7 Fascinating Facts on the History of the Shelby Mustang
Aside from the Mustang badge itself, there’s no name more synonymous with the Ford pony car than Shelby. Especially not when it comes to performance. Just ask Ford, which is why they decided to bring back the nameplate as an addition to the new line-up of Mustangs.
For many, the name Shelby means even more than performance. It’s also a level of deep respect for the legendary Carroll Shelby and everything he’s done to improve the cars over the years.
Yet a lot of people don’t really know the history of how the first Shelby came to be, which is why a recent Hot Rod report struck such a cord with us here at The Mustang Source.
Focused on one of the very first Shelby Mustangs, the piece is loaded with interesting facts about the car that you should really know. But if you’re strapped for time, we pulled seven things from the story that we think every Mustang fan would appreciate.
1. The development of the first Shelby Mustangs began in 1964 with two Mustang coupes sent to Shelby’s shop in Venice, California.
2. The initial team for the Shelby Mustang program included Ken Miles, Bob Bondurant, Phil Remington, and Ford’s chief suspension engineer, Klaus Arning.
3. To this day, nobody knows what ever happened to the first two coupes used to develop the original Shelby Mustang.
4. The first two production Shelbys were built as competition models (R-models).
5. The very first Shelby (pictured) was initially identified as “SFM5001” — as denoted by a hand-scrawled marking above the firewall.
6. Later, the first Shelby Mustang’s identification was officially changed to SFM5S003 to be sold as a production model.
7. Mark Hovander is the current owner of the first Shelby Mustang.
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via [HotRod.com]