Restorations in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to restore the car to its original racing configuration as seen at Green Valley, Texas, in February 1965. This painstaking task took four years and countless contributions by more than three dozen devoted enthusiasts, including many former Shelby personnel who played important roles in this car’s conception, construction and development. Literally thousands of hours were spent researching the car’s history before the physical restoration was begun. Hundreds of period photos were discovered and collected, along with original film and video of the car racing in its first race at Green Valley, Texas, and in another one of its 1965 races as a factory team car. Countless hours were expended traveling around the U.S. to locate and interview, on video, every possible person who had originally been involved with the car in any way. As a result of that monumental undertaking, 5R002 is extremely well documented with detailed first-hand information from those who were literally responsible for its creation and history. The restored 5R002 debuted at the 2014 Amelia Island Concours on the occasion of the Mustang’s 50th anniversary. Appropriately, Chuck Cantwell, the original GT350 project engineer who had driven it to one of its first class wins as a Shelby team car, drove it to the podium to receive the Best in Class Award for its division. 5R002 was shown at the National Shelby Convention at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, in 2014. It was judged by the National SAAC judges and received a 947/950 score in SAAC Division I judging with only 3 total points deducted. In 2014, it was invited for display at a special show of “Important Ford Prototypes” that was held in Dearborn at Ford Headquarters, where it was showcased alongside the other Mustang prototypes that Ford considers to be the most important of their prototypes in the world: “Mustang I,” “Mustang II,” “Mustang III,” 1965 Shelby GT350 Serial No. 5S003 (the street car prototype and the first GT350 built), and last but not least, this car—1965 Shelby GT350 Serial No. 5R002, the first competition car. While in Dearborn, 5R002 was invited by the head of Ford marketing and PR to be displayed and photographed with 5S003 on the lawn at Ford World Headquarters. Even today, these are the only cars to have been so honored. 5R002 then toured the country attending judged Concours events and historic Mustang 50th Anniversary exhibitions throughout 2014. In 2015, 5R002 was invited to another 50th Anniversary celebration, this time for the Shelby GT350 as the Marque of Honor at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. It not only won Best in Class, but it was also named the winner of Road & Track magazine’s coveted “Car We Would Most Like to Drive” Award, a rare honor given to just one entrant each year. That same weekend, 5R002 was driven around Laguna Seca and filmed and photographed extensively for a Rolex marketing campaign, subsequently appearing in both film and printed advertisements for Rolex watches. That same year, Ford borrowed 5R002 and displayed it at several venues to promote the new 50th Anniversary 2015 GT350 R-models. This included showcasing it with the 1967 Le Mans-winning GT40 Mk IV at the January 2016 North American International Auto Show in a special display that honored two of the greatest creations of the historically successful Ford-Shelby partnership. As the first GT350 competition prototype and the first of two Shelby factory team R-Models, there is little doubt that this car’s instant and wildly popular racing success is almost entirely responsible for changing the public’s perception of the Mustang as a mild-mannered “secretary’s car” to that of a genuine and distinctly American sports car. Consider this: had 5R002 never been built and had the GT350 concept never been realized and proven so successful right out of the box, there is every chance that the Mustang itself might have gone the way of the Falcon and disappeared altogether. Instead, thanks to 5R002’s immediate success, the initial enthusiasm for Ford’s revolutionary “Pony Car” grew unabated as Shelby’s GT350 continued its dominance at the track, spawning a movement that has grown from Mustang’s 1964 introduction into an enthusiasm for Ford’s pony car that spans the globe still today. The GT350 was succeeded by more generations of performance Mustangs that are themselves judged as classics, including a whole new and worthy generation of Mustangs bearing that famous moniker. It can be easily argued that none of that would have happened had this specific car not been built, nor been so successful from that first late winter day in the skies above Green Valley, Texas.