Video: Carroll Shelby Pitches the 1968 Mustang

Among his many talents, Carroll Shelby was one of the car industry’s great salesmen. Here the Ford Motor Company puts him to work selling the 1968 Mustang line.

 

 

In this 1968 Ford Motor Company commercial, Carroll Shelby is introduced as an engineer and a race driver, but many will tell you his greatest gift was as a salesman. With a smile and a shoeshine, in 1962 the smooth-talking Texan persuaded Lee Iacocca and Henry Ford II to bankroll his dream for a world-beating American sports car, the Shelby Cobra, and together they made motorsports history.

However, by 1968 the original Ford-Shelby partnership was winding down. The Cobra roadster was out of production, the Le Mans-winning Ford GT racing program managed by Shelby had run its course, and Ford put Shelby to work pitching the company’s production cars. Shelby’s own GT500 Mustang is featured briefly at the beginning of of this commercial spot, but the real focus here is on the standard Mustang models. If you’ve never seen the master salesman at work, here’s the perfect opportunity. Video below.

 

 

 

One thought on “Video: Carroll Shelby Pitches the 1968 Mustang

  1. What a salesman. I love how every word of the pitch is indisputable fact. You can see how he went far.

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