With the success of the Ford GT40, Ford and Carroll Shelby began a beautiful friendship. The Ford-Shelby duo then moved on to a new project: building the ultimate Mustang. While Ford’s pony already had proven success as a low budget alternative to the GTO, Ford wanted it to have more bang for its low buck.
In 1965 they called up Shelby and asked them to bred their pony into a full racing thoroughbred; thus came the 1966 Ford Shelby Mustang GT350. During this dealing, a little known rent-a-car company approached Ford with the idea of letting their clients rent race cars. As you might have guessed this company was Hertz.
Hertz wanted to give their customers the option of renting out not just fast cars but all out racing machines. They wanted their own fleet of custom GT350s that could be used for race tourism. Shelby built 1000 of these GT350s for Hertz, which were listed as GT350H. About 800 are in Raven black paint with gold stripes painted down the sides, the remaining 200 models came in all of the same colors as the standard Shelbys.
All of them came powered with a 303 horsepower 289 Hipo V-8 engine. The early ones were tied to four speed manuals with later cars being tied to automatics due to customers burning clutches. One of these rare Hertz Shelby’s turned up for sale with the Sam Peck Collection at RM Auctions in Dallas. It was believed this red and gold Hertz GT350H would fetch $100,000-$200,000, but came in at just $110.000. It was originally used as a Hertz rent-a-racer in the ’60s before being sold, and in 2003 the car was purchased by Cobra Automotive of Wallingford, Connecticut, who transformed it into a 572 Horsepower vintage SCCA racer.