The Shelby American (Winter 2021)

Although he would almost certainly casually toss it off as just another part of his engineering duties, Shelby’s GT350 Project Engineer, Chuck Cantwell, was no slouch when it came to production engineering. He very well understood that Ford’s output of Mustangs directly affected Shelby’s output of GT350s and recognized that Ford’s model year change-over and re- sultant shutdown at the San Jose As- sembly Plant would cause a problematic interruption to Shelby’s influx of platform Mustangs. As a clever work-around, he decided on the procurement of an extra batch of ’65 Mustangs-which would be built just before the plant shutdown – to keep the inflow of Mustangs to 6501 West Imperial Highway steady. These, of course, have come to be known today as the ’66 “carryover” cars, so-named because they ‘carried-over’ GT350 pro- duction through the time which no Mustangs would be arriving from Ford. The minutes from one of four ’66 Shelby planning meetings (this one, the first, occurring on May 3, 1965) sheds some light (yes, an intentional pun) on Chuck’s plan: An undetermined number of 1965 Ford production Mustang cars will be initially procured for the start of the Shelby American GT 350 build pro- gram for 1966 model cars. These cars must be procured from San Jose before the end of the 1965 production run (approximately August 1). To these cars will be added the Shelby Ameri- can 1966 grille configuration and all additional Shelby American unique components. The customer will receive a “near specification” 1966 Shelby American GT 350. The balance of the 1966 Shelby American program will be produced from 1966 model cars ob- tained from San Jose Assembly plant following September 30, 1965. All Shelby American components will be added to this DSO car and the cus- tomer will receive a “total specifica- tion” 1966 Shelby American GT 350. For the 1966 Ford Mustang pro- gram, the engine and drive train com- ponents will be essentially the same as 1965. The exterior will feature a new grille and horse emblem, new side trim, taillights, and gas cap. The inte- rior will feature a new dash pad, new material texture in the bucket seat in- serts, and a five-dial instrument clus- ter. The “near specification” automo- biles to be built at San Jose before Au- gust 1, will consist of the 1965 DSO package “A” plus a 5-dial instrument cluster with camera case black ap- plique and possibly minus the 1965 grille assembly. Shelby American will install the 1966 Shelby American grille configuration; will keep the 1965 taillights, gas cap, and dash pad; will add 1965 identity components, hood, and exterior components. The 1965 bezel may be retained for these units. The 1966 “full specification” cars will be constructed at Shelby American from a 1966 DSO package “A”. This will include the 1966 grille, taillights, gas cap, and dash pad. To this, Shelby American will add a 1966 GT 350 identity hood, exterior, and interior components. There is quite a bit of material here outside of the taillights but a few ex- planatory notes are useful in putting them into the context of a complete styling package. First of all, of course, we now know that the “undetermined number” of 1965 cars procured for the carryover effort turned out to be 250 (with two additional cars already at Shelby American bringing the ’66 car- ryover build to the now-well-known 252). The carryover cars ended up, as planned, having the ’65 Mustang GT “5-dial” dash while the remainder of the ’66 production had the ’66 version of the “5-dial” cluster (which had a slightly different trim chrome). De- spite plans as such, none of the ’66 cars ever got a ’66-unique hood as a few weeks later, it was decided to uti- lize the ’65 hood configuration for the ’66 build, although bids were solicited for a reduced-cost manufacturing process which fostered the now-infa- mous Pigeon Manufacturing debacle; low-cost all-steel hoods from Pigeon were initially ordered but were sub- standard (not to mention coated with oil to which paint would not adhere). This resulted in the emergency pur- chase of more expensive fiberglass hoods with steel frames. In the end, the carryover and later production ’66 cars ended up much closer together in configuration than initially planned, with both getting quarter windows and side scoops (al- though at one time consideration was given to offering either the quarter windows or the louvers for the 1966 GT350). For clarification, the DSO package “A” referred to was the street platform Mustang built by San Jose while DSO package “B” was for Mus- tangs intended for conversion to R- Model configuration. As for the planned “new” taillight, further expla- nation is contained in a note following the above text: A car will be sent to Bill Stroppe for installation of T-Bird taillights. So it seems that the “full specifica- tion” ’66 build was originally planned to incorporate T-Bird taillights as a way to enhance the visual difference between the Mustang and the GT350. But what happened? Apparently, Stroppe was pretty quick in perform- ing the conversion as just a week later, at the next GT350 planning meeting, it was noted that. The possibility of installing a Thun- derbird taillight system for the 1966 GT 350 was reviewed. It was decided to stay with the production Mustang taillight unit due to the excessive cost of installing the Thunderbird light and because of the semi-finished state of such an installation. That brief note seems to indicate that the idea of using a ’65 T-Bird light on the rear of a GT350 died then and there. Or did it? Certainly as a facet of the ’66 GT350, it did, but there are few Shelby enthusiasts who don’t know that the lights resurfaced-in a big way-to illuminate the hind quarters of Shelby Mustangs a couple of years later. As for the T-Bird lights and their proposed fitment to the ’66 GT350, an oft-asked question is “ where did the idea first come from? ” We asked Chuck, and in some ways his answer that he didn’t recall specifically whose idea it was wasn’t surprising. He ex- plained that in these sort of engineer- ing discussions, who started the ball The SHELBY AMERICAN Winter 2021 75