Ford built the 1967 Ford Shelby GT500 Super Snake in the 60’s as a hungry sports car but sadly it never went for full production. Last year, the American marque released a modern concept version of the car named the 2017 Shelby Super Snake. Now the company has announced that the 67 version will be revived. The announcement was made at Caroll Shelby International in Garden, California.
“We’re fulfilling the dream of Carroll Shelby and Don McCain. Shelby built an engineering study dubbed the ‘Super Snake’ for high-speed tire testing by Goodyear in 1967. When that successful test ended, Shelby American offered it to Mel Burns Ford in SoCal to retail to the public,” said Shelby American president Gary Patterson, in a statement.
“Former Shelby American employee Don McCain approached Shelby about doing a limited run of cars. They carefully studied the idea but sadly, the timing did not work because the car was too expensive. The program never came to fruition, until now.”
As customary with revivals, they are limited and the 1967 Ford Shelby GT500 Super Snake revival is no exception. Ford has planned to produce only ten iterations of the Super Snake but not from scratch. All ten 67’s will require a donor car, which Ford says should be a 1967 Mustang. In production, all ten will get a unique Shelby serial number as well as personal signatures of Caroll Shelby and Don McCain, both of which were reserved for the original project.
The Super Snake shall be built on order at the Pennsylvania plant starting at a whopping price of $249,995.
Since, the car is being revived in this modern age, the powertrain will follow modern standards. Therefore, the GT500 Super Snake shall get a 427 cubic-inch V8 that expels more than 550 hp while being mated to a 4-speed manual transmission. In 1967, Shelby engineering head Fred Goodell experimented by fitting the white fastback car with a 427 race-ready engine that made 520 hp after slight modifications.
The company even added premium front disc-brakes, a Detroit Locker rear end, rear traction bars, exterior upgrades including a new front grille and stripes as well as Goodyear Thunderbolt tires. The car achieved 170 mph on a test-run in Texas.
“The 1967 Ford Shelby GT500 Super Snake was an expensive vehicle, which discouraged McCain and Shelby from continuing the program, leaving only one built by Shelby American,” the company clarifies. Only one example was built and that was recently sold at an auction for $1.3 million.