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Peyton Cramer, Shelby American
General Manager, heard that GM wasn't going to supplying the Hertz car
rental company with Corvettes anymore. Hertz had a branch of the company
that offered high performance cars. Original plans in 1965 were to build
500 Cobras and an equal number of Shelby Mustangs at the Shelby American
airport plant. Those goals weren't
reached, in fact fewer than half that number of Cobras & GT 350's were
actually sold. As a promotional idea, Cramer thought he would see if Hertz
might be interested in buying 50 Shelby Mustangs. Hertz loved the idea.
Cramer walked out of the meeting with an order for 1,000 Hertz Shelby
Mustangs. If you were over 25 and had a driver’s license, you could
actually rent a Hertz-Shelby Mustang, a GT 350H. The first Hertz Shelby's
were all painted Raven Black with Gold stripes and a GT 350H rocker panel
stripe. Other than cosmetics, the GT 350 H's were identical to the regular
GT 350's.
Almost immediately, customers began
complaining about the no frills rental Shelby Mustangs. The ride was too
stiff. The rear end made too much noise. The car was too loud. And
everyone complained about the stiff brakes. The warning sticker on the
dash wasn't enough. So the engineers at Shelby American got a bigger
master cylinder from Minnesota Automotive to lighten the brakes. The
Mustangs started getting beefed up C-4 Ford automatic transmissions
instead of the 4-speeds. A Motorola radio filled the radio slot in the
dash.
The GT 350 H's were all leased to
Hertz. Eventually Shelby American and Ford ended up with the cars. In
those days you couldn't give away a Hertz Shelby Mustang. Most of them
were well used. After all, the cars had been rentals and who knew where
the cars had been and with whom. If we'd only known.... Ford told Shelby
American to get rid of them. So they did and they sold them all pretty
cheap. The things legends are made of... |
