Shelby American Celebrates 50th Anniversary With limited Edition Models

By Henny Hemmes
Senior European Editor

DETROIT, January 10, 2012. Today, Shelby America gave its first press conference in history here at the Detroit Auto Show. John Luft, CEO of Shelby American said: “We always teamed up (with Ford) presenting our models. But we are a car company, so why not do a presentation all by ourselves.”

Today also marks the start of the 50th Anniversary Tour, that will visit car shows, and other events nationwide during the next eight months (www.shelby50th.com) . At the show, Shelby presented three special anniversary editions of the GT 500 Super Snake, GT 350 and the Shelby GTS. Of each of these models a limited edition will be built, 50 units in black and 50 in white trim and available in coupe and convertible configuration. They will be marked with gold 50th anniversary stripes, badges and will be numbered. The three hundred units are expected to be sold pretty soon and will be collector’s cars in the future.

The GT 500 Super Snake is Shelby’s top model, based on the 2012 Shelby GT 500 Super Snake platform. The Super Snake has 650, 750 hp, or 800 hp. The GT350 is based on the 2012 Mustang 5.0 V8 platform and has a choice of 430, 525 and 624 hp. The Shelby GTS starts with the V-6 with 305 hp output up to 624 of the V-8. This is the ‘base’ model that should attract young buyers to buy ‘my first Shelby’.

With a base price of just under 20,000 dollars, the new generation of customers will be able to experience the GTS’s muscle power. When they are in a position to spend more money, Shelby offers a slew of possibilities to ‘work their way up’ to the Snake, that with all that 800 horses will be a handful even for experienced drivers.

However those customers that are in the market for an Anniversary package should be prepared to spend $ 59,995, not including the base car.