1965 Shelby Cobra on 2040-cars

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Shelby American cleans house of 14 concept cars

Typically when an automaker rolls out a concept car or pre-production prototype, it does its tour and then disappears into the company's archives. Maybe it will be displayed for the public to see in the company's own museum or maybe it will spend most of its time under covers in a warehouse somewhere, but every once in a while, an automaker will open up its history and start selling off its concept cars. For Shelby American, "once in a while" has just rolled around.
The House that Carroll Built is moving from its previous headquarters at Las Vegas Motor Speedway to a new facility off of the Las Vegas strip, and in the process is liquidating fourteen of the rarest cars in its collection. That presents a tremendous opportunity for muscle car collectors to bring one or more of these snakes home.
As you might expect, the catalog is composed mostly of Mustangs, but not exclusively. There's a pair of 289 Cobras: the last of the 50th anniversary slab-sided continuation cars and an original development vehicle, offered at $200,000 apiece. At the other end of the spectrum you'll find the 2013 Shelby Raptor concept for $125k and Focus concept for $50k. And of course there are the Mustangs.

Shelby Raptor is a 575-horsepower off-road goliath

Shelby American has definitely proven itself when it comes to tuning the Ford Mustang - look no further than its new 1,200-horsepower Shelby 1000 - but now the Las Vegas tuner has turned to the Ford F-150 SVT Raptor.
The big change for this already high-performance off-road pickup is the addition of a supercharger atop Ford's 6.2-liter V8, with spent gasses exiting through a Borla exhaust system. This improves the horsepower rating from a stock rating of 411 up to a shenanigan-ready 575. For a Shelby, the styling of this F-150 is very toned down, with only the company's name etched into the Raptor's digital mud to go along with custom wheels wrapped in 35-inch tires.
The company is only planning to build 100 of the Shelby Raptors per year, with pricing set at $17,995 on top of the stock donor Ford, which starts at $43,630. Scroll down for the official press release.

Ford Shelby GT350 Mustang is a lean, mean, Z/28-fighting machine [w/video]

If there's one thing you can count on, it's that the renewed rivalry between the Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro will never, ever cease. For every version of Ford's pony car, there's an equally potent Chevrolet. And so with the debut of the Camaro Z/28 earlier this year, Ford has responded with a track-focused 'Stang of its own, resurrecting the Shelby GT350 name.
It looks to be a fine piece of work, this Mustang, with power coming from a naturally aspirated 5.2-liter V8 that will produce "more than 500 horsepower" and "above 400" pound-feet of torque. That grunt runs to the rear wheels via a six-speed manual transmission, and a Torsen limited-slip differential keeps everything in line.
But that's hardly the most impressive piece of the GT350 puzzle. Ford has increased the Mustang GT's chassis stiffness for duty here in the Shelby, and the coupe employs MagneRide damping which automatically adjusts based on road conditions and driver inputs. It's a first both for the Blue Oval and for the segment. And speaking of firsts, the GT350 uses a flat-plane crankshaft - something Ford has never included in a production V8 before.