We’re sure someone will utter a cry of protest, but to our knowledge, the ’67 Shelby Mustang is the first production car to offer a true rollover bar as standard equipment. Not a thicker roof section, but a real live roll bar. The shoulder harness is not standard equipment, but like the GT 500’s automatic transmission, it will be difficult to get a Shelby Mustang out of the showroom without one.
The roll bar itself is a tubular structure, covered with padding, and welded to the chassis. Where it curves up into the roof, tabs poke out, and bolts secure the bar to the car’s top in the threaded holes intended for the upper attachment point for Ford’s over-the-shoulder shoulder harness. Shelby’s shoulder harness is the double type. Another pair of tabs are welded to the roll bar, and to these are bolted a pair of inertia reels made by Advanced Safety Devices. The reels exert a half-pound pull, thus requiring no adjustment by the user, and lock at .5 G, something like a window shade mechanism in reverse. The shoulder harness strap divides just behind the user’s neck, the halves passing over his shoulders to fasten at points on either side of the seat. A standard lap belt is used in conjunction with the shoulder harness, but because the halves don’t come together at the lap buckle, like racing harnesses, it’s the only shoulder harness we’ve seen that women can wear. These devices have to be seen and felt in action to be believed. At the risk of encouraging showroom traffic by curiosity seekers, we’d recommend that our readers stop by Shelby American dealers and try the shoulder harnesses. Then, no matter what other car you may buy, drop a line to the manufacturer and suggest that he offer shoulder harnesses like this on his cars.
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The rest of the GT 500 interior is stock Mustang, except for a few points. An oil cooler is standard equipment, but had been removed for some obscure evaluation on our test car, and an oil temperature gauge had been mounted under the dash. It never got over 230° F, incidentally. Our car also had the optional folding rear seat and an instrument cluster (ammeter and oil pressure gauge—the pressure was a steady 60 psi). The presence of the shoulder harnesses greatly complicated entry to the rear seat, what with climbing through a mass of nylon straps and ducking the inertia reels.
The air conditioner controls were confusing in an otherwise well laid-out interior, but this small annoyance was more than made up for by Shelby’s special wood-rim steering wheel. It has much less dish than Ford’s, thus placing it in a perfect position for effortless control.
That, then, is the GT 500. A grown-up sports car for smooth touring. No more wham-bam, thank-you-ma’am, just a purring, well controlled tiger. Like Shelby says, “This is the first car I’m really proud of.” Right. We’ve come a long way since bib overalls too, Shel.
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