"You're not going to believe this!"

Those were the words of Coy Harvey, who works for a pest control company in Lubbock, Texas, to Jeff Krueger, whom he previously worked with restoring classic Mustangs. While spraying a house for pests, Harvey opened the garage door to find a 1966 Shelby, buried under garden tools, baskets, Christmas ornaments, and assorted debris. It was one of those "Oh my God!" discoveries.

"All I could see was the driver's side door and window," Harvey says. He asked Marilyn Garrett, the owner of the house (and Shelby), if he could invite a friend by. Marilyn later told us, "I thought, What, you can't spray by yourself?"

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Krueger burned rubber to get a live look at the image Harvey had texted him. At the residential address in Lubbock, Krueger walked into Marilyn's garage to sense, in his words, "one of those great moments in time."

Krueger is past president of the Lubbock Mustang Club and owns a late-model Shelby Terlingua as well as numerous vintage Mustangs. For a few minutes he envisioned himself as the owner of this 1966 G.T. 350, but that wasn't going to happen. Marilyn's husband had recently passed away, so she did have thoughts of selling the car, saying, "I was kind of overwhelmed. I was thinking, I've got a whole racecar shop full to deal with!"

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Her husband, Malcolm, had owned several race cars and built a shop for them in their backyard, and Marilyn was going to sell them. She already had fended off quite a few aggressive buyers, such as the one morning at 6:30 when, wearing pajamas and a robe, she walked into her garage to spy two legs sticking out from under the Shelby.

"I just about had a heart attack. This guy said, 'Oh my gosh, do you want to sell this?' I said, 'No, get out of my garage!'"

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Krueger and Harvey are real Mustang enthusiasts, and since they hadn't committed breaking and entering Marilyn was happy to show them the Shelby. Krueger let her know he would be interested in buying the G.T. 350, but he did not want to press her into a decision. "Jeff very kindly, but painfully, just walked away," Marilyn said.

The family had already made a hard and fast decision about the Shelby. Marilyn wrapped up their sentiments with humor when she told us, "My children said selling was not an option, or when I got older they would find the ugliest nursing home possible, and then they added 'in Mexico''!"

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Three years passed. The racecar shop had been emptied, the shop itself becoming an apartment, but the Shelby still sat in the garage underneath 42 years of dirt and household items. Content with her decision not to sell, Marilyn called Krueger for advice on the next step. Krueger is in the carpet business full time but restores Mustangs on the side. He and his buddies call themselves the Texas Riff Raff Crew, of which this author qualified as a member despite no arrest record, stabbings, or warrants. Krueger and Neil Thompson invited me along to take pictures and record the story, which took place on Saturday, January 9, 2016.

When we arrived, the debris had been pulled off the Shelby despite Riff Raff pleas. What happened? "I was told, 'Don't take stuff off it.' But my son came home for Christmas and he said he could stand it no longer, so he and his wife and two kids threw everything in my garage away."

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Luckily, the "everything" did not include a hoard of parts stored between the garage wall and the driver's side of the car. Readers can follow along with our photos and the video online to share the vicarious thrill we had in finding a 1966 Shelby G.T. 350 parked in the same garage in the same spot since 1976. The biggest thrill awaited us upon inspection. The Shelby plate under the hood was dirty and dusty, and we could not read the number.

However, as we uncovered various components on the car, and when we got the Shelby sequence number (206) from Marilyn, it dawned on us that this 1966 was more than a 1966. This was one of the 252 "carryover" Shelby Mustangs that started out as 1965 model K-code Mustangs, and which share many of the mechanical features of the 1965 G.T. 350, including the override traction bars and lowered front suspension.

For now, Krueger might show the car in its Rare Find glory, dust and all, at a few car shows. Will it be restored or just made to run again? That's still being decided—it's Marilyn's call—but at least the car will see the light of day again and perhaps turn a tire under its own power for the first time in 40 years.

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