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By analyzing the
attributes of 1967 G.T. company cars and engineering vehicles listed on
original
Shelby American documents, including the
March 31, 1967 Vehicle Tax Register, the
July 31, 1967 Fixed Asset Ledger and volume
48 (page 54) of
The Shelby American, we
were able to cross-reference and populate additional information about the company cars. The
second table is
sorted by California Inventory Number and populated mainly from the handwritten Ionia Move Planning
documents (Jobs Yet to be Completed in California,
Disposal of Prototypes and
Cars Remaining in California). A few
pieces were gathered from the 1969 Shelby Automotive
Engineering Car List document. The SAAC Shelby 2011 World Registry also
provided additional facts.
The ultimate goal of this
exercise would be to create a single consolidated table that
cross-references each
company car by up to three
control numbers that may have been assigned. These include the serial number (VIN), Shelby American
(California)
inventory number (xxx), and the Shelby Automotive (Michigan) inventory number (yySTzxx).
After reviewing this table, you
might be left wondering if anyone that worked for Shelby didn't have a
"company car."
At ~ $4,000 per car, and counting at least 66 cars 1967 model year G.T. cars with
a VIN, we're looking at assets exceeding a quarter million dollars.
Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that the operation lost approximately
three quarters of a million dollars that year [ref:
Ford 1968 Racing Program presentation].
1967 Company Cars,
Including Engineering & Public Relations
Click here for the
Company Car
Cross-Reference,
and visit the
discussion topic
in our
1967ShelbyResearch group
Legend
CA = California
Asset Number (xxx)
MI = Michigan Asset Number (yySTzxx)
Transmission: M4 = 4-Speed Manual, A = Automatic
Options: AC = Air Conditioning,
EE = Exhaust Emissions,
SC
= Supercharger
Blue = callout for GT 350
Purple
= Working Theory
Bold = certainty |
Notes
The first
two 1967 Shelby G.T. concept cars were built in September 1966. Shelby American
employees Paul Kunysz and Lonnie Brannon were two of the key people working on the project
under the direction of Jack Khory and Frank Martin. Paul,
who shared his
commendation letter with us, recalled
that one car was built as a G.T. 500 and the other as a
G.T. 350. One was painted "red" and the other was "lime."
We know the red G.T. 500 was an eXperimental Ford test mule and never received a Shelby VIN.
Both cars were photographed for 1967 advertising and marketing
materials. Once Ford terminated the Shelby program, the red G.T .500
remained with the the small
staff that was related to Ionia, MI to form Shelby Automotive. One
there, the red G.T. 500 was assigned inventory number 67ST102. Eventually this car was donated to the
Michigan State Prison Unit
as a permanent shop car. The donation provided a tax break as compared
to crushing the vehicle. The lime gold car might be #0176, since it was the only
car built early enough to be fitted with fiberglass and used as a
photographic car in September 1966.
 Two-inch
(2") square decals were affixed to
both lower corners of the front windshield of Shelby American company cars,
including those in engineering, public relations and classified as
'pool' cars. Photographic cars would have most likely not have had
the decals for obvious reasons.
Internal-use, often
handwritten, documents from Shelby American would typically
reference specific cars by their inventory number rather than
their VIN.
Note: The decal numbers are NOT chronological to the car's VIN or to
either of the car's (2) build date(s). This fact leads me to
theorize that inventory numbers weren't assigned as the cars were
being built over the course of time, but rather were they assigned
all at once -- on a particular date. Perhaps with was part of
the 'structure' added by Ray Gedddes and/or Fred Goodell when Ford
took over? I wonder if the assignment of numbers to company cars might
coincide with the same time that "Z"s were additionally stamped to
VINs of regular inventory cars, and the sales network was expanded
to include non-franchised dealers ("Continuation" Invoices). The
latter was circa late April 1967 --
when I have theorized that Ford took over the assets and liabilities
of Shelby American, Inc.
The
new Shelby Automotive (Ionia,
MI) also
'branded' engineering cars on the windshield, including those
cars that were transferred from Los Angeles. The Ionia inventory numbers were formatted
as yySTzxx, where yy is model year (67,68,69), z is also an
indicator of the model year (1=67, 2=68, 3=69) and xx is the
sequence. It's probable that the 'S' stood for Shelby and the 'T'
for Metuchen.
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