Doran Hayes’ 1968 Ford Mustang Shelby GT350 Convertible
Doran Hayes’ Mustang Story:
When Doran Hayes was a student at Cal Poly University, his father wanted to buy Hayes a car and had been talking to a friend in Southern California just about getting together. The friend explained that he had to stay home that weekend and sit by the phone because he had an ad in the L.A. Times to sell his Mustang. A discussion followed, and the sale was made.
“I don’t know exactly what he paid for it,” Hayes said, “it was probably just under $2,000 (about $14,300 in 2022 dollars) sight-unseen.”
A friend of Hayes’ went to look at the car.
“He called me and said, ‘Do you know what your dad had parked in the driveway?’ ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘it’s an old Mustang.’ ‘Not quite,’ he said. ‘It’s a Shelby GT350 convertible.’ I didn’t know it was a convertible, and I didn’t even know what a Shelby was.”
Hayes became the second owner of the 3-year-old Shelby Mustang that had 48,000 miles on it. It was in good shape except that the first owner had been in a small fender-bender and had it repaired.
“So, it now has a new left front fiberglass fender and nose pieces. Over the years the paint they put on it turned pinkish, but other than that the car was in good shape.”
The car is almost completely original, even though it did spend some years ungaraged.
“For the last 40 years, it has been parked in the garage, only starting it up once in a while but changing the fluids and not registered to drive.” Surprisingly, Hayes has only had routine maintenance expenses on this now-104,000-mile, 55-year-old vehicle.
The candy-apple-red Shelby Mustang is powered by Ford’s 302-cubic-inch V8 engine using an aluminum Cobra intake manifold with a rated horsepower of 250 teamed with a three-speed automatic transmission. Some of the unique features include sequential taillights and the swing-away steering column used in 1966 Thunderbirds for easier entry and egress for the driver. A very unusual feature is the car’s two-piece, folding-glass rear window that actually folds in half when the top is lowered.
“It’s really a very basic car,” the owner stated. “It’s not a complex machine under any circumstances. In fact, it’s too basic, but that makes it really easy to have owned it for 40 years and really not done anything to it. It doesn’t have air conditioning or power windows, but it does have power steering and brakes with disc brakes in the front. It also has shoulder harnesses, which were not standard in cars in 1968, but they put them in Shelbys.”
Hayes has no plans to sell the car and no idea of its current value, but the sentimental value of his first vehicle, a gift from his father, makes this car priceless to him.
(photo credit: David Krumboltz - Bay Area News Group)
