Apart from this piffling complaint, we were rather favorably impressed with Mr. Shelby’s latest. It is, if nothing else, certainly the most sporting street machine we have driven in a long while, and anyone who tells you it isn’t a genuine sports car is nuts. The Mustang GT350 may have a most unsophisticated suspension, but it goes around corners furiously fast, and has speed and brakes to match. The SCCA has blessed it for class B Production racing, and we would guess that it has every hope of dominating that class.
The GT350, in complete racing trim, made its formal debut in SCCA competition at, of all places, the Green Valley Raceway in Texas. In the very capable hands of Ken Miles, the car went extremely fast in the three short events in which it was entered. Miles won a preliminary race and finished second in the two feature race heats. The car that beat the Mustang? A G-modified Merlyn driven by the 1964 SCCA class champ, Charles Barnes.
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The race-ready version consists of a $1500 package of options—all of which are available separately for the street machine—including an oil cooler, extra-capacity radiator, “blueprinted” (to optimum factory specs) engine with racing cam, cold air plenum chamber feeding the carb from the hood scoop, larger straight-through mufflers, front and rear brake cooling ducts, a whole new instrument panel with oil temp and fuel pressure gauges, deep-bucket racing seats, fiberglass front bumper and underpanel, plexiglass windows (including a vented rear window that also acts as a spoiler), 32-gallon gas tank, roll bar, shoulder harness, fireproof interior trim, fire extinguisher, any one of three other rear axle ratios from 3.70 to 4.33, and true magnesium racing wheels with 7-inch rims and low-profile racing tires. Sounds worth the extra money, eh?
In all honesty, it cannot be said that the Mustang GT350 is the sort of a car a sane man would enjoy driving at all times and under all conditions. The noise level is very high, the ride is very harsh, and at low speeds one must put plenty of effort into steering and braking. Then too, the engine has somehow become a bit fussy, although it will actually pull away from 1000 rpm. And, when you do get out on the open road it feels like the wind, and is, in fact, the nearest thing to a real racing car that one is likely to find on the public roads. The jouncing, and all the chuff and bang from the side-exit exhaust pipes, is simply part of the fun. Not a lady’s car by any stretch of the imagination; probably not even a gentleman’s car for that matter; but surely a man’s car, in the tradition of the Blower Bentley or the Cad-Allard, and in this day and age any car one’s wife would refuse to drive is a pearl beyond price.
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