1969 Shelby GT500 convertible

This car, Lot 30, sold for $128,800, including buyer’s premium, at Bonhams’ Quail Lodge auction in Carmel, CA, on August 24, 2018.

I once heard someone refer to these ’69 and ’70 cars as “Fat Elvis” Shelbys. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I figure it’s right in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way. By 1969, the Shelby Mustang had grown up, grown out, and was now pushing maximum density for a race car, which it really wasn’t anymore.

That Elvis comparison got me thinking about the surprisingly short amount of time Shelby’s cars were around, considering the impact they had on the car world. Six short years is all it took for the Shelby Mustang to morph from a lean, mean SCCA B-production dominator to a bloated, but not underpowered, cushy cruiser trying to cater to a niche market and achieve mass appeal at the same time.

By 1969, Shelby Mustang was a household name, but no one really wanted to pony up for one. So how did the Shelby Mustang go from lean and mean to karate kicks for show in only six years?

Comfort over performance

The answer is that in 1968, Bunkie Knudsen took the helm at Ford and decided quickly to move the Shelby build in-house. Keep in mind, Shelby was a speed freak. If it wasn’t fast, he didn’t want it, and Ford was full of corporate bean-counters who swore they knew better that anyone. To them, no car was worth selling unless it almost pleased most of the people.

That watered-down mentality took the simple, stripped-down, street-legal race car that was the 1965 (and 1966) Shelby and added power steering and power brakes for 1967. Those compromises were accepted in the name of safety and sales, but by 1968, a laundry list of luxury options neutered the Shelby Mustang’s track cred and basically made it worthy of a shoulder shrug in the eyes of the track-going public. Simply put, at the price point, they were hard to move.

By late ’68, with the introduction of the ’69 model year, pricing and exclusivity were working against Shelby. For 1967, Ford had decided to make the optional big motor in all assembly-line Mustangs the 390-ci FE, so the 428-powered Shelby Mustangs still had the cubic-inch bragging right over production cars. For 1968, Ford decided to put the same 428 in the production cars when so optioned. Therefore, even the GT500 KR could not claim big-inch exclusivity anymore.

When it came to the 428-powered cars, even Shelby’s racing pedigree could not compete with the introduction of the Boss 429 and its NASCAR mystique. The 428’s performance was mainly low-end torque. It was not a high-revving engine designed for race duty. At the time, the racing 427 would have been the hot ticket in the ’67-and-up Shelby, but it was tight on tolerance and expensive to build. Ford had better bottom-line plans with the 428, and once again, the bean-counters won. Whether Shelby himself was sold on the 428 motor is up for debate. But at the end of the day, Shelby was on his way out and the writing was on the wall for the GT500.

End of an icon

Ford had taken over the stripped-down performance market that Shelby had created with the 1969 Boss 429. If the cubic-inch buyer wanted the Boss motor, he was going to spend north of $4,800, which was still less than a loaded Shelby. That effectively elbowed the Shelby Mustang aside. The Boss motor gave Hemi-level power and exclusivity by being only offered in the Mustang, and buyers knew it — it was the new hot ticket.

In mid-1968, a deal was struck with A.O. Smith to build the 1969 and 1970 Shelby Mustangs. A.O. Smith was already manufacturing the plastic body components for Shelby, and Ford figured they could capitalize on A.O. Smith’s manufacturing prowess and have them do the whole car, since much of it was aesthetic and not mechanical.

Ford tried to wring the last bit of profitability out of the Shelby Mustang, but alas, the buying public wasn’t buying. A total of 780 1969 models were sold off as 1970 models, and the Shelby Mustang unceremoniously came to a production close in a proverbial white jumpsuit with rhinestones.

All of this sounds a bit dramatic, I know. Heck, I like the looks of the 1969–70 production Mustang, but the Shelby looks a tad bloated for my tastes. The front end looks to be a Mopar design copy and has too many NACA ducts and fender scoops for me.

But even if they look cartoonish rather than functional, I can see why people like the last Shelbys. Our car was done in a nice Candy Apple Red with white knit vinyl upholstery and a big signature from Shelby himself on the sun visor, which you might expect, as the catalog copy stated the car was from his personal collection. In the fine print, however, that was retracted. The car is said to be mostly original and was once donated to the Shelby Museum.

A good buy, sized XL

According to the catalog pics, the car looks to be a decent driver with some occasional rattle-can restoration possible. The battery is modern and the cables are incorrect, which is fine, but implies that the car has not undergone a full restoration. But like many of you, I like stuff I can drive without the risk of unraveling an expensive restoration. The trunk-lid plastics fit like socks on a rooster, but that’s par with quality control for the time, as Ford was not investing in such frivolity for the Shelbys.

At $128,800, I’d call the car slightly well sold only because it was not restored. There was no big financial investment made by someone else prior to this sale. The ACC Pocket Price Guide pegs the value at around $110,000 with an automatic, which our subject car has.

Conversely, recent sales of 1969–70 Shelby convertibles show some higher sale prices than this. Not long ago, auction catalog estimates on some examples were over $200,000. Is this the softening of a market for a car that got a little soft around the waistline? I’m not sure yet, but stay tuned. I’ll call it well bought for now. What I do know is that it’s Elvis’s rhinestone-bedazzled jumpsuit, size XL, and no matter how garish, will always be loved and considered iconic. So will Shelby and his Mustangs.

(Introductory description courtesy of Bonhams.)