The car's current owner, who has requested to remain anonymous, contacted Carroll Shelby for more information about the car. Carroll explained that the engineers on the project are all deceased, including Shelby-American's head engineer, Fred Goodell. Shelby himself didn't spend much time in Dearborn in the late '60s. He never saw this Boss 302-powered GT350.
The current owner wanted to call this '69 GT350 a prototype. However, Carroll was more comfortable with "pilot car," which is more appropriate because prototype implies extensive engineering and mechanical work. In reality, 9F02G482244 was a standard Boss 302 with Shelby fiberglass and equipment, including front fenders, a grille, a hood, foglamps, side scoops, a unique interior trim, a rollbar, and other Shelby-specific features.
When the current owner restored this car to the concours condition seen here, he took note of the factory-drilled firewall holes to carry the foglights unique to the Shelby. Boss 302s, of course, didn't come with foglights.
A previous owner found a set of Shelby wheel centercap decals and an extra foglight switch under the original carpet. Another past owner, George Huisman, owner of Classic Design Concepts in Detroit, researched Ford Archives and had no luck finding original photographs, despite his access. It's possible Ford didn't document the car with photographs.
The car also proved to be the only '69-'70 Shelby with manual steering. Another unique feature is what's known as a "single-key locking system." One key opens the trunk and the doors. Other Mustangs, of course, used separate keys.
At this stage of the car's saga, we enter a gray area. Speaking with past owners, the current owner believes the Boss GT350 stayed at Ford for about two months. Then a Ford engineer, whose name is unknown, managed to get the car. He removed the stripes, fiberglass, and scoops to make the Shelby less noticeable. The Shelby items that remained included the interior, rollbar, roof snakes, and five-spoke Shelby wheels. The engineer kept the car for about 10 years before selling it in 1979 or 1980.
Luckily, the car survived major rust damage in its journey through the 11 owners who took the car from Michigan to Texas to Kansas to Tennessee, then back to Michigan and finally to Indiana. Other than replacing the quarter-panels, metal repair was minimal. During the restoration, the owner checked close to 50 date codes on the sheetmetal. "Ninety-five percent of them were stamped within two weeks of the build date," he says. For example, a sheetmetal date of 4-24-3D decodes as April 24th, third shift, Dearborn.
The interior is 75 percent original. The transmission has the original VIN stamp, and the original C8FE block is stamped X48. The C7FE crank, rods, and heads are original for this Boss 302 as well.
As a final check on originality, Carroll Shelby and Edsel Ford II have signed documents citing this Boss 302 Shelby as the one and only Shelby built with a Boss 302 engine. Shelby even signed the glovebox door with his autograph and the words "One of One."