The challenge was bringing the suspension and engine up to a competitive level. Rick Kopec of SAAC (Shelby American Automobile Club) explains in his Shelby American World Registry that the SCCA allowed Shelby to modify the suspension or the engine, but not both. Also, they required at least 100 streetable production units to be built.
Shelby knew the difficulty of selling real race-prepared cars to the public in quantities of 100. The solution to sell the 100 required units was to build a racing GT350 and a street GT350. Shelby chose to give the competition GT350 a full-race 289 High Performance engine. The street version would share a suspension with the racing GT350.
The GT350 Competition was built first. The street GT350 became a "detuned" race car, adding considerably to its thoroughbred status, despite the humbleness of its chassis, which was the low-buck Falcon's.
Shelby didn't do this work alone. He had an incredible talent pool of drivers and car builders. In August 1964, Ken Miles, Shelby's development driver and engineer, took a pair of Mustang hardtops and went to work developing great-handling Mustang test mules at Willow Springs Raceway, some 100 miles north of Los Angeles. Miles learned much of the Mustang's chassis development could incorporate off-the-shelf parts already available from Ford. This would keep costs in check.
When Miles wrapped up the Mustang chassis development, three Wimbledon White '65 fastbacks were ordered and delivered to Shelby's Venice, California, facility. One of these cars became the street prototype-the first '65 Shelby GT350. The other two became race cars.
Mass production of the first 100 Shelbys ensued in the weeks to follow. An order for the first 100 Wimbledon White fastbacks arrived at Ford's San Jose, California, plant in Milpitas in the fall of 1964. These cars were all K engine code fastbacks with Ford serial numbers. All were identically equipped with 289 High Performance V-8s, aluminum T-10 four-speeds, 9-inch rearends with large Fairlane station wagon rear drum brakes and Detroit Locker differentials, black standard interiors, and steel wheels. As those first fastbacks arrived at Shelby's Venice plant, construction of the new GT350 began. Assembly was in blocks of five and ten according to the Shelby American Automobile Club.
Conversion to Shelby specifications included:*Lowering the upper control arms to improve negative camber*Heavy-duty sway bar*Koni shock*Shelby-spec pitman and idler arms*Underride traction bars*Fiberglass rear seat area insert (rear seat deleted)*Tri-Y long-tube headers*Cobra valve covers and T-pan*16-inch-diameter, wooden, three-spoke steering wheel*Horn button located to the dashboard*Dash pod with tachometer and oil pressure gauge*Trunk-mounted battery*Fender and tailpanel badges*GT350 rocker stripes*Optional LeMans stripes*Steel 15x511/42-inch Ford steel wheels *Optional Cragar 15x6-inch five-spoke mag wheels
Pete Brock, Shelby American's first employee and the man behind all sorts of innovations, designed the LeMans stripes, the GT350 stripes, and the GT350 badging.
Because the Shelby GT350s were all hand-built cars, there are endless variations of them. They were true custom-built, yet mass produced, automobiles. One example is the exhaust system. Despite the appeal of the '65 GT350's side-exit exhausts, Shelby-American ultimately had to move the dual exhausts behind the rear wheels. Side-exit exhausts were not legal in all 50 states.
When Shelby-American outgrew its Venice facility, it moved to a pair of hangars on the south side of Los Angeles International Airport. These hangars were LAX (L.A. International Airport) landmarks for years, long a mecca for Shelby buffs to visit. Sometime in the '90s, these hangars were torn down and replaced by new additions to LAX's vast air cargo complex.