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 1967 Shelby G.T. 500 Convertible

 

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Home » Research » 1967 SAI Company Cars & Engineering Vehicles List
 
 

By analyzing the attributes of 1967 G.T. company cars and engineering vehicles listed on original Shelby American documents, including the March 31, 1967 Vehicle Tax Register, the July 31, 1967 Fixed Asset Ledger and volume 48 (page 54) of The Shelby American, we were able to cross-reference and populate additional information about the company cars. The second table is sorted by California Inventory Number and populated mainly from the handwritten Ionia Move Planning documents (Jobs Yet to be Completed in California, Disposal of Prototypes and Cars Remaining in California). A few pieces were gathered from the 1969 Shelby Automotive Engineering Car List document. The SAAC Shelby 2011 World Registry also provided additional facts.

The ultimate goal of this exercise would be to create a single consolidated table that cross-references each company car by up to three control numbers that may have been assigned. These include the serial number (VIN), Shelby American (California) inventory number (xxx), and the Shelby Automotive (Michigan) inventory number (yySTzxx).

After reviewing this table, you might be left wondering if anyone that worked for Shelby didn't have a "company car." At ~ $4,000 per car, and counting at least 66 cars 1967 model year G.T. cars with a VIN, we're looking at assets exceeding a quarter million dollars. Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that the operation lost approximately three quarters of a million dollars that year [ref: Ford 1968 Racing Program presentation].

1967 Company Cars, Including Engineering & Public Relations

Click here for the Company Car Cross-Reference, and visit the discussion topic in our 1967ShelbyResearch group

Legend

CA = California Asset Number (xxx)
MI = Michigan Asset Number (yySTzxx)

Transmission: M4 = 4-Speed Manual, A = Automatic
Options: AC = Air Conditioning, EE = Exhaust Emissions,
SC = Supercharger
Blue = callout for GT 350
Purple = Working Theory
Bold = certainty

Notes

The first two 1967 Shelby G.T. concept cars were built in September 1966. Shelby American employees Paul Kunysz and Lonnie Brannon were two of the key people working on the project under the direction of Jack Khory and Frank Martin. Paul, who shared his commendation letter with us, recalled that one car was built as a G.T. 500 and the other as a G.T. 350. One was painted "red" and the other was "lime." We know the red G.T. 500 was an eXperimental Ford test mule and never received a Shelby VIN. Both cars were photographed for 1967 advertising and marketing materials. Once Ford terminated the Shelby program, the red G.T .500 remained with the the small staff that was related to Ionia, MI to form Shelby Automotive. One there, the red G.T. 500  was assigned inventory number 67ST102. Eventually this car was donated to the Michigan State Prison Unit as a permanent shop car. The donation provided a tax break as compared to crushing the vehicle. The lime gold car might be #0176, since it was the only car built early enough to be fitted with fiberglass and used as a photographic car in September 1966.

Two-inch (2") square decals were affixed to both lower corners of the front windshield of Shelby American company cars, including those in engineering, public relations and classified as 'pool' cars. Photographic cars would have most likely not have had the decals for obvious reasons.

Internal-use, often handwritten, documents from Shelby American would typically reference specific cars by their inventory number rather than their VIN. 

Note: The decal numbers are NOT chronological to the car's VIN or to either of the car's (2) build date(s). This fact leads me to theorize that inventory numbers weren't assigned as the cars were being built over the course of time, but rather were they assigned all at once -- on a particular date.  Perhaps with was part of the 'structure' added by Ray Gedddes and/or Fred Goodell when Ford took over? I wonder if the assignment of numbers to company cars might coincide with the same time that "Z"s were additionally stamped to VINs of regular inventory cars, and the sales network was expanded to include non-franchised dealers ("Continuation" Invoices). The latter was circa late April 1967 -- when I have theorized that Ford took over the assets and liabilities of Shelby American, Inc.

The new Shelby Automotive (Ionia, MI) also 'branded' engineering cars on the windshield, including those cars that were transferred from Los Angeles. The Ionia inventory numbers were formatted as yySTzxx, where yy is model year (67,68,69), z is also an indicator of the model year (1=67, 2=68, 3=69) and xx is the sequence. It's probable that the 'S' stood for Shelby and the 'T' for Metuchen.
 

 

 
     
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