In 1966, Ford and Carroll Shelby teamed up to produce a special run of rental cars. This would be an odd footnote in automotive history had the two companies gussied up a few Falcon sedans with stickers and a special weekend rental rate, but that’s not what happened. Instead, the Shelby GT350-H was created from the Mustang and dubbed the “Rent-A-Racer.” Offered through select Hertz rental locations, the GT350-H was an actual Ford Mustang Shelby GT350, only with a black paint job with gold stripes. We even rented one that year?$17 per day, $70 for the week!?and beat on it, er, we mean “tested” it. Fifty years later, Ford and Hertz are back at it, with a new Mustang GT-H.
Before your eyes mist over with nostalgia for the good ol’ days when you could rent a legit race car from Hertz and sneakily track it for a weekend, returning the car on Sunday with Hertz none the wiser, you should know a few things. First, most of those tall tales were just that; second, even if they were true, Hertz has long since wised up. In 2006, when Ford reintroduced the Rent-A-Racer (like this GT-H, it, too, was based on the Mustang GT, not a real Shelby), we rented a few and took them to Virginia International Raceway. This put us in a gray area with regard to the rental agreement, which explicitly forbade any “SPEED TEST, SPEED CONTEST, RACE, RALLY, SPEED ENDURANCE CONTEST OR DEMONSTRATION.” Lacking timing equipment and not wishing to demonstrate ...