If you haven’t read part 1 about the GT500, click here.
As mentioned in part 1, these Mustangs came my way through my wife and a school acquaintance who noticed she drove a bright blue late model Mustang GT. The acquaintance mentioned that his father had collected Mustangs most of his life and that the family needed to get rid of several stored on various properties. After a year or more of discussion I was able to purchase a 71 J code 429CJ Mach 1 from the family. Eventually, the discussion moved on to the Shelbys on a family farm in the mid-west.
I was able to get the VIN numbers from the family and verified that they had a legitimate GT500 and GT350. About a year later and with only VIN numbers and vague recollections of the condition, I made a trip to the family farm and was able to check out the vehicles in person. As you can see in the pictures, they were stuffed in a barn down on the lowlands.
1 of only 2 buildings on several hundred acres, it contained a John Deere tractor, 2 Shelbys and a lot of dead mice. After finding the keys to the door and with the help of the owner’s son and some workers on the property, we were able to move the very heavy gate and fight our way through the yellow jackets to be greeted with a few familiar shapes covered with carpet, boxes and rodent corpses.
We pulled back the carpets and boxes to find 2 complete ’69 Shelbys in relatively good, if not filthy condition. We didn’t dare crawl under them to look at the chassis due to the boards with nails and ubiquitous rodent corpses.
I took a couple of hours to value them as-is, where-is and made an offer on the lot. The family slept on my offer and agreed the next morning.
The next day was busy, with coordinating a rental trailer and tow truck driver to pull the Shelbys out of the barn and haul them up to the house on the “bench” 200 feet above. Luckily we got a great tow truck driver named “Tank” that did the heavy lifting. He was patient and most of all careful with the cars. He remarked that he had driven past that barn for 30 years and had no idea those cars were there, he was quit enthusiastic about his job that day.
We first hauled the GT500 up to the house and Tank dropped it in front of my rental trailer. He and the owner’s son helped me load it up for my trip home.
After that we hauled the GT350 to the house and stored it in the garage next to the ’67 fastback, both to be picked up on another trip.
On my return trip with my friend Ronnie and with the help of the neighbors, we loaded the GT350 and ’67 fastback into his 2 car trailer and headed South. We had a good time, telling stories and overcoming the challenges of a long road trip. Besides the 6% grades and traffic, we had 2 blowouts on the trailer, one in Wyoming and another in Texas.
One guy at Discount tire asked if we were hauling horses in that trailer, we just looked at each other, smiled and said “yep”. Another asked a more pointed question, and before we knew it we were giving a mini tour of the cars and sharing tales of our adventure.
We all made it home mostly in one piece. After carefully going over the engine, brakes and electrical system, the GT350 fired right up! It is a very solid car with 58,003 miles on the odometer. It is 1 of 14 in Gulfstream Aqua with Black interior and a White top. It is currently at my detailer’s shop getting cleaned up before coming back home.
The pictures below are of a clean GT500 and still dirty GT350.
Again, I’d like to thank Matt, Ronnie, Brian, Debbie, Tammy and other Matt for all of their help through this journey.