When Ford introduced the Mustang to a salivating public in 1964, it was quite the game-changer. It offered rakish, sports car styling at a highly attainable price—less than $2,400 at the time. But the Mustang had a dirty secret. Keeping costs down meant Ford raided its parts bin quite heavily. While the Mustang might have looked like it was going flat-out even when parked, it wasn't actually much of a performance car. At least, it wasn't until Carroll Shelby came along and turned it into the Shelby GT350.

The Mustang is now in its fifth generation, yet again looking like a million bucks. And 50 years since the original Shelby GT350s first took to the track in anger, the most exciting variant still wears the GT350 badge. The suspension is optimized for track work. There's extensive use of lightweight components. It has special brakes and custom tires. The six-speed manual transmission is unique to the car. It's not just lighter than a regular Mustang, it's also stiffer. Oh, and under the hood is a very, very special engine.

It's fair to say that the Shelby GT350 was Ford's most anticipated car of 2015. And so the prospect of driving it in anger, on track, was sufficient motivation to be awake even before my alarm went off at 4:30 one morning last fall.

Shelby

Jonathan Gitlin

Jonathan Gitlin

Jonathan Gitlin

Jonathan Gitlin

There can't be many names as iconic to American performance cars. Carroll Shelby was a larger-than-life Texan who spent his war years as a flight instructor before trying his hand as a roughneck and then chicken farmer. Finally, he found something he was truly good at—building fast cars and racing them. Today, there's one car company most associate with his work—Ford.

It was Shelby who had the idea to drop a big Ford V8 into AC's sports car, creating the Cobra. He used Ford power in his Daytona Coupe to beat Ferrari at its own game in 1964 and 1965 (including winning Le Mans in '64). He turned Ford's GT40 into a winner, taking the top spot at Le Mans again in 1966 and 1967. But most probably associate his name with the Mustang.

Ford wanted to give the Mustang some sporting credentials in 1965, and the company joined up with Shelby to make that happen. To save weight, the rear seats were thrown out, the windows were swapped for plexiglass, and the hood and front bumper were made from fiberglass. There were bigger tires, brakes, and a more powerful engine among other changes. The first few dozen GT350s were pure competition cars, but soon there were street cars available with a few more creature comforts added back in.

The following year, Ford even made a special run for Hertz, painted black with gold stripes. It's rumored that more than a few were rented for a weekend, raced, and then handed back with evidence of a hastily installed-then-removed roll cage! But enough of the history lesson—back to the track.

Listing image by Jonathan Gitlin