This ’68 Shelby GT500 KR is one that got away—and it’s probably just as well
What’s that thing I’ve read? Something about how you’re not really dead until the last person to say your name has also left the planet?
My dad’s been gone since 1996, and we four kids still remember him with great affection and more frequency than you’d expect given it’s been, let’s see … 27 years now. The photo of him and my mom on the wall has been hanging there so long I no longer really notice it, and his photo smile never did really convey the man anyway.
Sometime in 1977, during my junior year at Ruskin High School, I was walking home—which might mean my Triumph Spitfire was either down for the count again or I hadn’t acquired it quite yet. I came to the corner of Red Bridge Road and Bennington Avenue and a stunning Shelby GT500 KR convertible was gleaming at me from the wrap-around driveway of the nicest, biggest house around, with its top down and a “For Sale” sign on the windshield: $6500. If the Shelby shown here, listed early this year on Bring A Trailer, isn’t that very car, I’ll eat the white convertible top.
The first sentence of the BaT ad reads: “This 1968 Shelby Mustang GT500 KR is one of 518 convertibles produced for the model year and was built on June 26, 1968. It was delivered to Paul’s Ford Sales of Kansas City, Missouri . . .”
Tall Paul’s Ford was only about a mile down the road, and it’s hard to imagine there being two of these in that skinflint part of KC. There were plenty of Mustangs around, already clapped out at 10 years old, thanks to winter salt and period modifications, but the perfect, unmolested GT500 KR I saw seemed to have nothing in common with them. It must have spent all its time in the garage, or I surely would have seen it before. At that time, I was more of a Camaro guy, but seeing it there for sale, I was suddenly willing to rethink.
In my mind’s eye, I think it was spring, because I remember the patches of snow on the driveway that set off the red paint, just like in the BaT ad. The convertible top was down to reveal the racy black roll bar that KRs came with.
Soon as Pops rolled in from work in his AMC Ambassador, I laid it on him. “Dad! You have to buy this Shelby Mustang GT500 KR convertible!” I knew he was shopping for a new car anyway. In those days, you kind of had to buy a new car every few years, as they rusted away beneath you.
“Mustang?” he said in his Alabama drawl. Dad was never a Ford guy, either.
As part of my pitch, I may even have told him it would be collectible, though I doubt I really had any such idea at the time. I just wanted to drive around in the thing—who wouldn’t? “Dad, it’s a 428 Cobra Jet! With A/C and a power top! And it’s red and looks brand new!”
“How much?” he asked.
“Only $6500!”
He took a long pull from his evening vodka tonic, fixed me with one eye and said, “There’s no way in hell I’m paying no sixty-five hundred dollars for no ten-year-old Mustang.” He liked to revert to the vernacular when making certain declarative points.
I think I knew that would be his reaction, but I had to put it out there anyway, just in case. We needed cars to drive, not to collect, and Dad had a history of buying vehicles that didn’t really lend themselves to emotional attachment. Maybe I did sense the KR would be collectible some day, because by 1977 Ford was slapping the Mustang name on some truly atrocious little automobiles, which made even us Chevy dudes long for the ’60s. But even back in ’77, if you shopped around you could find nice used Camaros and Chevelles and the like for around two grand. So $6500 really was a lot of money, even for a new car. And with four kids to feed on one income, we weren’t a wealthy family. Just wealthy enough to tithe to St. Mary’s every Sunday, though. It was a different time for sure, and Dad was a completely different, less materialistic animal than his oldest son. Must have been a Depression-era thing.
He wound up trading the Ambassador for a Plymouth Volare wagon with the slant-six, which Google tells me had a base price of $4241. Yet another hair shirt of a vehicle, produced in that terrible era when Detroit hadn’t uncorked the fuel-injection genie and was still trying to make carburetors work with emissions equipment. My poor dad was no mechanic; I learned by doing and may even have introduced him to interchangeable parts. Look, Dad, it’s easier to just buy a new carburetor than to take the whole car to Jerry’s Conoco all the time to try to make that one work.
I was excited as you’d expect when I got the red Triumph Spitfire, followed immediately by being crushed that it was all topped out at about 80 mph. How can a thing look so fast and . . . not be? I got rid of it and followed up with an $1800 hopped-up ’67 SS396 Chevelle, which turned out to be neither an SS nor hopped-up. I had to save up another $600 to get its engine rebuilt; then it really was a beast both of my parents feared. At 18, however, I lacked their grim imagination.
A few short years after we didn’t buy the Mustang, the Army sent me to California, then Colorado, Texas, and Germany. When I finished school, I landed a job at Cycle magazine that moved me to California for good. I started my own family and may have made it back to KC six or 10 times in the next few decades, two of them for my parents’ funerals. One of our regular reminiscences was the red Mustang we didn’t buy. I’d tell my dad what it was currently worth (that it sold in February for $211,000 tells me I might have been on to something). He’d counter with something along the lines of: “You would’ve wrapped it around a telephone pole anyway.” He wasn’t wrong. But first I would have installed headers, glasspacks, traction bars, air shocks, and fuzzy dice.
I’m convinced that BaT Shelby GT500 KR was our GT500 KR, and seeing it pop up on my computer screen was like seeing Dad’s young ghost. That night, I dreamt of the two of us rolling down Red Bridge Road in it with the top down.
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1966 GT 350 in rough but completely original rust free Southern California shape for $5000 in 1991 I was 16. I had 2500 hard earned dollars. $2500 from a Shelby
I had one exactly like this except for the wheels, gave $2,000 for it in 1972….sold it in 1977 for $4,009
It was the late 70’s and I was selling farm machinery for a living. I was trying to sell a tractor to a newly minted rancher when he pulled the doors open on an old shed. There sat a 73 Pantera with at least 1/2″ of dust on it. It was complete, but the mice had had their way with it. The interior was rough and no doubt the wiring. Asking price…..$2500. Shoulda, woulda coulda. Didn’t.
My got away story was the summer of 1975. I had saved up about $400 and was looking for my 2nd car. I blew up the engine in my 67 Galaxie the 2nd day I owned it…. Anyways dad says he found me a car- a 1963 Volvo 1800s. As I had to work I handed over my hard earned monies to him, to buy me the car -sight unseen by me.
I got home from school the next day and there it was in all its bondo repaired fenders and rolled and brushed on paint job. I was horrified. It did run good, if you don’t include the slipping clutch. The radio didn’t work, and nether did the taillights. After bringing the car to our family mechanic to adjust the clutch, he had the car in a lift and showed my dad and I the Swiss cheese framework that the steering box was barely clinging to. So this meant that it was time to go car shopping . Again, but this time I was shopping for my car, not what dad thought I should have.
So to the point, I found a 1967 GTO on the lot at the local Pontiac dealer, gold paint, black vinyl top and interior, automatic power steering and brakes. If memory serves me correctly, they were asking $750.
I dragged dad over and we looked it over and took it for a test drive, he said the brakes needed work so he said no. No was NO! There was no room for discussion. What do 67 GTOs go for these days?
FYI, I ended up with a 1968 BRG sprite, that needed tires, which cost more than a brake job would have cost.
The other one that got away, because I traded it in (on a….Pinto😳) 1969 Fiat 124 Sport Coupe-just try to find one of these around these days! It just wasn’t reliable enough to drive back and forth to classes in college in the Chicago Suburbs in the winter.
Great story John. I appreciated the references about South KC as I was a beat cop there back in the day. Tall Paul’s location was also Boots Williams Ford at one time and was infamous for messing with prospective buyers, like throwing the keys to their trade-in on the roof of the building. They also required an “earnest” check before getting the “best deal” from the Sales Mgr. and if you backed out of the deal the response always was “You’ll have to come back tomorrow, we already deposited it.” Being a dedicated car guy, I probably experienced every car dealer BS scam in the book, until I started wearing my uniform into the dealership! My regrets aren’t about cars I missed out on, but cars I sold way too soon!
A 1966 F85 Olds sticks in my mind as one that got away. $800 seemed like a lot of money for a car in 1973 that seemed odd. 4 speed, bench seat, 400 with 3 deuces, a 4 speed, and a funky ram air system. Battery was in the trunk. Went to the library to see what I could find out about it.
Did find out Oldsmobile did indeed produce a tri power engine that year. Car was gone by the time I got back.
Years later, I finally understood just how rare this one was. It appeared in an auction catalog about 10 years ago, but was sold before it went on the block. Only a handful of F85’s were built with a 400, far fewer with L69 package, and then to top it off, the W30 option. I’ve only seen one other L69 in person, a friend having one in the normal 442.
Always interesting to see a car that was unusual back then resurface years later in the same area. Sometimes preserved, other times pretty much a shell.
Mine was a ’32 Ford 3 WD coupe in 1950 – on the Chrysler used ca lot in my hometown of Brookhaven MS. $100. My dad would not hear of it. In the spring of ’53, my mother bought me a 3 WD for $200. I still have it.
I still live my ‘one that got away’ story, but it’s not all bad. In February 1970 I grabbed a one-owner Volvo 544 Sport for $480 Canadian in Toronto and proceeded to drive, race and enjoy it. But, being a car nut, everything out there was a prize. I wanted an Austin-Healey and bought a 1960 2-seater 3000 to sit beside the 544. Loved driving the Healey but it soon showed it was going to need rings, and body restoration. Push came to shove, and one of them had to go. I chose to keep the 544 because it was more practical. Paid $1200 for the Healey, sold it for $800, with the factory hardtop. That Healey is now worth north of $80k. But I am still driving the 544 53 years later. Even though I can’t get $20k for it now if I was lucky, it has been a faithful companion, reliable, safe and far better to me than I have been to it. Introduced me to the world of vintage car collecting without worrying about it going up in value every year. Different perspective on the vintage car world. It’s not always about the dollars. But I do miss the Healey for what it was.
There is an exact double of that car selling at Mecum Kissimmee in January. Mine
Seems we all have similar stories, 1977 I’m 17 years old driving my first vehicle 1966 Chevy C-10 with a 250 straight 6 & 3 on the tree. On my way home I spot a 1969 Chevelle ss 396 4 speed with all the right options. Talk my Dad into coming with me to check it out, he got within 50 feet of the car & said no chance you’ll wrap that thing around a pole. Let’s go. Dreams shattered. He was probably right a year later settled for a 1969 mustang held on to it for 45 years. Sold it 3 years ago & bought a 1991 corvette zr1. Dad was right but DAMN.
Here’s what good writing does: it captures and holds interest in a subject one would otherwise eschew.
Everything John Burns writes does this.
I am not a car collector.
I am not a Mustang guy (though I have owned two).
I’m not a Shelby acolyte.
I kinda despise convertibles…
I’ve never been to Blandsville, Missouri (or wherever this autobiographical gem is set).
And yet, I read and enjoyed every word of this piece.
Please just pay him whatever it costs to publish more of his stellar work.
Attaboy, GiLA!
Mine in 1976 was a 1967 435hp/427 convertible corvette for the extravagant price of $2500.
Would have been great fun!
I came home from the hospital after I was born (in 1961) in a ’61 Corvette. My dad was a VW mechanic but scrimped and saved before I was born to buy that car. He was a car guy. When my little brother was on the way in 1964, he sold the Corvette and got a new (four seater) Studebaker Avanti, supercharged and definitely not ready for prime time. That car broke him. It lived in the shop and he got rid of it within a year. A ’64 Polara was his sad introduction to family car life. I felt that way when I bought my Previa van in ’93. As he moved up at the German car dealership, he started his sales career on the used car lot there. The cars that came and went were legend. At one point they had three Cobras on the lot because they couldn’t get rid of them. Guys would buy them and realize they were not suited to Michigan summers (or winters, or springtime rain). Gullwings passed through. He really, really wanted to buy a perfect Gullwing that came in on trade, for $5,000. My mom asked what he wanted with an old car like that? My own “one that got away” also came through that lot. He was selling new VWs and everything else German at the time, and I was barely 17, but the 1968 Z28 that came in was just gorgeous with just a tiny bit of rust over the rear fender lips was only $2,400! Cooler heads prevailed and I’d already gotten enough tickets in my ’66 Ford pickup so it sold quickly to some other lucky kid. I’m still looking for another ’66 shortbed fleetside F100 Custom Cab though. It was a great truck. Tanks for the memories Burns. I miss that grip of bike mags I’d wait for at the mailbox every month. Your words were one of the reasons.
When I was 14 years old, I fell in love with a medium metallic blue 1931 Ford Model A 5-window coupe (gasser-style) that was full-fendered with a 327 Chevy V-8, 4-speed, and black diamond tufted interior. It was for sale for $1,000 during the winter, in Saginaw, MI, and I had the money (saved up from my paper route) but we only had a 1-car garage and my Dad did not want to keep his car outdoors, so I had to pass on it. To this day, I often wonder what ever happened to that car?