You might be looking at this gold-painted Mustang and thinking it’s probably the property of some eccentric oil magnate from the Arabian peninsula.
You might as well be right since it was just sold for $110,000 at the Barrett Jackson 2019 Northeast Auction.
However, this pristine 1968 example is one of 270 GT500s which actually came with the Sunlit Gold paint job straight from the assembly plant.
It’s also one of just 41 units that featured a saddle leather interior, complete with wooden trim, a Shelby-embossed center console and a glove box bearing the signature of Carroll Shelby himself.
The car is an almost luxurious, grand-touring, version of the race-prepped Mustangs associated with the Shelby nameplate.
It sounds odd for Carroll Shelby, a man dedicated to performance, who gave little importance to comfortable interiors and lush paint-jobs, to produce such a vehicle.
That’s because he didn’t. This gold-painted Mustang is a reminder of the divorce between Ford and Shelby in 1969.
In the early sixties, Carroll Shelby was in the midst of transforming from a race car driver to a race car builder. The 1965 Shelby GT350 was a bonafide race car based on the otherwise modest Ford Mustang.
Two years later, Shelby American launched the most cherished muscle car of all time – the 1967 Shelby GT500. It used the engine from the Le Mans-winning GT40 – a 7.0-liter FE-series V8 rated at 355 horsepower 420 lb-ft of torque.
Carroll Shelby was quoted saying: “This is the first car I’m really proud of.”
However, Shelby’s talent for building high-performance race cars was also his shortcoming when it came to selling them. Customers wanted more comfort and would easily trade a few seconds of lap time for an automatic transmission, power steering, and brakes.
By 1967, Ford had begun assimilating Shelby’s operation. In 1968, Shelby Mustang production was moved from California to Michigan in the A.O. Smith facility. Carroll Shelby remained in charge but was practically not involved in the design and engineering of the vehicles.
The design received some updates. A new front fascia with a larger grille and rectangular fog lights. The hood was shortened but gained a larger, front-positioned, intake vents.
The rear bumper was updated with sequential taillights from the ‘65 Thunderbird and a polished metal segment to make them pop-out even more.
The Sunlit Gold color was available only for half a year during 1968.
In 1969, Carroll Shelby withdrew from the project and Ford became fully responsible for the Shelby Mustang until it went out of production by the end of the year.
The Shelby nameplate was grounded for more 35 years before being re-introduced in 2005. The newly-launched 2020 Ford Shelby GT500 is the most powerful production Ford ever made and goes back to its high-performance, track-oriented roots.
