This Mustang Was Supposed to Be Crushed. It Sat in a Texas Field for 20 Years Instead.

In 1967, Shelby American built just one GT500 coupe: a Candy Apple Red notchback test car the shop called "Little Red." It tested twin Paxton superchargers, it inspired the 1968 Mustang California Special, and when its job was done it was supposed to be crushed. It wasn't. For fifty years, Shelby fans thought it was gone. Then in 2018, Craig Jackson of Barrett-Jackson and restorer Jason Billups tracked it down using its original Ford VIN, and found it sitting in a field near Weatherford, Texas, where it had been parked for almost twenty years. This is the full true story: Carroll Shelby, the red test car, the crusher that never happened, the search, the restoration, and the night Little Red and its brother the Green Hornet were reunited in Scottsdale. If that rusty red Mustang had been sitting in your neighbor's field, would you have known what it was? Tell me in the comments. Watch the Ferrari under the magazines next: [paste the Video 4 link here] CHAPTERS 0:00 The Mustang they forgot to crush 1:03 The Snake Man 2:48 The red coupe 3:47 More power 4:27 The California Special 5:40 The move 6:23 The crusher 7:22 The car nobody believed 8:33 The search 9:37 March 3, 2018 10:28 Bringing it back 11:48 Scottsdale, 2020 12:40 Let's do the math 13:19 Why it almost didn't survive 13:47 Would you have known? Subscribe to True Classics for more real stories of legendary cars. CREDITS Photos: ShelbyPrototypeCoupes.com / Barrett-Jackson, Ford Authority and Wikimedia Commons contributors, credited on screen. Images were cropped, zoomed and overlaid with text. News and auction photos are used briefly for commentary and historical discussion. Stock video: Pexels (free to use under the Pexels License). Voice, music and sound effects: generated with ElevenLabs (paid plan). Some scenes are AI-generated illustrations (re-creations of people, places and objects), not real photos of the events. All cars shown are real photos. #shelby #mustang #barnfind #classiccars #gt500 #truestory