Car of the Month
January 2009

Tom and Liz Hasenberg's GT500

I became interested in the S197 Mustang as soon as I saw the first spy photos. Reading about the car heightened my interest with its significantly stiffer frame than the SN95 predecessors. I spoke with Rick Titus at SAAC30 in May 1995 and he had nothing but praise for the car. He also told me that when sales cooled off, Ford would be coming out with all of the special Mustang models including Cobras, Shelby’s, Bosses, and Mach I’s. I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be neat to have a late model Shelby to complement my ’66 GT350.

Fast forward 2 years later and there were 2 versions of the Shelby available - the Shelby GT and the GT500. I had decided to take a closer look. The last Sunday of June 2007, Liz, Christian and I. headed to the local Ford dealer to see what they had. The GT500 ‘vertible in the showroom really caught our eyes as well as several GT500 coupes. The Roush Mustangs and Shelby GT’s also looked enticing. We met with a salesman and discussed the cars. After a bit of discussion, we test drove a Stage 3 Roush and then a Shelby GT. Next, we drove a red Roush 427 ‘vertible. We all loved that car – especially the torque and power. We discussed the GT500s with the salesman, but they had $35K dealer mark up and were fairly inflexible. We decided to sleep on our choices and left for the day. That evening, I decided I really wanted a supercharged car like the GT500s and 427 Roush’s. Liz and I agreed to a budget at about the sticker price of the GT500. If I could not find a GT500 for near sticker price, my second choice was to order a Shelby GT ‘vertible (We called around and no dealer had one in stock).

The next day I started my new job at Coherent. That evening I took Christian to hockey practice. On the way home I realized we had not included CEF in our Mustang search the previous day. We stopped in and as we were drooling over the PJ Boss302 Saleen, a salesman asked us what we were looking for. I told him we really want a GT500 but it is probably out of our budget. He told us they had one and took us over to a striking red coupe. He asked what I would pay for it tonight. I told him our budget and he said how about $5K above it. I told him that was my budget and I would order a Shelby GT ragtop if I couldn’t swing the GT500. He came back with the manager who then offered the car for $2K above our budget. Christian immediately said “Dad let’s get it”. I told the sales manager I was already pushing it with my budget and would be in trouble with Liz if I went over. The manager then called the owner and came back and shook my hand. We just bought a new GT500!

I drove the car home that evening with Christian riding shotgun. All of us were quite excited. I drove it to work the next day and took the long way home to try to get 50 miles on the car so I could get boost. The on board computer was programmed to prevent the blower from providing boost until the car had 50 miles on it. Once we had the 50 miles Christian enjoyed hearing the sound of the supercharger. He would lean over to look at the gauge with a smile and ask “How many pounds of boost did we get?”

A few weeks after getting the car we decided to take it on our week long road trip to Northern California. We drove down Highway 9 to Santa Cruz and then up the coast along Highway 1. We had brunch in Half Moon Bay and continued up the coast. The car was very enjoyable to drive. It had great torque and power and was very stable in the corners on the mountain roads. Regardless of how hard I pushed it, the car gave a feeling of confidence on the curvy mountain roads.

The bright red car received a lot of attention throughout the week. We had one particularly amusing moment in Arcata, CA (near Eureka). We were driving along a city street when 2 boys passed on bikes in the opposite direction. One boy turned his head and just stared at the car. He continued to ride along with his head turned 180 degrees and then crashed into the curb. We were momentarily concerned that he was hurt, but suddenly his head popped up and he gave us a big thumbs up! This was the highlight of the trip for Christian. For the remainder of the week, we continued to take all the back roads of California. We ended up driving over 1100 miles, with less than 5 of them on the freeways! It was a great way to break in the new Shelby!

Tom Hasenberg