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Zagato GT350 bodied in Italy?

Discussion in 'Shelby History and Miscellaneous Topics' started by bitzman, Dec 5, 2008.

  1. bitzman

    bitzman Well-Known Member

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    I had a picture of a white one, lost it, but later saw pictures on the net of a dark green one in Germany. It looked something like a Shelby 2 plus 2 fastback but had rectangular headlamps (probably Cibie or Marchal) and different fender lines and a different rear roofline. I know Carrozzeria (coachbuilder) Zagato for the famous DB4GTZ but these Shelby Zagatos are so rare that even a book devoted solely to Zagato didn't have a picture of them.

    My questions for history fans is:does anyone remember
    Shelby ever announcing he was going to have Zagato re-do some cars for him? It seems like it would have pushed the costs too high--today a carrozzeria would charge about $250,000 up but back in '65 maybe it was only $8,000 or so. Still that would have almost doubled the price and put it above a Cobra.

    I know that Shelby often didn't reveal a project unless it looked like a winner (the mid-engined Lone Star got only one shot at publicity then was never mentioned again) so it seems consistent that, if the rebodying costs were too high, that explains why the publicity machine deleted it from its memory.

    Ironically, maybe a little after that, L Scott Bailey of Automobile Quarterly had a Mustang rebodied by a rival carrozzeria, Bertone, and that car was out and about until a few years ago when it disappeared. I figure that's got to be a million dollar Mustang because of all the publicity it got (much more famous than the Scaglietti-bodied Corvettes Shelby had bodied in Italy).

    Anyhow, just trying to dust off an old trail--does anyone out there know if the Zagato Shelbys were instigated by Shelby-American or merely cars that private owners wanted to see were improved by the Zagato magic wand....
    (just as a rich American recently had Pininfarina rebody a new Ferrari
    to resemble an old Sixties Ferrari P3/4)
     
  2. DeLa1Rob

    DeLa1Rob Well-Known Member

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