SNAKE CATCHER!

SHELBY AND FORD GO HAND IN HAND, BUT THE 69 GT MODELS WERE THE END OF THE ROAD AS CARROLL WAVED GOODBYE, TO THE BLUE OVAL BRAND

- S DAVE MORLEY

It’s not quite the forgotten Shelby, but the 1969 GT350 and GT500 Mustangs don’t seem to have gained quite the same traction with collectors as the earlier 1967/68 (with its Eleanor aura) and the very first Shelby GT350s from 1965 onwards, based on the very pretty OG Stang.

Maybe it’s something to do with the whole 1969/70 Mustang having gained a few kilos and lost a bit of the styling purity of the earlier cars. Maybe it’s because this was the model that dropped the Cobra badge. Probably, though, it’s because these are the Shelby Mustangs that had the smallest amount of actual input from Carroll Shelby himself.

What happened there? Can’t say for sure. Maybe old Carroll was sick of playing the corporate game with Ford; maybe the canny chook farmer had outstayed his welcome at Dearborn (certainly, sales of the later Shelby Mustangs were down on previous years, and if there’s one thing a company like Ford will pick at, it’s slow sales). Whatever, Shelby officially cut ties with Ford in the summer of ’69, effectively making the ’69 GTs the last of the breed.

In a production sense then, there were no 1970 GT500s, but some leftover ’69s were sold as ’70 models to get them out the door. And not just in a marketing sense; apparently several hundred cars were given new VINs to make them officially a 1970 car. And get this, the FBI was actually in on it to make sure there was no monkey business in the re-VINning.

Meantime, if the ’69 looks a bit more corporate, that’s probably because it was. Ford’s styling department got hold of the Mustang for the ’69 model year and made it longer. A full four inches longer as it happened, and along with that devised a different front-end styling package from any other Mustang. Not everybody is a fan, of course, and the rear treatment is likewise polarising with its less than dainty detailing and use of Thunderbird-style tail-lights.