The Shelby Mustang took a giant turn for 1967. Instead of a hard, lean and sports car, it was now a bloated Mustang with an appearance package, powered by a mild 428 backed by a standard automatic, and featuring standard power steering, power brakes and air conditioning. Not surprisingly, it was no faster than a regular 390 Mustang; its 15.5 second quarter mile times made a joke of Shelby’s advertised 13.5 seconds.
In other words, it was a Shelby Thunderbird.
R&T was pretty generous with the GT 500, approving of the appearance changes. But looks can be deceiving: it looks something like a racing car, yet it isn’t. True that.
Although the changes under the skin were considerably less for 1967, the suspension did get a bit of firming up. With the 428, an automatic and all those power accessories up front, 58% of its weight was on its front wheels. The ride was firm, and the wide tires did their best to mitigate all that inherent understeer. R&T was again generous: something less than we’ve come to expect from Shelby’s cars, but still very good in comparison to the typical American sedan. Thank goodness!
The 428 was fitted with Shelby’s twin four-barrel intake system, bumping power from 335 to 355 (gross) hp. As the testing results show, it was hardly a red light bandit. 0-60 in 7.2 seconds, and the quarter mile in 15.5 @95mph.
But the Shelby did set an all time record at R&T in one measure: it had the lowest mileage they ever recorded: 9.8 mpg average over 800 miles. That might account for the pervasive smell of raw gas in the passenger cabin; it apparently wasn’t all getting burned. The 428 piddled oil whenever it was parked.
The expectation is that the GT500 will find a wider buyer base than its gnarly predecessor. Presumably so, but it was never going to become the cult-mobile like GT350 either. Shelby was going soft.
According to the R&T data panel, A/C and automatic transmission were optional, not standard.
Shows how car mags were beholden to advertising dollars back then. You’d have expected Road and Track to have pilloried a bloated whale like this. Instead, they tiptoed around every negative in comparison fro the first generation Shelby.
Needs a link to page 3!
https://i2.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/shelby-3.jpeg?ssl=1
Oops. Fixed now.
Mediocre review yet like all things Shelby this car is an easy 6 figures in nice condition.
The cool factor was still there.
It seems like the 1967 Shelby-modified Mustang was a precursor to the 1968 car which was fully taken over and built by Ford. That one was definitely a full-fledged ‘Gran Turismo’ type tourer with touches like a snake-embossed front center armrest and a horizontal, two-spoke Ford corporate steering wheel hub replacing the former three-spoke, Nardi-style steering wheel.
And high-speed touring in any of these Mustangs wasn’t such a fun experience, either. Thanks to the attractive, but non-aerodynamic, front valance pan of these Mustangs, the front end had a pronounced lift at high-speeds, making for a rather dicey driving experience as the front tires tried to ‘take-off’ from the pavement like an aircraft.
If one wants to see this in actual practice, there are scenes towards the end of the classic Bullitt chase scene where the dreaded Mustang front-end ‘lift’ can be scene in action.
Born from customer demands. The GT350 was considered to raw for a road car by most drivers.Hertz cut off some of the raw with the GT350H and Fords just followed on from that.
By the way the 0-60 time wasnt that “raw”, same as Capri Injection of the 80s.
What a porker:
That the 428 is also full of weight as well as bulk is demonstrated by the 3520-lb curb weight of the GT500. The standard GT350 we tested earlier had a curb weight of 2800 lb.
I was a car crazy ten year old when these came out and even as a little kid they looked to be festooned with crap. Today that crap reminds me of the Fitch Sprint with its ridiculous tacked on fiberglass “fastback”:
To each their own, both the 67 Shelby Mustangs and Fitch sprint cosmetic ad ons improved both cars drastically to my eye. The parts were fiberglass that replaced steel factory so it’s not like they were adding weight. The FE engine and automatic transmission was probably the source for the bulk of those pounds
Agreed on the heavy 428, and of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but all those side scoops on the Shelby and the Fitch’s fastback just added things that weren’t there before. Odd analogy, but it reminds me of the later Star Trek TV from the 80s and 90s in which the aliens simply had different bits and bobs added to differentiate themselves from human.
The GT500 was a middle-aged guy’s car, a show off car to tell the world he’d arrived. But young buyers were more interested in performance than looks hence sleepers like the Road Runner, basic cars but with lots of performance. Sleepers also kept the cops away. They were two different markets.
I’ll concede the side scoops were a little much and amplified the fact that these were definitely not sleepers, BUT they were functional, the bodyside ones were introduced on the 66s and ducted air to the rear drum brakes for cooling and the C pillar ones did the same thing the louvers did on standard Mustangs extracting cabin air
I think sans scoops and stripes the resculpted facia and rear lip spoiler with the wide Cougar taillights they made the Mustang fastback look remarkably elegant.
The ten-year-old me was thrilled with the ’67 Mustang redesign. I still think it’s the best looking of the first gen’s; the ’69 restyle did it no favors. Which had me at 12 years old pining for the new Camaro but unfortunately for my impatient pre-teen self came out a half a year late. But the wait was worth it, especially compared to the bland ’71 Mustang that came out just six months later.
The 67 and early 68’s were a mess. The 428 in the 67 isn’t the same spec engine as the 428 Cobra Jet. The Cobra Jet was a mid to late 68 option. The 67 had cooling issues and the 68’s had some problems with the vendor that produced the front fenders, hood and nose parts. The parts didn’t fit together very well.
Still I’ll take a 68 GT500KR, these cars have had an outsized influence on the Mustang ever since they first hit the scene.
Lastly IMO these cars were never intended to be a thinly disguised race car, just another Pony car moving up in the engine displacement war.
At some point, I think there was some kind of issue with the GT500 engine availability. IIRC, there was a period when there wasn’t enough 428 engines to go around, either non-CJ or CJ.
So, in order to bridge the gap, whether it was early 1967 or 1968, some of the GT500s actually had 390s.
A 390 GT500 would, indeed, make it a Shelby Thunderbird. And it might also explain the poor performance of some of the road tests if the engine in the tested GT500 was really a 390. From what I recall, the numbers from the cited Road & Track article jibe with those from a 390 Mustang.
If that’s the case, it would be a weird case of a manufacturer supplying a test car with an engine that was actually ‘worse’ than what the production car might have. In effect, the exact opposite of a ‘ringer’ like some of the Pontiacs given to the magazines.
If it was good enough for Jim Morrison, it’s good enough for me: https://www.hagerty.com/media/car-profiles/50-years-jim-morrisons-death-1967-shelby-gt500/
The 67 Shelbys were by far the best looking of all first gen Mustangs IMO but they seemed to be saddled with compromises. Shelby still built the 67s at LAX but rather than devoting their manpower to installing traction bars, changing the control arm mounts, adding tube headers and other racecar stuff at their giant racecar building hanger, they were apparently spending their time struggling to massage the fiberglass panels to fit worth a damn, all the gearhead goodies got pushed aside.
Thunderbird is right, right down to the wheel covers – very few came with the kelsey hayes Magstar wheels featured in this article or the ubiquitous 10 spoke seemingly every “restored” GT500/350 now sports, but instead came with 15″ STEEL wheels and Thunderbird magnum 500 look wheel covers
Even as a young car nut, I was firmly against the idea of a big block truck motor in a pony car. Over the years, I probably drove every model there was, as they came to my family’s shop for tuning. Although Dad didn’t like muscle cars, we made plenty of money tuning and souping them up.
In my opinion, the extra weight of an FE in a Mustang was not worth whatever small increase in acceleration it gave. A 289 K code is the way to go, but I have never seen one in the wild.
Paul, this is a bit of a sidelight, but I see Ford came to to have this firm in Ionia, MI (near Grand Rapids) do Shelby-body makeovers, as part of a history that had included woodies (not for Ford) and postwar wagons (Ford apparently included). There’s a Shelby photo right up front, and a few more around 13:00 (Corvette stuff, too): https://www.macsmotorcitygarage.com/video-the-ionia-body-story/
Drivers of these must have hated to hear anything powered by a 340 motoring up next to them. Good grief. More civilized than a 1965 GT350? So was a Road Runner.
Thank God it had disc brakes…..
During that time frame, were not that common of Detroit iron.
If I’d seen this review, it would have sent me to the Mercury dealer to spec out a Cougar XR-7 with the 390 325 hp GT as a touring car.
The non 428 was rated at 345 hp. It was always funny to me that the 428 CJ was 10 hp less than the wagon version even with higher compression and bigger cam.