Car Of The Day: December 4, 2011

Today's car of the day is Shelby Collectibles' 1968 Shelby GT-500.

The Shelby Mustang is a high performance variant of the Ford Mustang which was built by Shelby American from 1965 through 1970. Following the introduction of the fifth generation Ford Mustang, the Shelby nameplate was revived in 2007 for new high performance versions of the Mustang.

For more information and pictures of the real car please visit: Shelby GT500

A bright pink Shelby Mustang.  I'm curious if Shelby actually made any real Mustangs in this color, or if they're taking some liberties with their own color palette.  One would think that since the diecast replicas are coming from the same company that manufactured the cars in the first place that they would be entirely authentic but I've never seen a real one in pink.  A big thanks to bunkerjim for tracking this one down for me!

For 1967, the GT 350 carried over the K-Code high performance 289 with a 'COBRA' aluminum hi-rise. The GT 500 was added to the lineup, equipped with the 428 Police Interceptor. These later cars carried over few of the performance modifications of the 1965–66 GT350s, although they did feature more cosmetic changes.

In September 1967, production was moved to the A.O. Smith Company of Ionia, Michigan, under Ford control. Shelby American had substantially less involvement after this time.

For 1968, the Cobra name was applied to both models, and they were now marketed as the Shelby Cobra GT 350 and the Shelby Cobra GT 500. In February 1968, the Cobra GT 500-KR "King of the Road" debuted; under the hood was a 428 cubic-inch Cobra Jet V8 which was rated at 335 horsepower (250 kW).

In 2002, Carroll Shelby sold a license to a company called Unique Performance in Farmers Branch, Texas, to produce the GT500E, a Shelby based on the "Eleanor" 1967 GT500 featured prominently in the 2000 movie Gone in 60 Seconds, starring Nicolas Cage. Other new Shelbys followed, including the GT350SR and GT500SR. Each of these new Shelbys is given a Shelby VIN.

On November 1, 2007, Unique Performance was raided by the Farmers Branch Police Department due to VIN irregularities and subsequently declared bankruptcy, which effectively ended the Shelby continuation "Eleanor" production.