Chevy vs. Ford! Corvette vs. Shelby Mustang! Take another look at this classic comparison from December 2012, yet another story you’ll only find at MotorTrend.
“For the first time in its decade and a half of production, Chevrolet’s Corvette — billed as ‘America’s only true sports car’ — is being challenged for the title.”
That’s how Steve Kelly introduced our April 1967 comparison pitting the newly refined big-block Shelby GT500 against the Corvette Sting Ray 427. By way of explaining why Shelby’s original GT350 wasn’t deemed a worthy Corvette competitor, he described it as “a rough-riding, hard-steering Mustang fastback with Bunyanesque brake pedal and an engine which would outshout a John Deere tractor.” Similarly, he noted, “There was a brief period when the [Shelby] Cobra was thought to be a fair and equal competitor to the ‘Vette, but a too-high price and rather impractical design put it out of contention.” On the surface, this comparison still looks lopsided, pitting a purpose-built fiberglass-bodied two-seater against an all-steel four-seater that shares underpinnings with the lowly Falcon. But, in fact, their performance was close, and a similarly equipped GT500 was priced within $250 of a Sting Ray.
Carroll Shelby’s star was indeed rising throughout the 1960s. The good-ol’-boy chicken farmer/car racer from Texas possessed sufficient raw driving talent to win the 1959 Le Mans race in an Aston Martin just seven years after his first race in a teetering MG TC. An angina diagnosis a year later prompted his untimely retirement from racing, but before long, he was shoehorning Ford engines into AC Aces that subsequently won enough races to attract the attention of one Lido Anthony Iaccoca. Lee wanted to build some racing cred for his gangbuster-selling pony, and when Ford’s own efforts to homologate the Mustang for SCCA B/Production racing failed, he commissioned the Shelby American shop to get the job done.
For its production classes, the SCCA allowed major engine or suspension modifications, but not both. Shelby decided to keep the K-Code 271-horse 289 small-block and focused on lowering and stiffening the suspension, beefing up the brakes, and installing a Detroit Locker axle, among other modifications. The formula worked. His 36 R-spec full-race GT350s won five out of six regional SCCA championships, with Jerry Titus winning the ’65 B/Production championship against certain Corvettes and Sunbeam Tigers.
Shelby’s race shop, located in a hangar at LAX airport, received “knock-down” Mustangs — minus their hoods, rear seats, and radios — from Ford’s San Jose plant. Shelby modified the suspensions, installed a scooped fiberglass hood, relocated the battery to the trunk, and tweaked a number of other items. Just 521 ’65 GT350 street cars — all Wimbledon White — found buyers, so to broaden customer appeal for 1966, four new colors were added and the styling was better differentiated from the Mustang’s by installing Plexiglas quarter windows in place of the side louvers, adding brake-cooling scoops, and polishing the Mustang’s black horizontal grille bars. The rear seat also became optional, and the raucous suspension and exhaust were tamed somewhat, although a Paxton supercharger option boosted power to around 380 hp (at $700, it found only 11 takers). Sales jumped to 1365 retail street cars and another 999 sold through Hertz.
Seeing that a little more differentiation and refinement had more than quadrupled sales, Shelby American figured that a heaping pile of it would really ring the registers. So, for 1967, a longer fiberglass hood with a wider scoop was matched to extended headlamp surrounds that also changed the grille shape, and quad headlamps replaced the Mustang’s duals, with the middle two clustered near the center of the grille — until it was discovered that several states’ laws prohibited this arrangement, whereupon they were relocated outboard. Venturi-effect air-extractor scoops replaced the one-year Plexiglas quarter windows, and in back a fiberglass trunk and new quarter-panel extensions provided a ducktail spoiler effect. Full-width taillamps borrowed from the Mercury Cougar (but without the vertical chrome bars and sequential signaling), a Cobra logo fuel cap, and Magstar aluminum wheels or Thunderbird five-spoke wheel covers completed the exterior transformation. Inside were a wood-rimmed three-spoke wheel and a rollbar incorporating suspender-style shoulder harnesses like the ones on an airline flight attendant’s jump seat. The inertia reel at the top was patterned after the belts in an F-4 Phantom fighter jet. The GT500 was the first production car to incorporate a rollbar and shoulder harnesses. The rear seat was standard, and A/C and AM/FM radio became optional. These were no longer race cars with license plates.
The biggest news mechanically was the availability of the new GT500 model powered by a 428 Police Interceptor engine topped off with two 600-cfm Holley four-barrels (though it’s doubtful this engine could possibly inhale 1200 cubic feet of air per minute without help). Output was rated at 355 hp and 420 lb-ft of torque. Ford installed these Shelby-only engines before shipping the cars to LAX. The same was true of the slightly stiffer springs, anti-roll bar, and Gabriel adjustable shocks fitted to GTs. Gone were the days of the race shop handbuilding a high-strung chassis — the Shelby folks were now busy painting and installing fiberglass body parts and trim items. It would have been a lost cause anyway. The ’67 Mustang grew so much and gained so much weight that Shelby knew he couldn’t produce a racing version that would outrun his original ’65 GT350, so he didn’t even try. (He did, however, build the notchback Mustangs Ford raced in Trans Am that year.)
Meanwhile, Chevrolet was in the final year of perfecting its C2 Corvette (actually, it was working overtime readying a delayed C3), so the ’67 featured cleaner ornamentation and new seats with a proper handbrake between them. The 427-cube engine options entered their second year — now covered by the beloved stinger hood design — and four-wheel disc brakes had been in production since 1965. Naturally, for his king-of-the-American-sports-car-hill contest, our man Kelly selected a top-spec L71 solid-lifter tri-power 427 (435 hp and 460 lb-ft of torque) mated to a close-ratio four-speed transmission, though, oddly enough, it came mounted in a roadster instead of the more Shelby-competitive coupe.
Kelly praised the GT500’s roomier interior, sublime inertia-reel shoulder belts, civilized trunk, and quieter drivetrain, while knocking the more highly strung Corvette for being “ticklish to keep running at slow speeds in bumper-to-bumper traffic.” The Corvette demonstrated better workmanship and clearer gauges, and its engines — 327 and 427 — were deemed better breathers with greater bandwidth for performance tuning than the Shelby’s 289 and 428. But the ‘Vette had an Achilles heel: its 7.75×15 rayon bias-ply tires. The aging bodywork lacked clearance to accommodate the GT500’s lower-profile, more modern E70-15 Goodyear Speedway 350 tires, so grip at launch and when exiting turns suffered greatly by comparison. Nevertheless, the Corvette managed a 0.7-second advantage in quarter-mile acceleration (13.8 seconds at 104 mph versus 14.5 seconds at 101 mph) and a 9-foot advantage in stopping distance (135 versus 144 feet).
Mr. Kelly signed off acknowledging that the GT500 needed more power to match the Corvette’s performance, but he neglected to pick a winner. We can only assume that management scolded him and sent him back out to do the job properly, because, just one month later, in the May ’67 issue, Kelly had rounded up both automatic and manual versions of the GT350 and GT500 to pit against an automatic 327/300-hp Corvette and another 427/435-hp four-speed, both coupes.
This time around, he revealed a soft spot for the lazy, quiet demeanor of the C6 automatic-equipped GTs, noting that they accelerated to 60 more quickly than their row-your-own counterparts, though they trailed the four-speeds at the quarter mile. He was unimpressed with the two-speed Powerglide Corvette, which proved slower down the strip than both GT350s. Ironically, he found the refinement of the 327 Corvette matched that of the GT500, while the 427 was “as loud and hard to tame as the GT350.” The Shelbys picked up a few more bonus points for spaciousness and lower maintenance and insurance costs, but at the end of this review, the Corvette’s superior build quality (“The add-on fiberglass pieces of the GT aren’t nearly as well finished or mated as any part of the entire Sting Ray body”) and its performance advantage (Powerglide notwithstanding) ultimately led to his crowning the Corvette “the granddaddy of the sport-personal cars.”
Of course, 1968 brought revisions to both our American hero cars, especially the Coke-bottle-curvaceous C3 Corvette, so in March ’68, we returned to the well, this time with ragtop versions of each. Shelby’s styling didn’t change much (the hood, grille, and front lighting were revised, and the convertible joined the lineup), but the company’s structure changed a bunch. Shelby American had outgrown its LAX digs, so manufacturing was subcontracted by Ford to A.O. Smith in Michigan, with oversight by the newly spun-off Shelby Automotive Inc. (A.O. Smith didn’t have much better luck matching the paint on the fiberglass bits.)
By this point, Steve Kelly’s institutional memory was fading, as he looked longingly back upon the true LAX-tuned ’66 Shelbys as “much more of a sports car than the ’67 and ’68.” But it was hard to argue with his assessment that “Shelby has sold out to the add-on and chrome-it establishment. The new cars are more decorated than the old and show strains of having too much ornamentation.” The new fat-tired Corvette was widening its lead, with the GT500’s acceleration falling between that of the 327 and 427 Corvettes, and 60-0-mph braking far behind them (155 feet for the GT500 versus 117 to 119 for the ‘Vettes). Ditto the handling: “Steering is right out of Mustang land. At least the feeling of ‘plasticity’ is. Response is not at all like the Corvette’s.”
Never much one for hyperbolically proclaiming comparison winners, Kelly wound up saying of the top-finishing Corvette, “Kinda wish we had one.” We never bothered comparing the dramatically restyled ’69-’70 Shelby following our initial drive report, which concluded, “Driving characteristics left much to be desired when compared to Shelby ancestors, as is evidenced in [its] severe understeer and body roll.”
For this reenactment of our recurring series, we rounded up two cars owned by inveterate Shelbyphiles. Corvette owner Colin Comer literally wrote the book from which much of the research for this piece was gleaned, “The Complete Book of Shelby Automobiles” (Motorbooks International), and has owned well over 50 Shelbys of various stripes over the years. But this 40,000-mile Corvette, resplendent in its original coat of Marina Blue paint, earned a spot in Comer’s collection and sees frequent hard use in rallies like the Copperstate 1000. It’s also equipped almost exactly as our April ’67 car was.
Craig Conley’s Dark Moss Green GT500 is his prodigal Shelby. The original owner bought the car and a racing 427 short block and heads like those used on the Cobra, with the intention of making a true race-bred GT500 upon his return from Vietnam. Unfortunately, he never returned, and Conley bought the car and engine in 1977, but the realities of family life forced him to sell it in 1981 to buy his first house. The third owner completed the engine swap (mounting the 428’s intake and carbs). Conley pestered the owner annually to sell it back to him, which he finally did — five days before our photo shoot, during which time Conley fitted a Detroit Locker axle (a dealer-installed option in 1967).
I start out in the Corvette and am impressed by its eagerness to fire after about a quarter of a revolution. The idle is a tad lumpy, as expected with a solid-lifter high-overlap cam, but the car is perfectly happy to motor around for photos, and a few brief dabs at the loud pedal evince no balkiness from the vacuum-operated front and rear two-barrels (as early reports on the L71 had complained about). This close-ratio box’s short-throw chrome-ball shifter moves with the same sublime mechanical precision I recall from driving “The Last” 1967 Corvette (MTC November/December 2006). Modern radials provide oodles more grip than the early skinny bias plies, too, but probably compound the effort required to twirl the helm at maneuvering speeds.
This higher-strung (12.5:1 compression) GT500 probably makes a better Corvette rival than the ones Kelly drove. Having just received the car, Craig has yet to fine-tune the carbs, which are running eye-wateringly rich. This undoubtedly compromises performance somewhat, but the sensation of big-lunged torque is unmistakable. The wood-rim steering wheel delights the fingertips as much as the Nardi wheel in any Italian GT, though I concur with Kelly’s “plasticity” comment regarding road feel. Brake and clutch operation is also more pedestrian than the Corvette’s (long-throw clutch, overboosted brake). Shorter gearing seems more tailored toward quarter-mile blasts than Le Mans duty, and the Detroit Locker axle makes an unholy racket in all but the gentlest of bends. But overall this particular GT500 seems to be trying to set the record straight in Motor Trend once and for all: I’m NOT so refined, I’m a rip-snorter like my ’65-’66 forebears, now lemme at that Corvette! OK, point taken. And right about now we’re more inclined than ever to forgive and forget Shelby’s brief decline into “add-on-and-chrome-it-dom” in light of the recent introduction of Ford’s 650-hp, 200-plus-mph Shelby GT500. But the top-dog Corvette was then, and remains now, the king of the Yankee-doodle sports cars.
Which Shelby Engine to Choose?
Of the two standard and three optional engines officially available to the prospective 1967 Shelby buyer, the most powerful was the special lightweight 427 racing engine lifted straight out of the GT40 Mk II. No horsepower or torque numbers are available, but the one GT500 that was built this way was sent to Goodyear for tire testing at speeds of up to 170 mph, and it averaged 142 mph for 500 miles to set a record. The price for this ultimate Shelby Mustang, dubbed Super Snake, was to be $7500. Long Beach dealer Mel Burns Ford envisioned selling an exclusive run of 50 such cars the way Pittsburgh’s Yenko Chevrolet sold special 427 Chevelles and Novas, but the first one took forever to sell and no more were built. The next step down was the 427 medium-rise-intake engine from the Cobra (it actually displaces 425.8 cubic inches), which was conservatively rated at about 425 hp and 480 lb-ft. Its bigger-bore, shorter-stroke configuration allowed greater performance than the more square standard “428” (actually 427.0 cu in) 355-hp/420-lb-ft engine, but its $2000 option price found only two buyers. The base 289 GT350 traded its steel-tube headers for a stock cast-iron manifold while somehow maintaining its 306 hp and 329 lb-ft rating, but this engine was 277 pounds lighter — a boon for handling. This suggests that maybe the ultimate canyon-storming option was the Paxton supercharged GT350, which added back only a fraction of that weight difference. It was advertised as boosting power by 46 percent (which would be 446 hp) based on the ideal mathematical effect of its 6.3 psi boost, but the realistic improvement was said to be perhaps 25 percent, or about 380 hp. Car Life test results reinforce that assessment, recording 6.2 seconds to 60 mph and a 14-second 92-mph quarter-mile run. Alas, priced about $500 more than a similarly performing GT500, only 35 1967 Shelbys were supercharged.
1967 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray
ASK THE MAN WHO OWNS ONE
Colin Comer bought his first car at age 13 — a damaged ’68 Mustang ragtop, quickly sold before his parents found out. Today he is editor at large for Sports Car Market and American Car Collector magazines, has written three best-selling books on muscle cars and Shelbys, and restores and sells collector cars in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Why I Like It: “I love the originality of it, the great color combination, and its factory original side pipes and the L71 435-hp engine. I’m really not a big Chevy guy — my collection is almost all Shelbys — but who can ignore the importance of a 1967 427 Corvette?”
Why It’s Collectible: 1967s are the most valuable of the “mid-year” Corvettes, and only the aluminum-head L88 is more valuable than this L71, but they’re not driveable because they’re million-dollar cars, and their high compression demands racing fuel.
Restoring/Maintaining: Most parts are widely available — maybe too available. When you can buy all the parts, it becomes difficult to tell the originals.
Beware: Original paperwork documenting the car’s history is essential, and fake paperwork is easy to get. Track down and verify the chain of ownership, and consider having a museum authenticate the paper’s age if all else fails, before buying.
Expect to Pay: (coupe/convertible) Concours-ready, $139,675/$162,175; solid driver, $77,600/$90,000; tired runner, $42,675/$50,375.
Join the Club: Corvette Club of America, America’s Corvette Club, The National Council of Corvette Clubs, Inc.
OUR TAKE
Then: “For those rare individuals who want — and can handle — its potential, the 427 Turbo-Jet is a red-hot machine. But if it gets away from you, don’t say we didn’t warn you.” — Bob McVay, MotorTrend, March 1966
Now: Mid-year examples are the hottest-selling Corvettes at auction, especially the big-blocks, but the only way to guarantee maximum return on investment is to find an open road, drop the top, and listen to those side pipes sing.
SPECIFICATIONS
Engine: 426.9-cu-in/6996cc OHV V-8, 3×2-bbl Holley 3902355 (prim) & 3902353 (sec) carburetors
Power and Torque (SAE gross): 435 hp @ 5800 rpm, 460 lb-ft @ 4000 rpm
Drivetrain: 4-speed manual RWD
Brakes: front: vented disc, rear: vented disc
Suspension: front: control arms, coil springs, anti-roll bar: multi-link, transverse leaf spring, anti-roll bar
Dimensions: L: 175.1 in, W: 69.6 in, H: 49.8 in
Weight: 3366 lb
Performance: 0-60 mph: 5.5 sec, quarter mile: 13.8 sec @ 104 mph, 60-0 mph: 135 ft (MotorTrend, April 1967)
Price: when new $5733
1967 Shelby GT500
ASK THE MAN WHO OWNS ONE
Craig Conley’s business, Paradise Wheels Inc., started out refurbishing Shelby wheels, and today Craig is among the world’s foremost independent experts at authenticating Shelby American automobiles. He’s owned more than 50 Shelbys and restored, sourced parts for, and fettled countless others.
Why I Like It: “What Shelby fan wouldn’t like a 427 GT-500 four-speed California black-plate car with 28,000 miles on the clock? I bought it in 1977 and regretted selling it to buy my first house, until I was able to buy it back after it had covered only 6000 miles in 35 years. “
Why It’s Collectible: 1967s are considered the last of the Shelby-built GTs, and this unmolested original preserves all its original endearing flaws (like mismatched paint on steel and fiberglass pieces), making it highly desirable.
Restoring/Maintaining: More parts are being reproduced to high quality today, and the high value of the cars means the Shelby-unique bits get circulated in any condition for people to put cars back together with original parts.
Beware: The big-blocks run hot in this small chassis, so the cooling system needs to be in perfect condition. The dual Holley carbs run rich and, with today’s ethanol-rich fuel, they need frequent service–especially if you let them sit.
Expect to Pay: Concours-ready, $168,625; solid driver, $114,000; tired runner, $77,500.
Join the Club: The Shelby American Automobile Club, Shelby GT 500 Club
OUR TAKE
Then: “With personal cars getting hairier all the time, it seemed likely that Carroll Shelby would do something to keep ahead of the pack. Sure enough, he introduced the Shelby GT500, a car so hairy as to make others look crew cut by comparison. “
— Unattributed, MotorTrend, January 1967
Now: The David versus Goliath aspect of this pairing is undeniably appealing, and had the GT500 in our April 1967 contest packed this race-bred 427 option instead of the milder 428, its slingshot stone might have felled the mighty Corvette.
SPECIFICATIONS
Engine: 425.8 cu in/6978cc OHV V-8, 2×4-bbl Holley 2804 (prim) & 2805 (sec) carburetors
Power and torque (SAE gross): 425 hp @ 6000 rpm, 480 lb-ft @ 3700 rpm
Drivetrain: 4-speed manual RWD
Brakes: front: vented disc, rear: drum
Suspension: front: control arms, coil springs, anti-roll bar; rear: live axle, leaf springs
Dimensions: L: 186.6 in, W: 70.9 in, H: 51.6 in Weight 3794 lb Performance 0-60 mph: 6.2 sec, quarter mile: 14.5 sec @ 101 mph, 60-0 mph: 144 ft (MotorTrend, April 1967, original “428” 355-hp, 420-lb-ft engine)
Price: when new $4576a
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