How many 1967 Shelby G.T. cars received a factory-installed AM radio?

[Brian Styles]

Question: How many 1967 Shelby G.T. cars received a factory-installed radio?

Answer: It depends on what you consider the 'factory' and NO, not all cars received a 'factory' radio.

Obviously there were two 'factories' involved in building a 1967 Shelby G.T.:

Cars were initially 'built' on the Mustang line at Ford's San Jose assembly plant. 

These special-ordered cars were then shipped by convoy (truck) to Shelby's El Segundo production facility (located at the Los Angeles Int'l Airport) where they were 'completed.'

Here are the facts:

• If Shelby American didn't specify a radio on the DSO, Ford SJ didn't automatically put one in the cars. 
  
• Radios were NOT standard equipment on a '67 Shelby. They were an option.
  
• 'Radio delete' would therefore be an incorrect term to use. 
  
• The Ford San Jose assembly plant only installed AM push-button radios into ~462 cars (less than 15% of total Shelby production). +1 if you count car #0176.
  
• SAI added AM radios to many cars before the cars were sent to dealers.
  
• SAI added AM-FM radios to a few cars before they were sent to dealers.
  
• Not all cars received a radio before being sent to dealers.
  
• If the car didn't leave San Jose with a radio, one would only be added by SAI if it was ordered that way by a dealer (just like 'LeMans' stripes or upgraded wheels).
• For an AM push-button radio, FoMoCo charged SAI $41.25; SAI charged the dealer $47.41 (13% markup); the window sticker's retail price of $57.51 allowed the dealer to make 18%.

In summary, there were two opportunities for your 1967 Shelby G.T. to get a radio before being shipped-off to a dealership. If a radio was added by Shelby, it was done at the airport facility (not offsite at Hi-Performance Motors or by a third party).

So how do you know if your car should have a radio or not? The answer lies in obtaining the car's PAPERWORK!

Depending on what paperwork you have, this is how you would determine if a radio is correct for your car:

• SAI Production Order - there's an "X" in the radio box
  
• SAI Dealer Invoice - there's a $47.41 line item charge for a radio
  
• SAI Window Sticker - there's a $57.51 charge for an AM radio.
  
  
• Marti Report - If there's an "AM Radio" listed within the "Your vehicle was equipped with the following features" subsection, that means your car had a radio installed by Ford San Jose. if there is no AM radio itemized, it's still possible that SAI added a radio.
  
  
• In the rare case you have any of the dealer's original sales paperwork, it might indicate an 'as-delivered / day 1' dealer-installed radio option. 
  

If your car didn't leave Shelby with a radio, it would have had a block-off plate. Here's a picture of #0173's dash for reference:

The SAI paperwork, including the Production Order, Dealer Invoice and/or Window Sticker can be obtained from Dave Mathews, the 1967 Registrar.

The next post will provide a bit more insight into our analysis of the DSOs and paperwork and how we arrived at our conclusions. Stay tuned.

See Also:

• Rear-installed radio antennas

[Brian Styles]

As promised in the first post, here is some of the research that led to our conclusions:

Looking through the entire DSOs file on microfilm, we seem to be able to create four pattern-based groups when it comes to how cars and radios were ordered:

• Group A: DSOs 2501-2523 (the ‘early’ cars), ordered by ‘G.W. Nuznoff’ (‘received’ August & September 1966) did itemize an AM radio on every DSO except 2513 and 2514, both of which ended up getting cancelled.

• Group B: When Dr. Ray A. Geddes took over ordering (i.e. his name started appearing on the orders),  DSOs 2524-2540 (‘received’ in October 1966) all originally had “AM Radio” typed in the options box, however, each was then scribbled out by hand on every DSOs in this range. Perhaps a cost-cutting after-thought?
  
  Note: There is one exception found in Group B, and we believe this exception is most-likely due to a human error during data entry to the Ford computer system. DSO 2532 was for 70x G.T. 500 Automatic cars (410F package). The cars on this DSO did receive AM radios (per the sampling of Marti reports collected on cars attached to this DSO), however, no Change Notice was found in the microfilm file. This one exception/mistake resulted in 70 cars getting radios that probably shouldn’t have. [Hopefully we can obtain some SAI Production Orders for cars ordered by DSO 2532 to see how they’re marked]. The Marti reports & invoices (collected so far) that support this single DSO exception include cars: #0314, #0320, #0359, #0363.

• Group C: DSOs 2541-2578 (‘received’ in November and December 1966) had no obvious pattern as to which units were ordered with a radio and which ones were not. Note: DSO 2541 is also when item number ranges started to appear on the orders:

• DSOs with AM radio: 2542, 2545, 2547, 2548, 2550, 2552, 2553, 2554, 2556, 2558, 2561, 2563, 2564, 2565, 2567, 2569, 2570.
  

• DSOs without AM radio: 2541, 2543, 2544, 2546, 2549, 2551, 2555, 2557, 2559, 2560, 2562, 2566, 2568, 2571- 2584.
  

• Group D: DSOs 2285-2614 (‘received’ in February and March 1967 - the last two months of orders) all followed a precise pattern that included AM radios with all Air Conditioning equipped cars (“Selectaire”). Simply stated: if the car wasn't ordered with air-conditioning, it wasn’t ordered with a radio.
  

• DSOs with AM radio (All have AC): 2585, 2587, 2593, 2595, 2597, 2599, 2600, 2602, 2605, 2607, 2611, 2613.

• DSOs without radio (not AC): 2586,  2588-92, 2594, 2596, 2598, 2601, 2603, 2604, 2606, 2608, 2609, 2610, 2612, 2614
  
  

Comparing the DSO Microfilm to the Ford record:

DSOs (and SVOs) are “pre-production.” The Ford Record (Marti) is supposed to be “post-production,” and is therefore usually the most accurate information we can use. In research, when these two data sources match, we know we have accurate information!

DSOs on microfilm (and Marti reports) gave us the following totals:

• Radio-equipped cars: 462 (461)   approx 14% of total

• Non-radio cars: 2672 (2672)  approx 86% of total

Note: A Marti report provided a total of 461 radio-equipped cars. Marti reports production quantities have been known to be off by a unit or two on occasion, often depending on the year the report was printed. Kevin's numbers (461+2672) only add up to 3,223 units, which is short of the 3,225 known serialized G.T. units. It's possible that #0176, #0131 and/or #0139 may be the discrepancies in the totals.

DSOs account for 3,224 cars in total. This differs from the registry’s total of 3,225. The registry counts car #0176 because it has a Shelby sequence number, however, Marti reports typically have not counted this car because it was not ordered by Shelby American (we assume Marti’s query is simply if [dealer]=X999).  For more on car #0176, visit the topic.

[Brian Styles]

New pattern found within "Group C"

Looking at DSO sheet, beginning with DSO 2541 there is a new data pattern I found. 

I was curious as to why I was finding sequential DSOs with same package code and different unit quantities. I had previously noticed that a different trim was involved.... 

Last week, I found that this also had to do with the AM Radio.

When I I group them like this you should see the pattern:

DSO  PKG  TRM RADIO  Qty

2541 200F 5A  --     13

2542 200F 5A  AM      2 (same as previous, plus radio)

2543 200F 5U  --      5

DSO  PKG  TRM RADIO  Qty

2544 210F 5A --      19

2545 210F 5A AM       2 (same as previous, plus radio)

2546 210F 5U --      12

2547 210F 5U AM       2 (same as previous, plus radio)

This pattern loosely repeats up to DSO 2569.

I will continue to research and I will provide another update in the near future....

[Rich Plescia]

I see the pattern. It's interesting they only ordered (2) two cars with radios for each package / trim variation.

It almost appears as if they wanted to cut costs by eliminating the radio on the larger quantity orders for these GT350 models.

Perhaps SA added the (2) each per pkg / trim with radios for small dealers that didn't want to (or couldn't) add one themselves.

Or...simply for a quicker turn around.

[Brian Styles]

Though not specifically relevant to this topic...

According to the registry, Car #0441 had an AM-FM radio added by SAI at LAX. 

Production Order --

Completion date: 2/17/67

Other:

Radio AM & FM

Carol - Note Radio

L.A. Pick Up, Hi-Performance 2/27.

According to the microfilm, this car would have been on DSO 2539 and the cars from that order did not get AM radios installed at the San Jose plant.

[Rich Plescia]

This is relevant to me. There has been light discussion in the past that a few cars received the AM-FM radios.

It makes sense that these would have been installed at the SAI LAX factory (or at the dealer a car was shipped to) and not at Ford's San Jose factory.

None of the SVO&PS (add/delete sheets) that we have on hand list AM-FM radios, only some of them list the AM radio's as an option. There no hints that they deviated from that.

The 2011 registry reports a handful of cars as having an AM-FM 8 track-player as well. I have not been able to confirm if any of those cars had them installed at LAX, at there original selling dealers, or by owners.

[Brian Styles]

According to the Ford record, we know that a total of 463 '67 Shelby G.T. cars (14.36%) received AM radios at San Jose. 

That leaves 85.64% that EITHER received a radio at SAI -or- left SAI without a radio.

The only accurate way to further breakdown the 85.64% (non-FSJ-radio cars) is by using SAI Paperwork (Production Orders, Invoices, and/or Window Stickers).

Based on the Production Orders collected so far, here are the metrics I can guesstimate today:

• SAI added radios to 53.85% of the cars. 
• 23.08% of the cars were shipped to dealers without radios. 

Again, the above numbers are ONLY based on the Production Orders we have collected.

Adding those two percentage figures to the known percentage of FSJ-installed radio units, we account for 91.29% of the total units. This likely means both tallied percentages are +/- 8.71% (margin of error). 

Summary (approximations):

• Between 14.37% - 31.79% of the cars left SAI without a radio.  
• SAI most likely added a radio to between 45.14% - 62.56% of the cars
• Adding the FSJ-radio cars (14.36% ) to the SAI-added-radio cars, I'd estimate that between 59.5% and 76.92% of the cars left SAI with a radio.

[Disclaimer: I am not a statistician nor did I attend college. The only statistic I can quote with absolute precision is how much I've forgotten, and that's a solid 95% of what I learned]