Greg KolasaBesprekingen

Greg Kolasa, book on the 1968 Shelby Mustang and other mustang cars of that era was very well written and had an in depth knowledge of the topic. He goes into great detail about the diffrent parts of the car so that a novice can understand. I enjoyed this book and highly reccomend it. I have passed it on to others who enjoy this type of car and they were thrilled with it.

A great book for classic muscle cars lovers, like my husband and I. This book is filled with amazing color photos and is jam packed with info. You could simply sit down and thumb through the pictures OR you could sit down and read it for the detailed info. So many other car books don't manage to do both of those things well. (We have one car book that has about 2,000 color pictures of the same car! There is no variety.) I especially found the appendices interesting with performance data, Production numbers and price, and even color swatches and VIN number explanation. A great book if you are looking to buy, or if you just enjoy looking.

Focusing on the 1968 Shelby Mustang, GT350, GT500, and GT500 KR, this book is filled with great color photos and a wealth of information. It is quite throughly researched and presented in a nice concise 95 pages. I received 1968 Shelby Mustang GT350, GT500 and GT500 KR: Muscle Cars In Detail No. 3 by Greg Kolasa as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program.

Greg Kolasa has written the absolute go to book for the 1968 Shelby Mustang GT350, GT500 and GT500 KR. The 1968 Shelby Mustang has reached Iconic stature. Mr. Kolasa skillfully explains why. First he explains Ford's efforts to bring muscle to the "Pony" car. To understand the '68, Kolasa provides a brief history of earlier models. The books has numerous expertly taken photos on every page. Simply put, they are beautiful just like the car. The text is well written and easy to follow. The book concludes with an appendix of production specifics. The result is a well written must have book for all Muscle Car enthusiasts.

Full faith in advertising: I received this book as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers giveaway.

1968 Shelby Mustang GT350, GT500 and GT500 KR… by Greg Kolasa

I received this book for a review. I was very pleased with the book and found so many facts I had never known. I owned one of the first Mustangs so this book was of interest to me. I found the beautiful photographs added to the information and made this one book I could leave out for others to peruse at their leisure. This book covered all aspects of the Shelby Mustangs included price and options, decoded the vin numbers and even explained changes in colors of the vehicles.

I'm mostly familiar with CarTech's larger books. This is the first time I've been able to obtain and review one of their "In Detail" little paperbacks. Definitely not a coffee table book (that's not bad, just a description), this work focuses on a single year for a single car, the 1968 Shelby Mustang. This is definitely geared towards the collector and restorer of this car. Its major focus is on the body and paint job, secondarily on the power train and various options, and the weakest part is probably on the interior trim. The text is clear and the coverage is thorough. This wouldn't be something for those generally interested in Mustangs. Narrow subject coverage done well.

Growing up my Dad had a 1968 Shelby Mustang, it didn't look as beautiful as it should have but it sure sounded wonderful! I loved everything about this book, the text was well written with all the relevant information needed to understand this great car and the pictures were absolute perfection. Highly recommend!

My favorite car of all time is the Mustang! And this book is perfect for the Shelby Mustang enthusiast . This book is well written and gives so much detail about the Shelby Mustang. The pictures are beautiful and it's all in full color. You will not be disappointed in this book. I keep picking it up and just keep dreaming about wanting to own one of these cars. It is a perfect coffee table book. Or a great book for you to have in your car if you own one of these cars and show it at car shows. All I can say is you must get this book!

I also wanted this book for my son but found myself leafing through it and admiring the photographs and detail. An excellent source of history and information on the Shelby Mustang. Only one thing missing... A photo of the car's creator, Carroll Shelby.

Having been a Mustang fanatic since childhood I was excited to get this book. Lots of pictures and history. The book provides detailed information year by year, what changed, what didn't and the reasons why. Definitely a book every Mustang fan should have.

I wanted this book for my son who is a die hard Ford fan. He was blown away by the wonderful photos and the information included in the book. Well done!

A fascinating look at a classic car. Plum full of gorgeous, full-colour photos and interesting facts. Also a very nice hardcover that is equally fitting on either bookshelf, for reference, or coffee table for display purposes. Highly recommended.

A beautiful book which is obviously a labor of love. Lots of specificity in the text and close-up photographic details, including substantial information for the serious car buff and avid collector on how to determine if the Shelby he or she is considering buying is authentic. And a nice nostalgic book for the Boomer generation. A pleasant read and authoritatively written and illustrated book. Enjoy!

Loved this book. I had a '69 Mustang and always envied the Shelby and anyone reading this book will know why. There were plenty of pictures and lots of history and specifications. They go by year and write about what changed, what stayed the same and why. If you love Mustangs and even if you don't this is a great book. Was a trip back to my high school days.

As you might guess, this book covers in great detail all aspects of Shelby mustangs with a particular focus on the story of their production. Although I’m not a huge car buff myself, I picked this to review because I love a good micro-history and I enjoy learning about new things. I was also impressed that the author based his book entirely on primary sources, from factory documentation to interviews with the people who were involved in the process. As soon as I got the book, I was struck by the quality photography as well. As a photography enthusiast, I appreciated how well done it was, but recognize that a Shelby enthusiast would probably be most impressed by the variety of Shelby’s the author managed to track down.


The first three chapters gave a broad overview of Shelby history. Once I finished those, I was worried that the following chapters focusing on each year’s Shelby would be too dry. Fortunately, my fears were unfounded. In the entire ~200 page book, there were maybe a dozen pages covering the nitty-gritty details of the Shelby’s engine in too much detail for me to understand. These were a little dry. But nearly every page had great pictures and fascinating stories about the people and the politics behind the Shelby, in addition to the technical details. For serious Shelby enthusiasts, fear not – there were nitty-gritty details on nearly every page as well. Just not enough to impact the enjoyment of this non-specialist.

There a few small typos, but also not enough to impact my enjoyment and over all this was a very high quality book. From the pictures to the impressive research, this is a great example of what a micro-history should be. I would most strongly recommend this to someone with some understanding of how cars typically work, since the details about the mechanics of the Shelby definitely assume you have some prior knowledge. Other than that, this is a book with something to teach the even a Shelby enthusiast while still remaining accessible. Finally, one of the aspects I think will most thrill enthusiasts are the incredible wealth of details about different Shelby’s made at different times even during the same production year. If you own or are thinking of buying a Shelby, it could be a lot of fun to find out where your specific car fits in Shelby history.

This review first published on Doing Dewey.

A book of Mustangs - parts, features and everything you would need to know. I have problems now as I wanted it for my son-in-law and husband wants it as well as another son-in-law. Great Book.

To use the word "definitive" in the title of a book might be considered presumptive. After all, it indicates that the author and publisher feel that there is effectively nothing more to be said on the subject. After reading this book, I think they might be right.

To comprehensively address an automotive marque in these types of books, three areas of focus come to mind: technical discussions, photographic accompaniment, and the human element. The mix of these matters may vary of course, but without all the elements the story isn’t adequately related.

From the technical standpoint this book is excellent. The Shelby American Mustangs of the mid Sixties to the early Seventies are one of the great stories for car enthusiasts, but time and human memory (or the lack of it) have resulted in many myths and erroneous facts being circulated and released in print. The author, Greg Kolasa, is a nationally recognized expert on the subject and in this book he has sought to lay to rest the misconceptions and bar stories and relate how the Shelby Mustangs came to be and how they were built. The detail is just that, detailed. For instance, there are the nuances of what was added, or more importantly, left off the Mustangs at the San Jose (and later Metuchen then Dearborn) Ford plants before delivery to Shelby American. And just as importantly, the “why” of these nuances. And this is just a small example of the incredible research in this book. All the bits and pieces that changed the car from a Mustang to a Shelby are identified and discussed, and again the “why” is just as important as the “what”. Additionally, the book provides some fascinating insight into how car models were designed in the sixties, a far more complex process than many might imagine.

The photography in the book is not only very well done, but complements the purpose of the book extremely well. The larger size of the book with it’s two columns of text per page allows the use of various sizes of photographs, so that something like a seatbelt buckle is shown in a small picture while the more “glamorous” shots get a bigger part of a page. The photographs are all of a consistently high quality and most all are in color. The photos and their accompanying captions excellently illustrate the points made in the main text.

Finally there is the human element. A book can be technically comprehensive and lavishly illustrated, but if it does not relate the human story behind the technical information it can be rather dry and dull. Kolasa has opted to not include first person quotes in the book, but his third person recounting of their stories is just as interesting and probably does save some precious space. And the people side of the story is interesting and at times surprising. As mentioned above, there is a lot in the book about the “whys” and often things happen or don’t happen not because of individual brilliance or coordinated effort, but because of dumb luck, bad luck or just plain serendipity.

It would be remiss to not mention the excellent production quality of the book. CarTech, the publisher, is to be commended for outstanding attention to detail. Proofreading and editing appear to be almost faultless and the layout of the book makes it enjoyable.

I highly recommend this book to auto enthusiasts, and also to anyone who might have an interest in technical histories (I’m sure there are a few more of them out there besides me). “The Definitive Shelby Mustang Guide: 1965-1970” was a pleasure to read.

This is a wonderful book.

Most 'car' books amount to little more than car-porn - 60-or-so pages of photographs, fleshed out with some copy borrowed from the maker's press releases. (I received this from LT's "Early Reviewer" program, and I'm glad I had an opportunity to see it, as the book greatly exceeded my expectations.)

The Shelby Mustang occupies a special place in the history of the automobile, and it's good to see that it has received a book worthy of it. The author is Registrar of the Shelby American Auto Club, and knows his stuff. The book is a thorough description of both the obvious and the subtle engineering changes that were made to turn a Mustang into a Shelby, as well as a thorough account of the logistical nightmares involved in the customization.

I learned quite a bit from the book (the Hertz 'Rent-a-Racer' program! the custom oil pan!), and I recommend it highly to anyone with an interest in muscle cars, the history of the automobile, or even an interest in the mind of the obsessed collector.

{And it wasn't said about the Shelby Mustang, but rather, about his Cobra - - but it's probably worth repeating Mort Sahl's remark about the visceral appeal of a preposterously over-powered car: If someone were to ask me for a short cut to sensuality, I would suggest he go shopping for a used 427 Shelby Cobra. But it is only fair to warn you that of the 300 guys who switched to them in 1966, only two went back to women. }