Ok somewhere between all those common & mundane rental cars and the upper tier lux-o rentals is a class of rental at Hertz called the “Fun Collection” that is priced a higher than their regular rentals. But if you can get past the sting of the price at about $200/day (100miles free $0.29 per mile after that) and all the extra little charges that they sneak in for renting at the airport you end up with a rocket ship called a Shelby Mustang GT-H Convertible.
In the current Shelby food chain the GT-H is probably at the bottom. Normally aspirated Mustang GT (no Supercharger here :( ) with some of Shelby’s visual touches to the exterior & interior. The looks are pure Shelby of course (Love it or hate it) but under the hood you’ll notice that this isn’t a mere mortal Mustang GT with some fancy graphics. The Cold Air box & heavy duty lateral support brace between the two shock towers are the most obvious even to those unfamiliar with the breed. Not sure what all’s been done to give this Pony it’s extra little oomph – but it seems to have benefited from a lowering and a throaty cat back. Having driven a few Stang GTs – I would suspect that there has been some tuning under the hood too given the way the engine comes to life. While I’d of truly preferred the coupe over the convertible – it was pretty cool in its own right. Personally I just prefer the coupe because there actually a couple hundred pounds lighter than the convertibles and although we are still talking about a Mustang – the coupes just handle better. Still the “style bar” (note I didn’t say roll bar) did look pretty cool and my girls loved driving around with the top down. Between the sounds and the wind in their hair they (as was I) where totally intoxicated. Jordan (the five year old) loved it when I smoked the tires! :)
Now should you ever decide you’d like to rent one – be aware that the Nannys’ over at Hertz (at the urging of their legal team no doubt) disabled the traction control disable button. However a quick search of the WWW will tell you exactly how they did this and how anyone can easily re-activate it in a couple of seconds with nothing but a tiny flat screwdriver. Should you do this – be warned that intensification of the fun factor is multiplied by about ten fold and you will be able to do smoking burnouts & doughnuts and all the drifting through corners to your little hearts content (Disclaimer: I didn’t do any of this – with my kids in the car). Also should you do this – just make sure you disable the traction control again before you return the vehicle.
Handling? Well – it’s no Porsche that’s for sure and while it’d probably blow the doors off of my 78 Porsche 928 in a drag race – even with all the extra power and suspension upgrades, it’s solid rear axle is it’s undoing. Fact is even though my old Shark (928) really a high speed cruising GT it felt much more sure footed in the twisties than the Shelby Mustang GT did. But again for what it is – on a balanced road coarse (say 50/50 mix) of twisties & straight-a-ways, I think the Shelby would probably prevail in the right hands. However a newer 928 (Say a S4 or a GT) would trounce it without any problems.
But really about the only thing I didn’t like about it was that it had a slush box – but I suspect the days of US rentals cars having manuals will never return. So I’m not sure it’s far to ding the GT-H for that.
That said – if you ain’t bothered by the price of admission on a scale of one to ten – I’d give it a firm 9 just because I couldn’t get the stupid grin off my face for the two days I had it.:twisted:
