The venerable and vaulted GT suffers under some of the same angst as other high-performance vehicles. There are probably, per capita, more GTs on the road today than there were when the cars were new. Who can blame the copycats? After all, these cars fetch more money than a standard fastback or hardtop—not only that, but also the GT carries a mystique that draws people.
Even so, when you are out there trying to buy into that mystique, you don’t want your purchase to be a Johnny-come-lately or some cobbled-up mess—you want the real thing. Obviously, as fakes go, there are cars that range from poorly done to well done. What is really scary today is that the knowledge on these cars is so great that good fakers can fool even the best experts. All the parts are certainly available to do it, too. You can get all the badging, exhaust hangers, and a correctly riveted door tag from any of the vendors that market Mustang parts.
So with all that said, how can you distinguish a real GT from a fake? You can’t, because dealers in 1965 actually “made” GTs. That’s right. They did just what today’s fakers do: They raided the parts bin and made GTs from standard hardtops, convertibles, and fastbacks. Ouch. This truly adds a certain murky quality to being able to tell a real GT from a fake. Why? Because the Mustang community considers these GTs to be legitimate due to the fact that they were cobbled together at the original-selling dealer.