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381: Shelby Legends at The Quail
381: Shelby Legends at The Quail
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About this episode
A vibrant discussion unfolds at The Quail during Monterey Car Week, focusing on the legendary Shelby Mustangs. Greg Stanley interviews experts and owners about the first three GT500s ever built, including unique insights from Brian Stiles and Craig Jackson. The episode highlights the stories behind iconic models like 'Little Red' and the only 67 convertible GT500. With a mix of history, personal anecdotes, and expert knowledge, listeners gain a deeper appreciation for these classic cars and their significance in automotive history.
Topics:
shelby mustangs
gt500 history
little red
convertible models
car restoration
auction insights
automotive memorabilia
monterey car week
Cars:
Ford Cougar
Ford Expedition
Ford Mustang
Hudson Hornet
Jensen Interceptor
Shelby Cobra
Shelby GT350
Shelby GT500
Monterey Car Week is always full of incredible stories, and this year I captured four of the best at The Quail. In this episode, these include:
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Craig Jackson – to dive into the legend of Big Red, the infamous Shelby that became a symbol of speed and rebellion.
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Brian Styles – who shares the fascinating history of the only 1967 Shelby convertible ever built, a true one-off that rewrote the Shelby story.
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Vern Estes – who brings his expertise on the ultra-rare 1965 GT350R, the competition-bred Shelbys that cemented Carroll Shelby's racing legacy.
From one-offs to race cars, each of these interviews reveals how Shelby's creations became some of the most important cars in American performance history.
Whether you're a Shelby fanatic or just love hearing the stories behind the world's rarest collector cars, this episode is packed with insider insights straight from The Quail during Monterey Car Week.
🔗 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.
#Shelby #GT350R #BigRedShelby #ShelbyConvertible #CraigJackson #BrianStyles #VernEstes #CarrollShelby #TheQuail #MontereyCarWeek #CollectorCars #CarPodcast #TheCollectorCarPodcast
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Stay connected with The Collector Car Podcast—find us on our Website, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or reach out to Greg directly via email.
Join RM Sotheby's Car Specialist Greg Stanley as he brings over 25 years of experience and keen market analysis to the world of collector cars. Each week, Greg dives into market trends, interviews industry experts, and shares insights—with a little fun along the way. New episodes drop every Thursday and are available on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Learn more at www.TheCollectorCarPodcast.com or email Greg at [email protected].
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"...terviews in this one podcast episode about Shelby Mustang. So to kick it off, we talk about the first three..."
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Shelby GT500
"...kick it off, we talk about the first three Shelby GT500s ever built, including interviews with Brian Stile..."
Car
Shelby Gt500S
"... So to kick it off, we talk about the first three Shelby GT500s ever built, including interviews with Brian Stile..."
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Shelby GT350
"...Vernon Estes, who is an expert in early 65 Shelby GT350s and the caretaker of two of the 36R models."
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Ford Expedition
"They're already behind schedule. Part of that expedition, they deleted the California missions off this ca..."
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Jensen Interceptor
"...is. Engine of course is called the 428 8V special interceptor. It has roots with the police interceptor, but th..."
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Shelby Cobra
"...ad fun with it, they strapped two McCulloch-Axton Cobra superchargers on this 428 dual-quad setup. When S..."
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"...uite a few prototypes. But this one and the Green Hornet are probably the two most famous because they're ..."
Select text to request an explanation
Hey, it's Greg Stanley, and welcome to another Collected Car Podcast.
If you're looking online, you can tell that I got a lot of sun this last weekend in Monterey.
Saturday alone, I walked over 20,000 steps.
Now, it was an incredible week.
I got some great interviews.
I've got some selfies with some of my past guests, which I will show up here shortly
on my social feed.
So this is kind of a fiver.
So I've kind of got five interviews, four or five interviews in this one podcast episode
about Shelby Mustang.
So to kick it off, we talk about the first three Shelby GT500s ever built, including interviews
with Brian Stiles, who's one of the experts, if not the expert on 67 Shelby's, Craig Jackson,
and his big red, Coop, that was found famously a few years ago.
And then we move on to Vernon Estes, who is an expert in early 65 Shelby GT350s and
the caretaker of two of the 36R models.
So we'll review that as well.
So a lot to get to.
Be sure to check out next week, because next week is when I do my really big deep dive in
all the auction results, including the $26 million Ferrari sale.
I'll have results from all of the auction houses, including what percent of cars sold
below low estimate, above high estimate.
What are some market trends we can kind of get from all of the results, including
how cars are doing from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, JDM, American classics, muscle
pony cars, Ferraris, Porsches.
I've got a lot of information I'm digesting and parsing here, so I can
bring you a really fun episode next week.
Now, as always, if you're not on my newsletter and you would like to be on my
newsletter, please shoot me a note, Greg, at thecollectivecarpicast.com.
And for that newsletter next week, I will have all of the data that I'm
talking about, so you can have an easy reference point if you'd like to
know kind of how the market is looking after the huge Monterey Car Week.
So let's check in with these incredible owners of these incredible Shelby's.
RM Sotheby's is the world's largest collector car auction house by total sales.
They are the preeminent market maker of high quality collector cars and
collections, regardless of size or complexity.
By working in partnership with the Sotheby's team and its network of 80
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All right, so I'm at the quail and I've got three historic Shelby's in front of me
and I've got the expert of experts to talk about them, Brian Styles.
How you doing, buddy?
Good deal, good deal.
Yeah, I appreciate you doing this.
So we'll have the original, or not the original, but the owner of
the very first 500 here in a second.
Then we'll have Craig Jackson talk about Little Red.
But Brian's going to give us an overview, including of his car, which is the only
67 convertible, which he can talk to a minute.
So why don't you give us an overview of what we're looking at here?
Glad to.
We actually have two one-offs here.
But the cool part about that story is that wasn't the original plan.
What you're looking at here are the first three regular production GT 500s
that were serialized and built.
As you can see, all three of them are candy, apple, red.
That was the PR color.
They're all ordered identically, heavily optioned, air conditioning, mag wheels,
AM radio, black deluxe trim, and of course, the candy, apple, red paint.
They were supposed to be PR cars.
The Fastback's obviously started off production.
The coupe was considered optional.
And the convertible was slated to go into production in the spring time.
Drop tops do sell better when the weather gets better, right?
That's right.
The Fastback was finished first.
All right. It was actually expedited at San Jose, built about 18 days ahead of schedule.
They needed to get this car into the hands of the magazines.
They're already behind schedule.
Part of that expedition, they deleted the California missions off this car.
It left San Jose without California missions.
Really?
And to cover themselves, they stamped an ENG for engineering into the Vintag.
Smart.
Yep.
How many rules does that get you out of?
Well, it's California.
So the next car that we have is the coupe.
That was actually built right about the same time, couple days after, I believe, the Fastback.
And the convertible was built about two weeks after that.
It did get emissions.
The convertible actually did get California missions.
Not saying that they were carb-certified, but it did get emissions.
So that's the difference.
Car 100 is the Fastback.
Car 131 is the coupe.
Car 139 is the convertible.
Car numbers were assigned when they counted the cars after being dropped off the trucks
from Ford, not when they were started or not when they were finished.
So there's the little gapping in the numbers.
So were they produced sequentially or were there Fastbacks in between?
Yeah, so again, the car numbers that shall be assigned, Car 100, this was the 100th
car counted.
And the count would be influenced by the way that they were parked, which was influenced
by the way they were unloaded from trucks, which was influenced by the way that the order
they were built at Ford, San Jose.
So that's how the car, for example, car number three is the first 67 Shelby that was completed
by Shelby.
Right, right.
They weren't completed in serial number order.
428, dual quad, right, two 600 CFM Holley's on top of this.
Engine of course is called the 428 8V special interceptor.
It has roots with the police interceptor, but the 390 GT heads and 390 GT exhaust manifolds,
the mid-rise aluminum intake, the dual floor barrels, that made that package known as
a special interceptor on Ford engineering documents.
Okay.
Awesome.
The owners of these two cars talking about them, obviously, Little Reds, Iconic, we got
the dual superchargers.
I'm going to give you a little trivia.
Yeah, give me some trivia.
Oops, sorry.
This car's nickname, Little Red, came from a gentleman by the name of Fred Goodell.
And Fred was effectively an engineer from Ford that got dispatched to Shelby when
they ran at all these launch problems, right?
Barbara Glass doesn't fit.
Send someone out to fix it.
Goodell as an engineer never liked the multi-carboration setup that Shelby was doing on these cars.
But when this coupe was first used for engineering, and I should say that, remember, these cars
were originally designed for public relations duties, but they decided they weren't going
to make more, so they used it for engineering.
When Shelby first engineered this car and had fun with it, they strapped two McCulloch-Axton
Cobra superchargers on this 428 dual-quad setup.
When Shelby, American, showed this car in May at the Custom Car Show at the Los Angeles Memorial
Sports Arena, they called it Big Red.
Oh, okay.
So Shelby referred to this car as Big Red.
Later on, as 68 Production was nearing, Fred Goodell, of course, got his way and they deleted
the dual-quad setup.
68s were going to be a single-four barrel, and when they did that, they reduced this car
to a single blower, and perhaps passive-aggressively, Goodell re-nicknamed the car Little Red.
It goes from Big Red to Little Red when you lose a blower.
That's the actual story about this car.
Little Red, the name, Fred Goodell used it constantly.
That was his nickname for the car.
He was the one interviewed for all of the books that were written about the California
Special.
So that name has followed this car throughout its history.
As presented here today, Big Red.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
Now here's a very interesting car, your car, so tell us about it.
So car 139, the third car in the trio, the third GT500 built, was the PR car.
It was supposed to be the advertising car, the public relations car, with the documented
plan of producing more convertibles in the springtime.
Convertibles do sell better when the weather gets better.
Unfortunately, all of the problems that Shelby had with the fitment of the fiberglass, the
launch problems, the dealers, everything that was going on, the company really didn't
survive until that mid-year point.
Ford took over Shelby American in April of 67, and the more convertibles that were
supposed to be built, didn't get built.
That left this car the first of many as the only one.
It's really the same story as the coupe.
It's the first of what could have been many, but due to the twist of fate, only one, only
one.
Now was this rebody to look like a 68 for promotional materials?
I will absolutely not use the term rebody.
Not rebody.
The different hood.
Right.
So what happened?
So if you look at the coupe, you see slightly different styling on this car.
Yeah.
All right.
You see some bright work added around the grille.
You see the inboard high beams move to the outboard position.
You see the louvers added to the hood, which was these things were all necessary
to help the cooling of the GT500 air-conditioned cars.
The different tail panel painted silver.
Okay.
All right.
And these features were all things that Shelby American was considering for their vision
of 68.
Okay.
So just like 66 was incremental to 65, 68 was going to be incremental to the 67s.
Little bit more bright work, little bit of wood grain on the interior, maybe a few
safety features as mandated federally.
The convertible evolved the same path as did a bunch of other engineering cars that we've
documented.
Right.
So if they're not going to serve their PR duty, they're going to become engineering
cars.
And that's what happened.
They went through a number of iterations.
The convertible would have gone through the same iterations, albeit maybe slightly
tweaked that this car did.
Just like 544 car that everyone calls the Super Snake, that car was a 68 engineering
car.
With the outboards, Loverhood and Chrome Grille, those were all on the same document, which
I'll be glad to show you.
So this car evolved, as I like to say, its second chapter in life is as a 68 engineering
car, Shelby's vision.
The third chapter, as you brought up, was after Ford took over and kind of threw
out Shelby's design and said, no, no, we need to do something more drastic.
Ford redesigned the 68.
At A.O. Smith built two sets of fiberglass, which included the front end, the hood, the
tail light panel, and the center console.
Two sets were shipped out to California, and Shelby's instructions were bolt one
set on a fastback, bolt the other set on a convertible, and take lots of pictures.
That was the third chapter.
So they referred to this as a 68-photographic car at that time.
The fourth chapter, which we've learned in the last few years, is that
after these fixed assets were relocated to Dearborn, this car got loaned out to a
Michigan-based oil company called Leonard Oil, and it participated in the SCCA
sanctioned press-iron-regardless rally.
Wow, okay.
So that's the fourth chapter in this life, and then somewhere from Michigan, this
car ended up in the Chicagoland area, and then spent its entire life in the
Chicago area until we acquired it in 2009.
And when you acquired it, did you know exactly what it was, or did you have suspicions?
I knew that it was special because it was a dual-quad convertible.
Okay.
How many dual-quad convertibles do we know of as car collectors?
Right.
You got the Mopars, you got the Hemmys.
Yeah.
Right?
So I knew it was special, but all the books that had been written about it
called it a prototype.
And they said it was always designed to be a one-off.
If you read the stories, always a one-off, it always looked like a 68.
It was supposed to be crushed when they were done with it because that's what they do with
prototypes.
Right.
Right.
Well, they were all wrong.
Right?
These were regular production cars.
All three of them.
The rumors on this one were that it was crushed.
Right.
Right?
Yeah.
So they were regular production cars.
No reason to waste perfectly good money.
All of them were returned back to essentially assembly line specs and sold off through
the dealer network and ended up in public hands just as they originally intended
to do.
So you got the car.
What did you have to do to it to get it back to be totally accurate to the period, I guess,
the original?
Well, we had to do a lot of research, a lot of discovery, kind of created a dream team
of experts that all voiced their opinions, of course.
And we knew that no matter what, it was an early-built San Jose Mustang, right?
This car was built in November 1966.
So it would have left San Jose as a November 66 Mustang convertible with a 428 dual-quad
special interceptor.
Everything on the car was going to be a November-built 66 Mustang.
Then we know it went to Shelby.
And Shelby would have built the car just as they would have built every other car
during that same time period.
It would have had the one-piece front end, the one-piece grille, the in-board high
beams with the band clamps, right?
It would have had all of the early car features, right?
The only thing it doesn't have were the high-level brake and turn signal lights and the air
extractors.
We'll call them scoop lights.
Yeah, right.
Because there are none.
Right, there are none.
There's no C-fellows.
Yeah.
Wow, that's incredible.
All right.
Well, that's very, very...
It also doesn't have the roll bar that was common in...or in 1968.
So what we found, actually, speaking of roll bars, is in both the coupe and
the convertible, right?
It's got a bunch of 20-something-year-olds working at the hangers, right?
Yeah.
They're going down the list, like, okay, put the stripes on, put the emblems on, put
a roll bar in.
Wait a second.
They're fast-back roll bars.
They don't fit.
Oh, right.
So we believe they went over to the race hangers, grabbed a couple cop roll bars, drilled
eight holes in the floor and mounted them in both these cars because all those holes
were still in the floors of these cars when they were found.
Oh, wow.
Oh, that's very cool.
That had very similar holes was the 67 Red GT500 emblem advertising car, V738-2.
Same holes in the floor.
Oh, wow.
So they all...one car tells a story, put together.
That's a group, right.
Put together.
You got a whole book.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
Well, tell me, I know you're tracking these 67s really well.
What's the website where...
Oh, all of my research, all of our collective research is published at 1967-shelbyresearch.com.
Awesome.
Well, so this is a car podcast, but we also like watches.
What do you got on there?
Oh, an old Rolex Daytona.
That's a very nice one.
Very nice colors.
Thank you.
Well, thanks for being on the collective car podcast, buddy.
My pleasure.
All right.
So I've got the owner here of quite a special car.
So Craig, tell us about this car.
I know it's quite a journey to find it and you're quite a Shelby guy.
I am.
I named my daughter Shelby.
Carol was a very good friend.
I'd known him since my brother did the movie Grand Prix with Phil Hill and he traveled all
through Europe with all the legends and they used to come by our house.
And I got to know Carol and then later in life, spent a lot of time with Carol.
So very much a fan, probably 30 cars in our collection, our Shelby's quite a few prototypes.
But this one and the Green Hornet are probably the two most famous because they're
nickname cars for a reason.
This car he built when he came back, actually these three cars, all built at San Jose.
This one, he took this coupe and started to use it as a development car.
And this is what makes it so special.
So like the Super Snake Cobra, he put two blowers on it producing 600 horsepower.
All the research we did and when we found the car, we realized and subsequently Brian Stiles
helped us realize everybody said it was crushed.
It just went to be another prototype.
So it's a 67 prototype and a 68 prototype because the end goal was they want to make
5,000 fuel injected coupes and 5,000 supercharged cars.
And they decided two blowers was too much and I can attest to that.
This thing will smoke the tires for a football field and I've done it.
It's everything that they had in their engineering tied out to when we put this car back together.
We found the gentleman that built the car at Shelby America.
So this is truly a one off because it's the only one ever built at Shelby America
in the hangar built in secret behind curtains and the story, the guy that built this
is identical to the story, the guy that built the Super Snake with two blowers
done in secret and behind curtains.
These were his pet projects.
The coupe and the convertible both share connolly leather seats and Ferrari carpets.
And this is his, I just beat you at Le Mans.
I'm going to kick your ass on the street next.
This is his car.
So I remember when I'm a huge Mustang Shelby guy, I remember reading Mustang monthly decades
ago when this car was like found what like in New Mexico or the desert somewhere.
This one in Texas.
In Texas.
And if I'm correct that initially they weren't quite sure what they had.
It took some while to dig into it to put it all together.
No, we found it.
And here's why nobody found the car.
It never had a Shelby number on it.
Oh, okay.
I did the green Hornet.
We have inventory sheets that show, yeah, it's rare in a lot of ways.
It's the only 428 to 4 barrel air conditioned coupe ever to come off the assembly a lot.
Right, right.
Took the air conditioning off and put two blowers on it.
Originally it had inboard headlights and it overheated.
They moved the headlights out.
They put one of the first louvered hoods on the car so it could breathe.
And it just kept evolving.
They blew up the transmission.
They blew up the engine.
We have all the paperwork for that.
They built a cast iron rear tail housing to beef up the output shaft of the transmission
and beefed up the engine and got it to live.
Yeah.
So this is what it is.
It's an R&D car but it was also Carol Shelby's and Fred Gadel's car to go out and terrorize
the streets.
So where was this in production?
When were they building this car?
The car came off the San Jose assembly line, I have to ask Brian, I remember November I
believe.
About 67.
66.
66.
For the 67 model.
So these were ordered right when and what we found, and I got a whole book, we did
a whole documentary on this.
It's also on our YouTube channel but when we found it with no front fenders on it
we took it and we unveiled it at the Henry Ford Museum after finding the car.
We found the car using the private investigator and Facebook and then we crowdsourced to get
information from anybody that ever worked.
And the first day we crowdsourced and it was on the front page of USA Today, a guy
on our Facebook page said, my dad built that car and he said it's crushed.
Oh wow.
About a month later he actually showed his dad the pictures of the car and he goes
that's a little red.
Oh wow.
So in the whole world he retired in Phoenix, Arizona.
So he came over and saw the car and he validated the car and everything that was on it.
But when we unveiled it at the Henry Ford Museum, Kevin Marty noticed something I never
noticed on the inside of the fender well in yellow crayon, it said Shelby.
All these cars were Shelby's coming down the San Jose assembly line to be the
three prototypes, the prototype for the fastback, the coupe and the convertible, ultimately
they only ended up making fastbacks that year.
They never made coupes other than the next one which was the green hornet which had IRS
independent rear suspension and this car ended life as a 68 with a ton of prototype parts
on it when we found it with a one-off console, one-off gauges and it ended life with
one blower and four-wheel disc brakes and sequential taillights and all that's in the Ford paperwork.
And then so this would be the earliest out for headlight 67 Shelby.
I believe so.
Right?
It might be like.
They did it right away.
Yeah.
It had all the brackets and you could see the holes.
When we got it it had these one-off hood pins which when we went and found the
actual drawings and all the parts it had all the pre-production 68 parts out.
So I built another car using all those parts so there's the another one of these, it doesn't
have the same van, it is not a real car.
But the car when it was found had so many 68 prototype parts I built a car to show what
this car ended life as.
One blower on it as a 68 with disc brakes.
Pretty cool car.
Do you mind opening the inside?
Sure.
Shelby inventory stickers just like it had.
So this is the Conley leather you said?
Yep.
Conley leather in it.
See the carpets.
Wow, very nice.
So those are the FU carpets, right?
Yes.
Everybody said that it was originally painted Ferrari red but the car had never been
repainted, it had been spotted.
Now this doesn't look like the factory.
They did this so this was an option, it was actually in a can and they would spray it and
you put these on and that was still on it when we found the car.
So it's almost like a bed liner.
Yep.
Instead of a vinyl roof.
Interesting.
In the Shelby notes it denotes upgrade to 68 exterior, sunny working on hood and lower
body panels.
Here's update the convertible and the fast back.
They did those, then they did little red, it's in the inventory sheets.
Well, and you got someone like Brian who's a bird dog when it comes to 67s.
Here it is in the inventory sheet.
It's flasher.
Yeah.
The register had blocked out the VIN number.
We actually got one of the inventory sheets without the block out of the VIN number.
Here's the original build orders for the car.
Here's when he blew it up.
He tried charging Ford $700 to R&R the engine.
Sounds like Shelby, right?
They denied him.
Here's the build sheet for the car.
Wow.
Yeah, look at all this.
Just incredible.
The stories where it was, the car was definitely known to be crushed.
This journalist drove the car from when it was at Riverside and talked about outrunning
the police in it.
Oh, yeah.
Look at these pictures.
First owner pictures.
So this one was given to me by the guy that built it, the only color picture.
He gave me this picture, which is the only known picture with EXP500 on it, outboard headlights.
It's license plate that it lived with in 67 trim.
Here's a picture of the engine in 68 trim with one blower, and that's the way he bought
it from the dealership.
It got crunched a little.
Are those cougar wheels on it?
Yeah.
Okay.
Spiders?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's the way.
This is what I remember.
That's what I remember.
It's an EXP500, but in 67 form.
And here it is as we found it.
This is all the unveiled it.
That is the coolest logo right there, isn't it?
That's a one-off badge, a one-off badge, a one-off badge.
Here's what we had at the Henry Ford Museum with Aaron Walter, who built the car.
The gentleman who restored the car and helped me find the car.
He was very instrumental.
We unveiled them with the green hornet, little red.
Ford made me, when I bought the Ven 1 charity car, they painted it the same, and then they
built another 131 to match.
So this is sort of the story.
Yeah.
Restoring the car.
It got a little risk.
Yeah.
It's a piece of automotive history.
It was a car that everybody knew was crushed and gone, and it was hiding in plain sight.
That's amazing, Craig.
I used to drive around, and I asked the original owner in the documentary, what did you buy it
for?
Well, I needed a utility wagon.
You didn't buy a pickup truck?
He goes, no, I want something a little sportier.
What did you haul around?
He goes, well, I want hunting.
I go, what did you hunt?
Elk.
I go, where'd you put the elk?
Well, this thingy in the back helped hold them on, so I would just lay them
across the back.
And at Christmas time, I'd tie the Christmas tree to the top of the car.
Elk lid slash carcass holder.
Yes.
Up like that.
This car was driven thousands of miles with EXP500 on it, sold at the dealership with EXP500
on it.
Yeah.
You'd never do that nowadays.
No.
But the accountants wanted the money, so they sold the cars.
Well, so I appreciate you sharing this story.
This is a podcast about cars, but also a little bit about watches.
What are you wearing today?
Actually, I'm wearing a Cartier black.
Tomorrow I'll be wearing a Ublo that I designed for the Bugatti that I have.
That's a one-off watch.
You got to get the car with the watches.
The car with the watch.
Thank you.
I have little red watches.
I just didn't bring one.
We made 100 watches for little red and green hornet with actual metal from both cars
and when we're storing them.
That's incredible, man.
Thanks for being on the Clutch of Car podcast, buddy.
Thank you.
I appreciate you sharing such a historic car.
Thank you.
So Brian gave us a nice overview of the first three GT500s, but we actually have the owner
of the very first one.
So Eric Johnson, thank you for sharing your incredible car here at the Quayle.
Oh, you're welcome.
What can I tell you about it?
Well, tell me, like, how did you get the car?
When you got the car, did you know the significance of it?
Did you have to restore the car, like a little bit about your history with this
particular car?
I had gotten interested in these cars in the summer of 1979 when I was 16 years old.
We actually found this car at the World of Wheels Car Show in Denver, Colorado in
Thanksgiving weekend of 1979.
Started talking with the gentleman that owned the car at the time and worked a deal
out with him to buy it and got it a month later.
So now when you bought it, did you know the significance of it?
No.
No.
So you just bought it because you wanted a 67?
I wanted a red 67 GT500 with an automatic transmission, and that's what this was.
And I knew enough about the cars at the time that there was something unique about
the serial number plate on this car.
And so I got to doing research on my own and contacting the National Shelby Club members
and president and the registrar for the 67s at the time, and to cut to the chase by
about mid-summer, early fall of 1982, we had a pretty good idea of what the car was.
Wow, way back then.
And once we got that figured out, the car became a keeper.
So I've had it since I was 16.
Oh my gosh, what an incredible car to have at any point in your life, much less when
you're 16.
My mom and dad took out a second mortgage on their house and loaned me $8,500 to buy
this car.
Did they just love you that much or they just had such bad judgment?
Which one?
My parents put an awful lot of trust in me, and I can't say enough good things about my
parents.
So this is a red Shelby.
How old were you when you got your first ticket?
I've never gotten a ticket in this car.
What?
Seriously.
Oh my gosh.
I've deserved lots of tickets, but I've never gotten a ticket in this car.
Wow.
All right.
Do you mind opening the hood for us?
Is that okay?
Yeah, I can do that.
Why don't you pop it open?
Let's get in on this car.
Now you can see the early cars had the center headlights in 67.
All right, let's look at the VIN over here.
So when you look at the VIN, it's 100, right?
Yes.
So what makes that the very first 500?
500s were new for 1967, the first 99 serialized cars that Shelby American for that production
year are all GT350s.
So the 100th car ended up being the first GT500.
Wow.
Do you mind opening the door for us?
You can leave that up if you'd like.
Fiberglass hood, all the great vents.
This is, in my mind, the prettiest Shelby ever built.
So you've got the rally pack gauges underneath, factory, but then you also have some secondary
ones just to make sure everything stays just right.
Exactly.
I used to track drive this car.
So I've got mechanical temp gauges for water, engine oil, and transmission temp gauges.
Now I know the early cars had this side blink of light here.
I thought they were all 350s, but they're worse than 500s.
This car can be documented as having originally been built with the upper scoop lights because
this is the magazine test car.
In the February, 67 issues of car and driver and road and track.
And also the March 1967 issue of sports car graphic, when it's actually the cover car on
the March 67 issue of sports car graphic.
Okay.
And then those photos, you can see the scoop lights.
That's awesome.
So I see the signature on the glovebox door.
I've seen many, many Carroll Shelby signatures, but show me this one because this one's
really special.
All right.
So we've got the first GT500.
Your friend.
Your friend, Carroll Shelby.
Very nice.
He did that for me in December of 2007.
Okay.
Tell me about the license tag here.
Is that a reproduction of what was seen in the press photos?
Yes.
That's a reproduction of the plates that it was wearing during the magazine tests
in late 1966 and early 1967.
Well thank you for sharing such a wonderful car and being such a great caretaker for decades.
And I really enjoy seeing it.
Great.
Thank you.
I appreciate your interest in the car.
All right.
So I'm at the quail and I got really loud music behind me, but we're going to try
to make this work.
So I have Vern S's with me.
Hey, Vern, how you doing buddy?
Hey, good to see you Greg.
So what's so cool is that we're Facebook friends and you do a lot of really
cool stuff with Shelby's.
That's right.
So tell me exactly what do you do with Shelby's?
So I run a business called Vern and S's Classics, very kind of low volume, but very specialized
classic car dealerships that specialize in the 65 to 67 Shelby American product and
also about 68 to 7 as well.
So I love your Facebook posts because I'm a Mustang Shelby guy.
And every time you post stuff I'm like, oh my gosh, that thing's gorgeous.
Oh my gosh, that thing's gorgeous.
Oh my gosh, that thing's gorgeous.
Yes.
I do lots of memorabilia, lots of cars and just try to focus on really solid
examples of cars.
Speaking of which, you've got two amazing cars in your collection behind us.
Both are models.
Sure.
Yep.
And so for our listeners there's only what, 562, 350s for 1965, 36R models, and you are
the care-take care of two, not only two, but arguably the most famous Shelby Mustang,
I do that in quotes, Shelby Mustang in the world right behind us here.
So tell us about this car.
Yeah, so they're not my personal cars, but I take care of the owner and take
care of the cars for him, but this is 5R002.
It's kind of affectionately known as the Ken Miles R model.
This is the second GT350 ever built.
It's the first R model ever built.
Also known as the flying Mustang?
Also known as the flying Mustang.
This is the most expensive Mustang ever sold publicly.
They sold a couple times, around $4 million?
Yeah, a little short of $4 million.
Okay.
This car was the first R model.
It was the prototype for all R models.
It was the only R model that Ken Miles drove.
It won its debut at Green Valley Raceway in February of 1965, and it's just kind of a
very historic car.
Even though it looks very similar in a lot of ways to every other R model, to the
trained eye, almost everything about it is different.
There's actually very little that it shares with production R models.
Wow.
Okay.
Full competition Cobra engine, not actually a GT356 bolt engine.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
You know, the first three cars were received at Shelby American prior to any other cars.
Number one, two, and three.
The car that received Serial Number Three was actually the first car built.
It was a street car, and they needed a street car to do a bunch of PR work with.
This is Serial Number Two, and then Serial Number One was actually the second comp
car built on the car that was campaigned by Jerry Titus at the end of the 1965
season.
Now, people wonder where the R comes from.
If you look at the VIN, let's get the VIN down here.
This is the most famous part.
Yeah.
So 5R002.
5R002, it's not focusing.
So S is for street, that's the 562, and then R is for the race.
And back then, you know, it wasn't a marketing campaign, right?
It was like, well, this car is for the street, this car is for the race.
Today, when you see an R model, it's a marketing exercise, obviously a product
exercise.
But today, they're like, all right, this one's for what purpose?
All right.
No, these were real race cars.
So these were totally.
If you want to come around to the interior, one unique feature of this
particular car is that it has fixed side windows with this bracket here.
The windows do not go down on it.
Yeah.
So super high.
These had what Shelby American referred to as a fireproof interior, meaning there
was nothing to catch on fire inside of the car.
So no carpet, no headliner, no visors.
No dash pad, no dash brackets on the dash pad.
So these R models were built as total delete cars.
They never had interiors.
So I about burned my hand just touching that right there.
Yeah.
It's a pretty hot ride.
Now, in February of 1965, when this car made its debut with Ken Miles, he actually,
in that particular race, he loved these windows because they retained the heat
and it was cold in Dallas, Texas and North Texas where the race was.
But eventually these windows would come off the car and they would just leave
the bracket there to identify it in period photos because this car would get so hot
being raced because the windows didn't go down.
There's no insulation inside the car.
So all 65s had the rear seat delete with the integrated roll bar, shoulder
harnesses, racing seats, actually a specific chrome fire extinguisher
that's unique only to our models.
Oh, wow.
So our models had the roll bar?
Yes, sir.
All our models had the roll bar.
Only two street cars were ordered with a roll bar from the factory.
So a roll bar is not necessarily our model unique, but it basically is.
Our models had a different plexiglass rear window, plexiglass rear window
that exhausted heat out of the interior.
This car is also immediately identifiable because it's the only
our model that had these.
You know, in this car, they were they were figuring everything out
for the first time.
So this is a unique way of mounting this this rear window.
Now, is this a vent up here?
It is.
It's there's absolutely no totally open, totally open.
Exhausted heat out of it and also aerodynamic benefits to it.
Also, they deleted the vent windows on them.
They all had magnesium wheels.
They had door panel delete on them.
This car still has.
Oh, wow.
Shelby's did not usually retain, but this car has its kids
original warranty that record motor company.
Now, is this reproduction?
Yes, it is.
But you got all the info?
Yes, sir.
Yeah.
They're all K code original cars.
This car was after it was raced by Shelby,
was sold to an engineer for Ford named Bill Clawson, who
mostly raced it up in the north, most notably a Waterford
Raceway, and eventually found its way into Mexico
and was found in Mexico and retained in the Shelby
American collection in Boulder until it was restored.
So I I I've had is it Steve that runs the.
Steve Bulk.
Yeah, he's been on the podcast before.
Now, I remember when this car was found because I had Mustang
Monthly and it was a big deal when this thing was found.
Sure.
So painted bumpers.
Is that our model?
That is only this car.
So this car ran painted bumpers.
I've never seen that.
I think that was probably something they were trying to
adhere to regulations and they realized that the
regulators didn't care about that in SCCAP production.
34 gallon long tank, long range fuel tank, extra
electric fuel pump.
It has a it has a mechanical fuel pump on the engine
and then a backup electrical fuel pump in the in the
rear of it.
Yeah, you see the splash guard around the gas tank, which is
in the trunk.
You can another very unique thing is that you can see that
the insides of the quarter panels don't have these cars
had seam sealer, but they did not have sound deadener.
The only area in our model that does have sound deadener
is inside the doors because the subcontractor at Ford
that produced doors for Ford could not delete the
sound deadener.
But this car has no sound deadener in anywhere else
to light it up as much as possible.
And the Mustang judging world, this yellow glue
here is called snake snot.
Yes, right, right?
Snake snot.
And that's how messy it was from the factory.
This car has been restored to perfectly replicate exactly
as it was built.
So even stuff like that where you might look at it and
think that it's, you know, poorly put together, that's
how they were back in the day.
The same thing goes for the weather stripping in the
doors, the glue for the weather stripping was just
spread on pretty haphazardly.
It makes sense.
It's called snake snot on a coat, you know, a
Shelby.
Right.
Now, the other thing is, what are the autographs?
You can also see how the stripes are painted, by
the way.
Oh, yeah, that's just normal overspray.
That's how, that's how they work.
Now we've got Kent Wells autograph.
Who else do we have here?
We got Jerry Schwartz, Bernie Kretschbauer, Peter Brock.
Nice.
And Chuck Cantwell.
Wow.
All right, we've got to get all those guys with the
original Mustang shop that built these.
We've got to get the picture of the, yep, the
reason it's called the flying Mustang here.
All four wheels off the ground.
All four wheels off the ground.
Green Valley Raceway 1965.
Wow.
So do you get this car out and have it on the
track ever?
Yeah, so actually after, after this weekend, we're
taking it to Sonoma for SAC 50, the SAC Convention.
And this car and the Charlie Kempar model, which is
another one of the 36 GT 350Rs, will be doing
parade laps there.
And people will be able to hear it.
This car runs two and a half inch straight
through side exhaust.
And it's, it's quite the engine that's in it too.
It's, it's really an exciting car to hear it
run.
Tell us about the racing team sticker here.
That was a racing team that was kind of dreamed
up by Bill Neal and Carroll Shelby called the
Tirlingua Racing Team.
Tirlingua, Texas was kind of a ghost town that they
would sort of vacation to and raise hell where they
wouldn't get in trouble for doing that.
So a bunch of the race team would go down there
and have fun.
That's just this, it's a, it's a, it's a rabbit
that is supposedly giving a, giving a finger to
the competition.
It's what that logo is.
So it was sort of a fun thing that they had.
And that ended up kind of being the symbol of it
was on this, I believe this car is one of
the first cars to ever run that decal.
And then eventually that became sort of the symbol
also the Trans-Am team in 1967 with Jerry Titus.
All right.
So the most special Shelby Mustang, Mustang,
whatever in the world, what's the one behind it?
So I just must point out, we have, I don't know
how many R models we have here, but this is quite
a collection of incredible cars, right?
Yeah, we've got three of them right here.
That's 5R101 over there, the 1, 2, 3 car.
This is 5R538.
This is the Charlie Kemp car.
This car is a later production, 65 GT through 50R.
It's most identifiable by its orange R model front apron.
Charlie Kemp was a very well-known racer.
Later, after he raced this car, he would race
in 917 and K&M competition.
Big Ferrari racer, big Ferrari collector.
This is probably his most famous car he ever raced.
So this is more the production, quote unquote,
production R model?
This would be a production R model.
So, you know, it looks very similar in a lot of ways,
but for example, this car has the stock export brace.
This car does not actually have an export brace.
5R002, because it wasn't ready at the time.
Right.
This car has a crank driven tachometer.
This car has the typical electric tach
that the normal R models used.
Not that any R models are actually normal.
They only made 36 of these things.
So where's the tach?
I don't see it on the dash.
This does not have a tach.
So it's yeah, it does not have a padded dash.
It has a total delete.
So it has these cars don't have even dash brackets
for the dash or a glove box door or a glove box door.
They have radio delete.
Yeah, and then they had a switch on the dash for the horn.
This is how our models were delivered.
They actually had that 5R002 is not this way,
but this car has a standard seat on the passenger side.
Right.
And that's just the way they were racing bucket for the dryer.
This car has a 15 inch production steering wheel
where 5R002 is an early car, so it is 16 inch wheel.
But they are very similar cars.
I mean, to the untrained eye, they would look the exact same.
So the street version has the tach on the dash.
That's right.
So the race version has a unique gauge layout in general,
all circular gauges, whereas the street car has the typical
sweeping 65 speedometer.
And then it has what like a scallop right here
called a gauge pot that has the tach of the oil pressure gauge.
Now are all 36 known?
At least the histories of the 36 are known.
I mean, the thing about our models is that they are run hard
and put away wet.
Also, you can see here that this car has the typical
our model windows that move up and down by the strap.
That's how they do that.
Production our model.
Oh, that's awesome.
But yeah, there's the snakes.
Not snakes.
So when it comes to our models, I mean, there's the
histories of all of them are known.
They got beat up pretty heavily in racing.
So it's pretty unusual to see cars that survive
in their entirety.
So how many of the 36 are missing?
Do we know, you know, I don't know an exact total,
but maybe maybe it depends on what you mean by missing
because some of them are just known to have been destroyed or scrapped.
So there's there's one or two that are truly missing that
people don't know where they ended up.
But then there's there's five or six that people know
it did not exist anymore.
And then there's cars in different states and all
different states of originality.
So awesome.
Well, thanks for the tour of these incredible cars.
You got it.
But how can the listeners connect with you?
www.vernanestasclassics.com and just my personal accounts
on Facebook and Instagram.
So it's where I try to where you post some really cool pictures
to sell some used cars.
All right.
Yeah, some used cars.
They're all used car salesmen, aren't they?
That's right.
All right.
Thanks, buddy.
Thanks.
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