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NO RESERVE - LOT #1395
FROM PR CAR
TO BARN FIND
TO TRIPLE CROWN
AN AMAZING 1965 SHELBY GT350 WILL SOON FIND A NEW HOME
Sure, there have been other Mustangs that took Lee Iacocca’s pony car to
new heights – including several notables in recent years. But it was Carroll
Shelby, engineer Chuck Cantwell and a team of maverick hot-rodders who
turned a humble “secretary’s car” into an enduring icon of American swagger
and brash performance. The 1965 Shelby GT350 was the car that legitimized
the Mustang as a performance hallmark in the mid-1960s. It was born at the
apex of Detroit's golden age, a Mustang bred for competition. The GT350
was Ford’s thoroughbred, a car that celebrated Shelby-American’s can-do
attitude and appetite for speed. The 1965 Shelby GT350 did not simply enter
the pages of history, it commanded, as one of the most sought-after and
collectible American cars ever. And now comes a rare opportunity to own one
of the best of the best.
On offer with No Reserve at the 2021 Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale Auction is
a very special 1965 Shelby GT350 from the personal collection of Barrett-
Jackson CEO and Chairman Craig Jackson. “As a serious collector of Shelbys, I
- - - can confidently say that this car is the best 1965 Shelby GT350 on the planet,”
JACKSON, THE NEW OWNER, WOULD said Jackson. “It doesn’t get any better than this.”
SERVE AS THE FORCE BEHIND THE This 1965 GT350, #5S553, is one of just 562 produced by Shelby-American,
and the seventh from last build in the inaugural year of the Shelby Mustang
PLAN AND THE TEAM TO MAKE THIS program. Originally built at Ford’s San Jose, California, assembly plant, the
SHELBY GT350 A TOP CONTENDER fastback Mustang would head south to Shelby American’s LAX headquarters.
FOR BEST IN THE WORLD. There, the Mustang would be transformed into performance car legend, or,
as Car and Driver put it in their May 1965 issue, “The nearest thing to a real
- - - racing car that one is likely to find on public roads.”
This GT350 saw public relations duty before being sent to a Ford dealer in
Huntington Beach, California. It would later be purchased and taken to a
small town in Southern Texas. There, owned by two brothers, it remained
until the summer of 2016, when it was rediscovered sitting in a barn.
Despite the decades literally out of sight and out of mind, the GT350 was
remarkably well-preserved, with a mere 19,000 miles on the odometer, and
nearly every Shelby-specific item present and untouched. Under the fiberglass
hood sat the original “High-Performance” 289ci V8 engine, complete with the
full array of factory-installed Shelby “go-fast’ parts, with a high-riser intake
VISIT BARRETT-JACKSON.COM FOR THE COMPLETE DOCKET 65
