2006 Ford Mustang Shelby GT-H

It's 1966 and you, Mr. Jet Setter, are blowing into Malibu for the weekend. Being a hip man-about-towner, driving a rented Galaxy or Belvedere isn't your scene, even with Bobby Darin playing on the eight-track. You have people to see, parties to hit, and skirts to chase. But don't sweat it, sport. There's a better deal: Drive into a Hertz location and sign up for a 306-horsepower Shelby GT350H. Sure, $17 a day and 17 a mile is a lot for a rental car. But not for a high-roller like you.

Such was the dreamscape Hertz painted for its original Shelby GT350H rental car program: a fast, beautiful ride available to fast, beautiful people at the flick of a Diners Club card. The visuals were accurate, and the dazzling (mostly) black-and-gold Mustangs were popular for executives on business travel or those looking to enhance their Sixties weekend getaway. But these special machines occasionally led a second, less talked-about life.

The tales of GT350Hs being returned to a Hertz lot with holes in the floor to facilitate the mounting of rollbars and/or racing harnesses are the stuff of urban legend. Instead of cruising along the coast highway or languishing at a resort in Palm Beach, some of them spent their weekends on road courses and at dragstrips. Tires-fresh only days before, but now worn to the cord-were another clue to the action they'd seen. One war story recounts a late-night engine swap, the poor Mustang being dumped back on Hertz with a well-worn 260 under the hood, instead of the fresh, Shelby-modified 289 it came with. The GT350H didn't earn the nickname "Rent-a-Racer" for nothing.

Automotive folklore not withstanding, the program was a success. Hertz rented a lot of cars, and original H-model Shelbys are now worth a mint. It must have been good P. R., too, as we're still talking about it, four decades later. So much so that the Hertz Corporation, Shelby Automobiles, and Ford Motor Company have decided to launch a sequel. Meet the new GT-H.

There are two stories here. The first is that Hertz is back in the business of renting Shelby Mustangs. The GT-H is the marquee player in the company's Fun Collection, a selection of boredom-fighting cars and other vehicles targeted at the leisure traveler. The deeper issue is that, after a painful litany of licensee deals with independent shops, dealers, even the Shelby American Automobile Club to build and market wannabes, Carroll Shelby's own company-Shelby Automobiles-is again constructing amped-up Mustangs (see sidebar). "It's important we do things that are right for, and to protect, this historic brand," summarizes Amy Boylan, president, Shelby Automobiles. And the straight-talking former Mattel exec means it.

What put the H on a Mustang GT? "It all happened over the course of about three months," says Paula Rivera, Hertz's public affairs manager. "We have an original Shelby GT350H in the lobby of our corporate headquarters. We see it every day. As we were developing the Fun Collection program, our vice president of fleet, Walt Seaman, said 'Why not this-again?' Once we started talking about this idea with Shelby and Ford, everyone got on board." The GT-H made its debut at the New York auto show in April; we captured the very same car-Shelby's only prototype-for this story.