The Shelby American (Summer 2022)

A close examination of the original photographic print reveals: •• In the cars closest to the camera you can tell there’s no trim piece (grille joint cover) in the lower-center of the grille. Again, that’s the way car- ryovers were delivered because the new-for-1966 part was not available for installation at San Jose when the carryovers were produced. (Of course, that’s also the way 1965 GT350s were delivered, but 1965s wouldn’t have rear seats.) More proof that those cars are 1966 GT350 carryovers: ••• The car behind the front car shows “…S09...” on the lower part of the paper in its windshield. And has “…94…” visible on the top of the paper. ••• Howard Pardee says that all of the cars in the 6S090 – 6S099 range have “94” in their Ford VINs. So the second car in that row must be 6S09x. ••• The car behind that one shows “… S08...” in the lower portion of its wind- shield paper. The partial Ford VIN on top of the paper is unreadable, but that car still has to be 6S08x. From all this we learn that: •••• The cars in the photo are 1966 GT350 carryovers. •••• The car closest to the camera is one of these six – 6S100, 6S102, 6S106, 6S107, 6S108 or 6S109. •••• The two cars behind it are 6S09x and 6S08x. •••• At least for a while during car- ryover production, SA taped a paper in the windshield that had the last 6 dig- its of the Ford VIN on top and the Shelby VIN on bottom. The left and right edges of that paper tended to curl back from the windshield making reading the full numbers difficult. That could be critical knowledge if any similar pictures are ever found. So… I didn’t prove that one of those cars is 6S087, but I came pretty close. I have a one-in-ten chance that the car on the far left is mine. Yee Ha! * Carryover = One of the first 252 1966 GT350s. They were built from 1965 Mustang chassis, to fill the production gap between building 1965 and 1966 models. They have a combination of ’65 and ’66 features, with some fea- tures unique to those 252 cars. Part 2 As a recent retiree, I was enjoying all my new found spare time when a photo showed up in my email that caught my eye. My friend Kieth Champine (aka KOP – King Of Pic- tures) had been perusing some old auto magazines and scanning to digi- tal files some of the articles and pic- tures of interest. On this particular day he sent me a copy of page 40 from the January 1995 issue of Mustang & Fords . The picture on the top-left of that magazine page was an assembly line photo at Shelby American that he’d seen several times before. On the top-right was a cropped version of the LAX Back Lot photo that was exam- ined earlier. On the bottom was a beautiful 427 Cobra. A larger version of that assembly line picture shows up on page 16 of The Shelby American #58 without any caption or identification. And another uncaptioned version shows up on page 263 of the 2011 edition of the SAAC Shelby Registry 1965-1966-1967 . But in Kieth’s scan of that magazine page there was a caption indicating that the front car is 1965 “car No. 508.” What a hoot! After all these years we finally know exactly which car that is. Or do we? When I looked at that picture closer, I noticed a few things that didn’t seem right. Uh, oh! Goodbye, re- tirement spare time. The first thing that jumped out was the rear seats on top of the cars in that line. The front car doesn’t have them, but all the rest of the cars do. Hey, 1965 GT350’s never had rear seats – not even fresh from San Jose. Those cars must be 1966 GT350s. That photo caption has to be wrong! Why did someone think that front car was 5S508? And what other clues are there that might help determine the real identity of that front car? Well, not much more could be as- certained from that magazine photo. It looked to me like that front car might be missing its grille. And the passen- ger side rear vent louver assembly ap- pears to have been removed. But that version of the photo lacked the detail to really make those conclusions. Ugh! Looked like a dead end. Then another friend, Rich Plescia, came to the rescue with a much sharper version of that picture which he found on the Internet. Yee Ha! In that better photo more and more inter- esting details were discovered. Here are the highlights: • As previously noted, the cars behind the front car have their rear seats re- moved and placed on top of each car. Since no car destined to be a 1965 GT350 was delivered with rear seats, we can conclude that the cars in that lineup are 1966 GT350s. • If you look through the windshield on the front car, you can see that the rear vent louvers on the passenger side of the vehicle have been re- moved – indicating preparation for quarter window installation. • Looking inside the front car, in the area just in front of the standard Mus- tang rear vent louvers, you can see a small bracket exposed on each side of the car. Those brackets are there to allow the attachment of the screws that hold the upper interior quarter trim panels over the louvers. Seeing those brackets exposed means the upper interior quarter trim panels on both sides of this car have been re- moved. More evidence that this car is receiving quarter windows. • There’s no front grille in that front car. That’s the way carryovers came from San Jose because the 1966 hori- zontal bar grille was not available for installation yet. Those were shipped separately to Shelby American at a later date. All other cars destined to become 1965 or 1966 GT350s were de- livered to SA with their grilles in The SHELBY AMERICAN Summer 2022 72 January 1995 Mustangs and Fords