[Lee Stewart]

Carroll Shelby was a true maverick. A man who could see the future and take advantage of that foresight. He was steadfast in what he wanted for his cars . . . unfortunately sometimes he became an obstacle in what he wanted versus what could be built. The 1967 GT 350 and GT 500 are perfect examples of this.



His front grille design included twin 7 inch "driving lights" AKA Hi-Beam Lights. He did no research into this design - he just liked it. Unfortunately it created a number of problems: First, not all states accepted this lighting design. Those that did not would not allow a Shelby GT to be registered. Second, the 1967 GTs were the first to be offered with factory A/C. By placing the lights in the middle of the grille, needed cooling air was blocked and cars easily overheated, especially the GT 500s.



So a second front grille design was used for those states with the lights placement issue and to retrofit those cars having overheating issues along with GT 500s with A/C



In his advertising, Shelby stressed not only performance but safe performance. His two callouts were the "competition approved overhead safety bar" and "eye level turn indicator and brake lights" . . . the famous "scoop lights."

The 1967 Shelby GTs were way behind schedule and way over budget. One of the real issues were all the fiberglass parts which made up a good portion of the 1967 Shelby GTs. The problem (which is very common to fiberglass parts being married up to metal parts) they didn't fit right and required a lot of hand massaging which was costly in time.

Ford sent one of their VPs to Shelby's LA airport offices to get the 1967 GTs back on track. When he arrived he saw the scoop lights. When asked to describe how they worked the VP looked at Shelby and demanded "who told you you could do that?" Shelby replied "no one. I thought of the idea myself." The VP then explained to Shelby that the lights he thought of were illegal in all 50 states. "Only emergency vehicles are allowed to have those kind of lights." So immediately, all those GTs that had the lights (approx. 200) would have to be modified so that they became "parking lights" - they came on when the lights were activated and were shut off when the lights were deactivated.

The 1967 Shelby GTs were taken out of Shelby's hands with Ford moving production to A O Smith in October of 1966 who quickly fixed the fiberglass parts issue. Then Ford terminated his LA airport facility in May of 1967.