A Rare 1968 Shelby GT500 Mustang Fastback's 54-Year Journey to Primetime

Shelby Rising
Heart of the Beast: 428ci Cobra Jet Big-Block
1968 Shelby GT500 Production Facts and Figures
What’s a 1968 Shelby GT500 Worth?
Shelby GT500 #00565 History
Shelby GT500 #00565 Last Spotted …
1968 Shelby GT500 Fast Facts
How to Watch the Mecum Auctions Harrisburg Event
Watch! Best Vehicles from Mecum Indianapolis 2022

The year 1968 represented a high point for Shelby American. Under the leadership of Carroll Shelby, in six years the company had risen from practically nothing to one of the world’s premier limited-production, high-performance manufacturers. Fifty-four years later, the 1968 Shelby GT500 is one of the most coveted collector cars from the muscle car era, and this Candy Apple Red fastback example will be up for bids at the Mecum Harrisburg auction, July 27-30, 2022, as lot number S113. It will surely prove to be a spectacle when it crosses the auction block on Saturday, July 30.

Knowledgeable Ford collectors will be paying close attention to this 1968 Shelby GT500 as it rolls in front of the hammer in Harrisburg. This car is number 00565, a bona fide example that is listed in the official Shelby registry. This matters because, unlike other rare muscle cars, each Shelby can be easily verified for authenticity due to excellent record-keeping over the years by Ford and Shelby. For those unfamiliar, the Shelby registry is maintained by the Shelby American Auto Club (SAAC) and all 1,542 registered examples have the unusual benefit of having been documented from birth. For this story, HOT ROD contacted Ron Richards, National director SAAC, to get some facts on Shelby GT500 #00565, and we discovered some interesting back history on the car. But first, some Shelby background.

Shelby Rising

After an illustrious driving career crowned by a win at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1959, Carroll Shelby began transitioning to car building for health reasons. Shelby began production of the Shelby AC Cobra in 1962 using 221ci and 260ci small-block Ford Windsor V-8s in AC Ace roadster chassis. Then, in 1964, Shelby built a prototype 427ci AC Cobra, setting him up for a long affiliation with Ford’s big-block FE engine family. Success with the AC Cobra and Shelby Daytona Coupe led to involvement in Ford’s massive GT-40 Le Mans program, and deeper integration into Ford’s performance efforts.

a rare 1968 shelby gt500 mustang fastback's 54-year journey to primetime

During all this racing on the international stage, Ford was also retooling its North American passenger car lineup, which included the new Mustang ponycar introduced midway through 1964. Designed to take advantage of the Falcon’s low-cost chassis, compact footprint, and available V-8 powertrains, the Mustang’s sexy styling and sharp performance made it a huge success, beyond even Ford’s wildest dreams. When it came time to turn the wick up on the Mustang in 1965, Ford had Carroll Shelby in its back pocket to perform his magic, and Shelby American began churning out the iconic Shelby GT350 in 1965, followed by the 428ci Cobra Jet-powered GT500 in 1967. The GT500 was built by Shelby American through the 1968 model year, before Ford took over production of all Shelby models in 1969.

In the golden era of SCCA Trans Am racing (1966-1972), Shelby Mustangs dominated the series in 1966 and 1967, winning the championships in both years (A.J. Foyt in 1966 and Jerry Titus in 1967). Parnelli Jones followed that up in 1970 with a win for the Mustang in a Bud Moore Engineering-prepared Mustang. Like many kids growing up in the era, your author had an HO-scale Aurora slot car racetrack—a kit that featured Shelby Mustang GT350s on the box. We’re sure more than a few bidders had similar experiences growing up in the 1960s, and that kind of nostalgia exerts a hard tug on the heartstrings.

Heart of the Beast: 428ci Cobra Jet Big-Block

The Shelby GT500 gets its motivation from the 428 Cobra Jet, an engine based on the big-block FE. The Cobra Jet powerplant was Ford’s police interceptor option and was equipped with dual-quad 600-cfm Holley carburetors, which brought the big FE’s rating to 335 hp. Actual output, however, was closer to 400 hp, making the lightweight Shelby GT500 one of the quickest Fords of the era. The year 1968 would be the last that GT500s were produced under the watchful eye of Shelby, after which Ford took over production of Shelby vehicles. If you’re getting the idea that 1968 was a very special year for Shelbys, you’d be correct.

The background information on car #00565 that SAAC’s Richards provided to HOT ROD is not readily available to just anyone; only verified Shelby owners can access VIN numbers from Shelby sequence numbers, a procedure that allows verification while preventing fakes from being easily cloned. Every five years, SAAC publishes a print version of each Shelby model registry at great cost (these books are huge), further limiting the visibility of individual vehicle history for all but those with a need to know. As we approach the sale of Shelby GT500 #00565 at Mecum Harrisburg, we thought it was important for potential buyers and viewers to know the details, and SAAC agreed.

1968 Shelby GT500 Production Facts and Figures

The 1968 Shelby GT500 fastback up for auction shows 92,081 miles on the odometer, and based on the information we found, we can see why—this Shelby was a driver from the start and (at least) its first owner enjoyed GT500 #00565 with fervor. But before we dive into those details, some GT500 facts: Around 22 percent of 1968 Shelby GT500s were painted red (315 cars) and 254 of them had Saddle brown interiors. (Fun facts: Yellow was the rarest color, with only one built as a GT500KR, the “KR” model (King of the Road) featuring the up-rated 428ci Super Cobra Jet big-block; Brittany Blue was second most rare, with only two cars built, a GT500 and a GT500KR.) Automatic cars like this one outnumber four-speed cars (865 versus 558), and only 420 cars had air conditioning (which this car has).

What’s a 1968 Shelby GT500 Worth?

Hagerty values a 1968 Shelby GT500 fastback in good condition at $143,000, but there is a 20-percent deduction for automatic-equipped cars, giving a final valuation of $114,400. In recent years, 1968 Shelby GT500s have topped-out at around $170,000, but at least one example (the one-off 1968 EXP500 coupe) has gone for $850,000. Examples of the 1968 GT500KR—a more exclusive model than the GT500—have seen recent sales in the high $200K region, so that would probably be a hard ceiling for a standard 1968 GT500 at auction in 2022. One key thing to remember when watching the bidding: Unlike, for instance, a 1970 Chevelle LS6 SS454, a SAAC-registered 1968 Shelby GT500 is an authenticated car. Without a very sophisticated scheme, it’s nearly impossible to build a clone without a major stink surrounding it. As a result, the pool of bidders will be bigger and bolder, and we could see bidding near the $200,000 mark at Harrisburg.

Shelby GT500 #00565 History

Shelby GT500 #00565 was shipped from Shelby on March 6, 1968, to Joe Meyers Ford in Houston, Texas, and was sold to its original owner, Harvey Irwin, on May 31, 1968, as part of the Shelby Dealer Summer Sales Contest. It had an MSRP of $5,269.53. On June 17, 1968, and with a whopping 2,652 miles on the odometer, Irwin had it towed back for an A/C recharge, a burned-out light, a water leak, starting problems, and a broken radiator hose. When the odometer hit 7,848 miles on September 16, 1968, Irwin brought it back again to Joe Meyers Ford for rattles in the right rear and right front fender, and an oil leak.

Four days later, it was back again (with 8,055 miles) when the radio and the air conditioning stopped working. Then, on October 16, 1968, at 9,453 miles, the glovebox was repaired. (It still looks a little tweaked in the photos.) Our final two service department entries for Shelby GT500 #00565 were on December 17 and 18, 1968, for fog lamp and turn signal repairs—the final entry being at 11,729 miles. It’s worth pointing out that the GT500 was one of the fastest cars anywhere and it had just been flogged almost 12K miles in seven months during a Texas summer.

Shelby GT500 #00565 Last Spotted …

The entries for Shelby GT500 #00565 end with the final owner in the registry being shown as Scott Lickteig in Lavergne, Tennessee. (The car appears to be registered in the state of Georgia now.) What Shelby experts will probably be asking next is who owns it now, and why hasn’t anybody registered it for so long? “We have 54 years of not knowing what happened,” says SAAC’s Ron Richards of car #00565, adding that there’s no cost to register to be listed in the Shelby registry. (For registering, contact [email protected].) Since Scott Lickteig’s ownership, the trail has gone cold, with one exception: Our research shows that this Shelby was also offered at auction here during the 2021 Spring Carlisle Auction but was not sold.