Jim Morrison’s Shelby GT500

Jim Morrison’s 1967 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 — Nightmist Blue, four-speed, 428 Police Interceptor, parchment interior, California plate VRD389, VIN 67402F2U00939. The books mostly bury it in 1969. The classifieds do not.

The work here is the paper trail: twenty-two ads from Los Angeles papers, 19 February 1969 through 14 October 1971. Jim’s own run is four insertions that February. People have been looking for this car for years. Some talk as if they have the file. What they had was one old insertion. I asked to see the rest. It never came. I went back into the files until the run was complete. This is the first time they have all been put on the map. I am proud of that. The twenty-two ads here are the rest. That is the difference.

February 1969

The earliest ad is 19 February: plate VRD389, under 5,000 miles, make offer. The phone is 659-1667 — a Doors office number, as is 659-1668. Jim placed it. The same line ran again on the 20th, 21st and 22nd. The car did not sell. There is no second owner in the papers until Ray’s in 1970.

Jim and Pamela used the papers often — when Sage ran away, when they were opening Themis. John listed cars and motorcycles on the same office numbers. In August 1973 John advertised “Doors equipment.” Those ads are on The Doors office.

The usual story

The usual story ends the car in 1969. Tony Funches thought it went to the wrecker. Hopkins and Sugerman wrote that nobody was hurt and it was towed to a shop in Beverly Hills. Other versions: a telephone pole on Sunset, a total loss, long-term parking at LAX. The last California registration under James Douglas Morrison is spring 1969. After that the books go cold.

The dates do not allow it.

He listed the car himself on 19–22 February 1969: under 5,000 miles, private party, plate VRD389, Doors office phone. It did not sell. In early April he put the same Shelby in HWY: An American Pastoral — desert, then Los Angeles, including the Whisky. The car is whole on film.

The pole story is placed after that shoot, usually “fall 1969.” Jim was not on Sunset most of those months. Documented absences: 14–15 June Chicago and Minneapolis; late June Mexico City; 25–27 July the Bay Area, Oregon, Washington; mid-September Toronto to Pittsburgh; 4 October and 1 November, Las Vegas; 11 November a flight from Los Angeles to Phoenix. The nights he was in Los Angeles after the film are few: the Aquarius shows, 21–22 July 1969, on Sunset itself; an office interview in November; Long Beach on 7 February 1970; and the unfilled weeks in between tours.

From 12 November 1970 the same plate is for sale at Ray’s Hi-Performance, 4429 W. Century, Inglewood. Four-speed. 14,000 miles. Showroom condition. $2,500. Not a write-off line. The plate runs through 14 October 1971.

The Los Angeles papers in the gap — March 1969 through November 1970 — carry no accident, no pole on Sunset, no tow listing tied to this car. A wrecker job does not come back with the same plate, a four-speed and a showroom price a year later.

The people who told the 1969 ending were not working from the classifieds. The classifieds were not consulted.

Ray’s Hi-Performance, Inglewood

From November 1970 the ads are Ray’s Hi-Performance Center, 4429 W. Century, Inglewood. That Ray Wolff is the same man who was general manager of Carroll Shelby’s Hi-Performance Motors Inc., and who ran Trans-Am Mustangs with Chuck Cantwell in 1966–68. The 1968 Riverside Trans-Am entry is already under Ray’s High Performance Center (ponysite.de, racingsportscars.com). He could splice a wrecked Shelby onto another Mustang and put it back on the road. That is who he was. These ads are not that job. They have him offering Jim’s car: four-speed, 14,000 miles, showroom condition, $2,500, plate VRD389. He ran that block four days running, 12–15 November 1970. Roughly nine thousand miles on from the 1969 listing. Driven, then on a lot. Not shredded. Not a total loss.

March 1971: still there, still the plate, shop phone 677-3818. Jim died in Paris on 3 July 1971. On 11 August Ray is still advertising a ’67 GT500, 15,000 miles, “been in storage,” $2,350. Then October: the 1st, 2nd and 3rd, a gap, then every day from the 8th through the 14th. Same wording, same plate, a second phone 320-8421. Fourteen October is the last one found. After that the paper is silent. Whether he sold it is not known.

Mileage moving from 14,000 to 15,000, then sitting at 15,000 in storage, is a car that was moved and parked. It is not a race conversion and it is not a crusher receipt. Serious collector interest only rose after Oliver Stone’s 1991 film. Claims of current possession have not produced the VIN.

Where it is now is unknown. It may have left the state, been parted, wrecked later, or stored. The ads do not say. They do say it was still for sale in Los Angeles more than two years after the books kill it, and months after Jim was dead.

The scans are the evidence. They were not sitting in one folder. They came out of the papers one insertion at a time.

VRD 389

The rest of the run. November 1970 through 14 October 1971.

The plate

The car came from Stockton Quincy, the Ford dealer in Westwood Village. That is why it ran this exact frame: WESTWOOD VILLAGE on the top bar, STOCKTON QUINCY on the bottom. The number in the window is the number the ads print, VRD 389, from Jim’s February 1969 run through the last listing in October 1971. This one is in the collection.

The car is still missing. That is not the same as a wreck in 1969. Jim tried to sell it in February. It did not go. He filmed it. Then it sat on Ray’s lot in Inglewood, same plate, showroom, then storage, into October 1971. The books stopped in ’69 because they never opened the paper. Twenty-two classifieds did. Until someone shows the VIN, this is the record.

Themis Boutique · Admiral Stephen “Steve” Morrison · The Doors office