Modern Ford Mustang Shelby GT350 Already On Its Way To Becoming Collectible
Almost lost in the big Ford Mustang Mach-E debut late last year was another Mustang milestone: The final S550-generation Shelby GT350 rolled off the assembly line. Introduced in 2015 to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the original Shelby Mustang, the new-age GT350 is now itself history.
It’s also a surefire collectible, even as the Shelby Mustang with the highest production numbers in history (the 23,574 combined production run of the GT350 and GT350R just edges the 2007-2008 GT500s total of 22,989). Although the car is not yet part of our price guide, we do provide insurance for the cars, which means we can track values owners quote over time. No surprise, many are still depreciating (as we’ve reported before, even new supercars aren’t immune to the normal cycle of depreciation), but only slightly. Some are already on the upturn.
According to our insurance data, the flat-plane ‘Stang is extremely popular with the big fish in the collector hobby. The average GT350 owner for whom we provide insurance has 7.8 cars in their collection, and nearly half of all of them own at least three classics. (The average Hagerty member, for comparison, has one car).
No surprise that GT350 owners have a soft spot for American metal. Other Fords are most popular with these collectors, which tracks for American collectors who tend to be tribal when it comes to the Big Three and Ford in particular. Yet we also see a fair number of Porsches, which account for 5 percent of the cars in these owners collections, as well as Shelbys (4 percent).
As you might guess, a lot of GT350 owners collect Mustangs. In fact, 65 percent of the owners with three or more cars also own another Mustang. Original GT350s are, of course, quite pricey and thus aren’t commonplace in any collection. But if we zoom in on new GT350 owners with 10+ car collections, we find that 17 percent of them also have a 1965/66 example. A matching set would be enticing, indeed.
Before we go further, let's state the obvious: Any modern GT350 is a special car worthy of the storied Shelby badge. Instead of relying on a beefed-up version of the Mustang GT’s Coyote V-8, the GT350 received a bespoke 5.2-liter mill with a Ferrari-esque flat-plane crank. Dubbed "Voodoo," the engine received (at the time) the highest horsepower rating — 526 — in the company’s illustrious history of building naturally-aspirated V-8s. Along with all of those ponies came a stratospheric 8250 redline.
(photo credit: Ford)
