The paint was faded, the side-exit exhaust was loud, and the interior showed the effects of a hard first decade. The salesman wanted $1,500 for it.
Twenty-three-year-old Jack Mercer took one drive and bought the car.
At the time, the Shelby was simply an old Mustang with stiff suspension, heavy steering, and enough noise to upset every neighbor on the block. Jack drove it to work, took it on weekend trips, and occasionally ran it at local club events. He never imagined that the car would someday be worth a quarter of a million dollars.
He simply knew he liked driving it.
The GT350 had already lived a full life before Jack found it. Built at Ford’s San Jose plant as a Mustang fastback, it was shipped to Shelby American, where the standard Mustang was transformed into a serious performance car.
Its high-performance 289-cubic-inch V8 received an aluminum intake, Holley four-barrel carburetor, Tri-Y headers, and other Shelby modifications. Output was rated at 306 horsepower. A four-speed manual transmission, quicker steering, stronger brakes, and revised suspension gave the GT350 abilities far beyond those of a regular Mustang.
Over the following decades, Jack’s Shelby experienced the usual battle scars. Stone chips covered the nose. The seats cracked. The engine began using oil, and the original white paint slowly turned dull and thin. By the late 1990s, the car was driven only occasionally. Eventually, it was parked inside Jack’s garage and covered.
The Shelby remained there for nearly twenty years.
Jack refused every offer to sell it. Some came from collectors. Others came from dealers who knew exactly what was hiding beneath the cover. As prices climbed, the offers became harder to ignore, but Jack always gave the same answer.
The car was staying with him.
In 2022, he finally began the restoration he had talked about for years. The body was stripped to bare metal and mounted on a rotisserie. Decades of small repairs were corrected. The original panels were preserved wherever possible, and the body was refinished in its factory Wimbledon White with Guardsman Blue stripes.
The 289 was rebuilt to its original Shelby specifications. The four-speed transmission, suspension, brakes, wheels, instruments, and interior were restored with the same attention. Even the side-exit exhaust returned, giving the Shelby the sharp, aggressive sound Jack remembered from the day he bought it.
Three years later, the finished GT350 rolled back into the sunlight.
The car appeared much as it had when Shelby American completed it in 1965. The paint was clean, the engine bay was properly detailed, and the black interior looked factory fresh. Yet one important piece of its history remained untouched: Jack was still in the driver’s seat.
Today, genuine 1965 Shelby GT350s occupy a very different place in the collector-car market. Jack’s $1,500 used car is now valued at approximately $650,000.
He has owned it for fifty years.
The numbers are remarkable, but they are only part of the story. Jack remembers buying gas when he could barely afford it, taking his future wife on their first date, teaching his son how to shift the four-speed, and walking into the garage during difficult years simply to see that the Shelby was still there.
Plenty of valuable cars move from one collection to another. Very few remain with the same owner for half a century.
Jack bought the GT350 when it was simply a used car.
Fifty years later, both the man and the Shelby are still together—and neither one is ready to retire.