Shelby GT-H

Scope of this guide

This guide is scoped to the Shelby GT-H (2006), the black and gold Ford Mustang GT coupe that Shelby and Ford Racing prepared for the car rental company Hertz in the spring of 2006. It is a two-door, front-engine, rear-wheel drive coupe with a 4.6 litre V8 up front and a five-speed automatic gearbox in the great majority of cars. It is not a guide to the Hertz GT-H convertible that followed for the 2007 model year, and it is not a guide to the Shelby GT or GT500 road cars that Shelby sold to the public in the same period, even though one of our sources says the later Shelby GT used the same engine.

We have not driven this model for this article. We are an editorial desk that reads sources, and everything below comes from pages we opened: Serious Wheels, Wikipedia, three Mustang Specs pages, a reprint of the Ford, Shelby and Hertz announcement on The Auto Channel, a GTPlanet forum thread, an RM Sotheby's lot page, a road-test report on Speedsportlife, an Amazing Classic Cars page and an Auto Restorer article. We have not inspected, owned or tested a car. This page is for research, not a buying recommendation, and it cannot replace an inspection by a Mustang or Shelby specialist.

The figures at a glance

• Engine: 4.6L naturally aspirated V8, 4,606 cc, a 90-degree single overhead cam, three-valve-per-cylinder Ford Modular engine from the Mustang GT, mounted front-engine.
• Drivetrain: rear-wheel drive, five-speed automatic in the main run of cars, with a 3.55:1 rear axle ratio from the Ford Racing handling pack.
• Power: 325 bhp. Every source that gives a total says 325 hp, made up of the 300 hp of a standard Mustang GT plus 25 hp from the Ford Racing Power Pack. We use 325 bhp throughout.
• Torque: 447 Nm. This is 330 lb ft multiplied by 1.35582, which gives 447.4 Nm. The 330 lb ft is the standard Mustang GT figure of 320 lb ft plus 10 lb ft from the Power Pack.
• 0-100 km/h: no figure shown. The sources we read give 0-60 mph times, and a 0-60 mph time is not a 0-100 km/h time, so we have not converted or relabelled it.
• Top speed: no figure shown. One page says 155 mph and calls it unlimited, but that page is inconsistent in other places and we explain why we left it out below.
• Weight: 3,500 lb, or 1,588 kg, curb weight on the Mustang Specs pages.
• Years: 2006 only for this guide.
• Production: about 500 coupes, which is the figure most of the pages we read give.

History of the Hertz GT-H

The idea came from a 1966 car. In 1966 Hertz rented the Shelby G.T.350H, marketed as a Rent-a-Racer, and the 2006 car was announced as the 40th anniversary of that program. Mustang Specs gives the background this way: the Hertz Fun Collection launched in March 2006, and Walt Seaman, Hertz's vice president of worldwide fleet operations, took his inspiration from a 1966 GT350H at Hertz headquarters. He first wanted 500 Mustang GT coupes with simple cosmetic changes such as gold stripes. Ford was already working with Shelby on a special car, so Hertz, Shelby and Ford developed the GT-H program in under 90 days, according to the same page.

The car was introduced at the 2006 New York Auto Show. The announcement we read describes Ford, Shelby Automobiles and Hertz producing a special run of performance-modified Mustang GTs, built at Shelby's facility in Las Vegas with Ford Racing engineers and technicians involved. The builder is named as Shelby Automobiles in some pages and Shelby American in others, and we have not tried to settle the naming. The cars were offered only for rent through the Hertz Fun Collection at select airports, and the announcement lists locations in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Nevada, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington. Fun Collection cars were reserved by exact make and model and included satellite radio.

What changed from a standard Mustang GT

The base car was a black 2006 Mustang GT coupe. The pages we read list two Ford Racing packages and a set of cosmetic changes.

• Power Pack (FR1): a 90 mm cold air kit, a muffler kit, an X-pipe described as similar to the one on the Shelby GT500, performance calibration and a cat-back exhaust with GTA axle-back mufflers. The pages credit this with 25 hp and 10 lb ft over the standard GT.
• Handling Pack (FR3): tuned dampers, lowering springs, thicker sway bars, a strut tower brace and the 3.55:1 rear axle. GTPlanet quotes a drop of 1.5 inches at both ends.
• Brakes and tyres: GTPlanet lists 12.4 inch vented front discs with dual-piston aluminium calipers, 11.8 inch vented rear discs and four-channel ABS linked to traction control. The wheels were 17 inch five-spoke alloys with P235/55ZR17 tyres.
• Exterior: black paint with gold racing stripes, Le Mans style dual overbody stripes, rocker stripes marked Shelby GT-H, a Hertz Edition fender emblem, a Shelby Performance hood with pins, a brushed aluminium grille with a running horse emblem, a revised front fascia, body side scoops and painted brake calipers.
• Interior: Hertz Shelby GT-H sill plates and a numbered dash badge carrying Carroll Shelby's signature.

The engine details on the Mustang Specs pages are a bore of 90.2 mm, a stroke of 90.0 mm and a 9.8:1 compression ratio. The Wikipedia entry names the gearbox as a Ford 5R55S five-speed automatic.

Which figures we chose, and why

Power

Serious Wheels, Mustang Specs, GTPlanet, Speedsportlife and the RM Sotheby's lot page all give 325 hp or 325 bhp. The announcement on The Auto Channel gives the two parts of that sum, 300 hp for the standard 4.6 litre three-valve Mustang GT and 25 hp for the Power Pack, without printing the total. Wikipedia likewise does not state the total, though it says the Power Pack added 25 hp and 10 lb ft. The spec table on the Amazing Classic Cars page lists 300 hp, but the text of the same page describes the Power Pack adding 25 hp to 300 hp, so we read the 300 figure as the base car and not as the GT-H. We use 325 bhp. GTPlanet puts the peak at 5,750 rpm, while a Mustang Specs page prints 5,750 rpm next to the torque instead, so we do not give an rpm.

Torque

The sources split on whether the total is 320 lb ft or 330 lb ft. GTPlanet prints 320 lb ft at 4,500 rpm while also saying the Power Pack contributed 10 lb ft. Serious Wheels, Speedsportlife and two Mustang Specs pages print 330 lb ft, and one Mustang Specs page prints that as 447 Nm. The Amazing Classic Cars spec table prints 320 lb ft, while its text implies about 330 lb ft. Because the Power Pack figure of 10 lb ft is on top of a standard Mustang GT, we read 330 lb ft as the GT-H total and 320 lb ft as the base car. Converted at 1.35582, 330 lb ft is 447 Nm, and that is the figure we use.

Acceleration

None of the pages we read gives a time to 100 km/h, so there is no figure shown for it. The 0-60 mph times we found do not agree with each other:

• GTPlanet lists 5.0 seconds for 0-60 mph, 60-0 mph braking in 127 feet and a quarter mile in 13.6 seconds at 102.0 mph, and credits them to Motor Trend. That attribution rests on a single forum post. Auto Restorer gives 5 seconds and 13.6 seconds without naming the magazine.
• Speedsportlife reports that Car & Driver tested privately rented GT-H cars and recorded 5.3 seconds to 60 mph and a quarter mile in 13.9 seconds at 103 mph.
• Amazing Classic Cars lists 5.1 seconds to 60 mph, but it also lists the production as 5,000 in one table and 300 hp in another, so we treat that page with caution.

The spread from 5.0 to 5.3 seconds is probably down to test conditions, and we have no way to tell from the pages which is better.

Top speed

No reliable top speed is shown. The only figure we found is 155 mph, which the Amazing Classic Cars page labels as unlimited. At 1.60934 that would be about 249 km/h, but the page is internally inconsistent and does not say whether the car was tested, so we leave top speed out rather than print it.

Production

Most of the pages say about 500 or 500 units. The announcement says about 500, and GTPlanet says 500 units, coupe only, all finished in black with gold stripes. Mustang Specs adds detail on how those cars split: it says Shelby built 496 automatic GT-H units for the rental fleet, 20 of them went to Hertz executives and were never rented, and four more cars had manual transmissions and factory 18 inch wheels and were also never rented. Together that comes to 500 coupes. Wikipedia lists the GT-H as 2006-2007 with 500 cars and does not split coupes from convertibles. The RM Sotheby's page describes a separate 500-car convertible run after the coupes, with the cars other than its prototype being 2007 models. That is why we keep the figure at 500 for this guide and label it as the coupe run. The announcement itself only says about 500, so the sources do not settle whether any cars beyond those counted above were built.

Rental life and what it means for a used car

The pages we read give some detail about how the cars were used, though none of them is a buying checklist.

Speedsportlife, writing in February 2007, describes riding in a rented GT-H on Ortega Highway. It reports a 100-mile limit with an overage charge of 0.29 dollars a mile at the Hertz office concerned, and says renters had to be 25 or older. The author found the seats comfortable and supportive, the exhaust loud but quiet at cruising speed, and the grip strong. The criticisms were an interior that feels cheap, a flexing dash, a lot of silver plastic and a jittery, harsh ride over bumps, which the author attributes to the lowered, stiffened rear suspension. That is one rider's opinion in one article.

On disposal, Mustang Specs says used rental units were sold only to Ford dealers, at closed auctions. That differs from the common idea that rental cars of this kind were simply sold on to the public. We have not found a page that describes how the cars reached private owners beyond that dealer-auction route, and we do not have a mileage or condition pattern for them. The numbered dash badge and the sill plates are documented identifying features, and Mustang Specs says most of the modifications used numbered Ford parts, with the Shelby hood the exception. A reader looking at a car should ask a specialist what to verify, since the sources we read do not give a list of faults or checks.

Market and value notes

We found one sale price in the sources we read. The RM Sotheby's page shows the exact prototype of the Hertz GT-H convertible, built in 2006, with 11,905 miles, sold at 115,500 US dollars as lot 240 of the John Staluppi Collection. The page does not state the date of the sale. That car was an executive car and a convertible prototype, not a rented coupe, so it is not a guide to what an ordinary GT-H coupe is worth. A Mustang Specs comment from 2021 asks how to value a 12,000-mile car numbered 72 of 500, but the page does not answer, and other sale listings that turned up in our searches were not pages we opened. We give no price range.

What we could not find

• No 0-100 km/h time and no measured top speed, so there is no figure shown for either.
• No single agreed torque rating: the sources give 320 lb ft or 330 lb ft, and we explain our reading above.
• The Hagerty article on the Hertz Rent-a-Racers, the Ford Authority auction report, The Mustang Source timeline page, the LMR specification page and an AutoTrader Classics listing all returned access refusals, and the Wikipedia page titled Shelby GT-H does not exist. We did not work around any of them.
• The full text of the announcement as published by Ford or Hertz. We read a reprint on The Auto Channel.
• A confirmed split of manual and automatic cars beyond the figure of four manual cars on one Mustang Specs page.
• A model-specific fault list, recall notice or buying checklist for the GT-H.

About the photograph

The page uses the catalogue photograph for this model, and its credit is listed on the credits page.

Verdict

The Shelby GT-H is a Mustang GT that was dressed, tuned and rented out, and the sources agree on its story more than on its numbers. We take 325 bhp, 447 Nm from 330 lb ft, a curb weight of 1,588 kg and about 500 coupes built, with no figure shown for 0-100 km/h or top speed because the pages we read only give 0-60 mph times between 5.0 and 5.3 seconds and one weak top-speed figure. It looks like a rare, well documented piece of Shelby and Hertz history that is also a rental car with an unknown service life. Treat this page as a research aid and ask a specialist to inspect any car before relying on it.