158k-Mile Survivor Shelby GT350H: One Owner Since '69, Last Wash in '80, Last Drive in '09

The Shelby GT350 was born in 1965 and continued the following year with a major marketing hit – the Hertz contract. In essence, Shelby signed a deal with the car rental company to supply 1,000 GT350 Mustangs. The GT350H was born, bringing about a never-ending source of lore, tales, myths, and bonfire stories (most of them false).

However, the cars were as real as they got, and hot-headed, lead-footed Americans suddenly had a great deal on their hands. For 17 bucks a day and 17 cents a mile, anyone over the age of 25 could take a Shelby Mustang. There were also the small details of a Hertz Sports Club membership status, but that was just a matter of bureaucracy.

Identical in every aspect to the regular Shelby Mustang GT350s, the Hertz cars had a different course in life. Following their rental service life cycle, the high-performing occasional drivers would be shipped back to Ford for an overhaul. Once the Blue Oval mechanics were finished getting the beaten cars back in shape, Ford sold them to the general public.

That’s how Andy Vann got his GT350H example in 1969. The young man was dating his sweetheart, Mary Ann, at the time, and the Mustang probably made a long-lasting impression on the woman. So long, in fact, the two are still happily married today, 55 years after she first rode in a Shelby Mustang. It wasn’t just the man who got to her heart; the car became her daily driver for a while, but with the increasing popularity of the early Shelby 'Stangs, more and more piston addicts offered to buy it.

The car was not for sale, but that didn’t stop die-hard Ford guys from chasing her with propositions. One of them even followed the woman home to try and persuade help sell him the GT350H but to no avail. However, the nuisance became so aggravating that it convinced the couple to keep the car out of sight and away from lusting eyes.

So they did – the Shelby Hertz pony was parked in 1980 and simply not driven after that. Garage dust slowly crept up the car, covering it over the years until 2009. When the Mustang turned 45, Andy and Mary Ann Vann pulled the car out of retirement, got it up to working order, and went to a Mustang car meet to celebrate. The car was still wearing its three-decade layers of garage dust and whatever traces of ‘time capsulation’ were left in and on it when it was taken off the road.

The special Ford would have been the perfect imperfect survivor if not for the three washed spots in the windshield and rear window. Andy insisted on driving the car in and out of the trailer for the meeting – a feat he repeated 15 years later, in 2024, at the Mustang’s 60th anniversary.

Interestingly, and very much contrary to popular belief, this particular Shelby Mustang GT350 Hertz rental car was not raced. Not by Andy, in any instance, despite his solid background in sanctioned motorsports events. He was a consistent driver and builder of race cars.

Past tense is required because he no longer gets behind the wheel in fireproof overalls now, but he still wrenches on track-only vehicles. He bought the Hertz Shelby after the car had finished its rental duties, with little more than 9,0000 miles (just under 14,500 km) on the clock.

We might say Mrs. Vann drove the Cobra out of it, given that the milometer now records 58,429.5 statute miles / 94.033 km (see it in the video below). That, however, is precisely one hundred thousand miles short of the actual road experience of this well-seasoned, well-worn GT350H - the actual mileage is 158,429.5, just a whisker under 255,000 kilometers.

‘It’s never used a quart of oil between oil changes - the only car I ever had that didn’t use oil.’ Andy Vann is not the man we’d suspect of not knowing the first thing about how a motor works. In 1997, he drove in a classic car rally and came second in his class behind the wheel of a 1950 Ford Club Coupe with a 239-cubic-inch flathead V8 (3.9 liters).

Oh, and if you’re wondering why this is relevant to his knowledge of cars, it’s because the race lasted 45 days, started in Pekin, China, and ended up in Paris (that’s the capital of France, in Europe) some 10,000 miles and 43 days, 53 minutes later. It was the first-ever motoring event to cross through Tibet and over the Himalayas.

The couple don’t plan on ever selling their 1966 Shelby Mustang GT350H – they don’t have any children – but they will care for it for as long as possible. To cite Mary Ann, ‘They’ll bury us in this car.’ I’m willing to bet some Happy Racing Grounds residents will beg them for a ride, even though it’s not one of those rare and coveted four-speed manual examples.

Of the 1,000 units built under the Shelby-Hertz agreement, only the first 86 (85 regular production examples, plus the first test car) were fitted with the performance four-speed gearbox. The rest came with a three-speed auto (the Vanns have one like it).

However, one less pedal didn’t mean less fun. Shelby American tuned the three-speed automatic gearbox to shift at higher RPMs (5,500, to be specific) than in regular Mustangs. The performance numbers were fairly close to those recorded on a regular four-speed.

The K-code 289-cubic-inch Hi-Po V8 (Ford’s fabled 4.7-liter) was an impressive high-power motor in itself (271 hp, 312 lb-ft / 275 PS, 423 Nm). The Shelby treatment got the numbers to 306 hp and 323 lb-ft (311 PS, 438 Nm) with the help of exhaust headers, an aluminum intake manifold, and a large four-barrel Holley 715 CFM carburetor.