Shelby 40th Anniversary GT500 Super Snake Pace Car Needs No Introduction

By Tony Markovich - July 19, 2016

shelby_gt500_pacecar

Calling this 2007 Mustang “special” is an injustice. Every Shelby ever made is a special Mustang. This is a Shelby GT500. Plus it’s a Super Snake edition GT500. Plus it’s the Shelby 427 pace car version of the Super Snake. On top of that, it’s in the 40th Anniversary tribute trim for the GT500. All of that, and it has less than 1,000 miles on the odometer. So, yeah, it’s worth the $90,000 price tag.

Allow us to elaborate. Shelby has only sponsored one NASCAR race in its history. That race was the 2009 Shelby 427 in Las Vegas, where Shelby’s factory stands. The race was 427.5 miles as a call back to the old 427 Cobras that Shelby produced. The pace car for that race was aptly a Shelby GT500. This isn’t that exact car, but it’s wearing the same clothes that car wore.

You might have sharply noticed that the dates don’t really add up. How could a 2007 car have the liveries for an event that was two years in the future? Well, when the original owner bought the car, he bought it as a 40th Anniversary Edition GT500 (1967-2007). Then he had it converted into a Super Snake. When he saw that a GT500 was pacing the Shelby 427, he entered his car into the program and had it outfitted with the appropriate gear. Through the process, he met Carroll Shelby and also has signatures from Bob Tasca, John Force, Jack Roush, Ashley Force, and Steve Saleen, among others.

All of that makes it a remarkably rare car, and we haven’t even touched on its performance potential yet. With the Super Snake conversion, this car is capable of 725 horsepower from its supercharged 5.4 Liter DOHC V8. It also has a Tremec TR6060 6-speed manual transmission, a 3.73 gear ratio, and a suspension tuned by Shelby and Eibach.

This is all to say that it’s a one-owner car with 644 miles. Different reputable sites list different numbers, but there are less than 1,000 40th Anniversary GT500s in the world, and some say only 300. This is one of only 202 Shelby Mustangs to receive the 427 pace car treatment, and one of only 16 to have that treatment in Performance White. It’s a car destined to sit in a collector’s museum in the future, and we haven’t even listed half of the extra features. Check it out on eBay, then let us know what you think.