels, all in preparation for re- ceiving ‘66 GT350 quarter windows. • There are no front grilles in these cars. That’s the way carryovers* shipped to SA because the 1966 hori- zontal bar grilles weren’t available for installation at San Jose at that time. No other 1965 or 1966 GT350s were delivered to SA without grilles, so these cars are obviously 1966 GT350 carryovers. • Note that the cars in that photo have a paper taped in their windshields. Let’s examine that piece of paper by focusing on the car closest to the cam- era: •• The left and right sides of the paper in the windshield are curled back so you can’t see all the characters written on it. In the upper part of that paper you can see “…4232…” (the beginning or end of the sequence is not visible). In the lower part of that paper you can see “…6S10…” (the last digit – or dig- its and any possible prefix digits are not visible.) This is part of the Shelby VIN. •• This can’t be 6S10xx because this car is a carryover and there were only 252 carryovers. And it can’t be 6S10 because there is no such car. So if “6S10” is part of the Shelby VIN, then this car has to be 6S10x. •• Howard Pardee says that of the cars in the 6S100 – 6S109 range, he shows six cars that have “4232” some- where in their Ford VINs. That can’t be a coincidence. So that car closest to the camera has to be one of these six – 6S100, 6S102, 6S106, 6S107, 6S108 or 6S109. •• More important, we have now es- tablished that the digits on top of the paper are the Ford VIN, and the digits on the bottom are the Shelby VIN. All of that was revealed by studying the digital JPG version of that picture. The SHELBY AMERICAN Summer 2022 71 – Steve Sloan sloanx@swbell.net A