A rental car may be soulless, faceless, and dead inside, but therein lies its beauty: its promise of ceaseless exploitation. Because you don't own it, a rental car will accelerate faster, brake harder, and fit into tighter parking spaces than anything else on the road.

Nobody understood this better than racing hero and car builder Carroll Shelby, who in 1966 created a series of rental cars primed for mischief: the Shelby GT350Hs (the H stood for Hertz). Shelby sprinkled these V-8-powered Mustangs with a bit of tuning magic, heightening their appeal to aspiring racers who lacked that most fundamental of tools: a car to race. These Rent-a-Racers did time at America's bullrings and drag strips, returning from the weekend with holes for roll-cage bolts drilled through their floorboards.

The collateral losses of 40 years ago must have finally come off the books, as Shelby Automobiles, Inc. (still a small-batch manufacturer, as it was in '66), Hertz, and Ford are back with 500 new Shelby GT-Hs, personally spec'd out by Carroll himself. It's a celebration of Shelby's new marketing arrangement with Ford, and a pretty grand PR stunt. But Hertz has smartened up this time. Whereas the old GT350H rented for just $17 a day, the GT-H, available at select airport desks as part of Hertz's "Fun Collection," commands a not-unwhopping $500 per week. Also, Hertz now forbids you to take it on a racetrack. But I know a guy.

So in the spirit of the original Rent-a-Racers, on a blistering summer day we arrive at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, adjacent to Shelby's world headquarters, to drive the tar out of the thing. In the pit lane a quick walk around the vehicle reveals changes both mechanical and stylistic.

The GT-H takes as its base the Mustang GT five-speed automatic and then piles on a bunch of Ford Racing Performance parts, such as the Power Pack, which improves intake and exhaust breathing to boost output from the stock 300 hp to 325, and the Handling Pack (retuned shocks, lowering springs, big antiroll bars front and rear, and a stiffening strut-tower brace up front). There's also a Ford Racing 3.55:1 rear-end ratio for barking off-the-line acceleration.

The car looks meaner than the stock Mustang GT. It has a billet-aluminum grille, a bulging hood with racing-style fastener pins to keep that panel from popping up, flared side scoops, and the jutting front jaw from the California Special Edition Mustang. All GT-Hs are painted Hertz black and gold, which looks far more sinister on a muscle car than it does on the polo shirt of a Proactiv-addicted car porter. Inside, nothing much has changed: same elongated, retro-style numbers on the gauges, same Kelvinator-inspired dash metallics. But there is a plaque between the air vents bearing the car's build number and, in my car, Carroll Shelby's signature is on the passenger air-bag panel.

I hop in and go slowly at first to find the shortest racing line around Vegas's flat, snaking infield course. Then, when I run it in a little harder, the exhaust system starts to belch out an air-ripping snarl reminiscent of an erratically throttled bass boat.

I've driven Mustangs on tracks before, and they exhibit tics you'd never notice on the street. They're nose-heavy and hard to get pointed into corners. Their masses shift dramatically through switchbacks, heaving up from one side of the car to the other and crashing down like rogue waves. But in the GT-H the lowered springs and the bigger antiroll bars keep the body motion in check, so you don't have to wait nearly as long for the car to settle in turns before putting the power down. And there's some big power here. While the on-paper gains seem insignificant, the engine calibration tweaks, in combination with the more aggressive rear-axle ratio, give this car immediacy and authority. The horsepower bump feels more like 50 than 25, and the car could really use stronger brakes and grippier tires to compensate. (Shelby will offer the latter on a nonrental version, the 2007 Shelby GT, which is essentially the same car but comes in white or black and with a manual transmission option.)

I am somewhat grateful for the lack of tire. The GT-H can be easily provoked into lurid, frame-filling, The Fast and the FuriousÐstyle drifts. And while every muscle car is, by definition, redolent of burnouts both teenaged and vulcanized, the GT-H might be the smoky-tire king. With the traction-control disabled, the rear tires can leave plumes high enough and skid marks long enough to warrant a police investigation.

As I lap, it occurs to me that I'm not driving so much as I am exacting a kind of long-simmering revenge on every armpit-scented rental car I've ever steered, every brick-windowed motel room I've ever fitfully slept in, every bitchy airline-desk jockette who's put a curse on my connecting flight. Each blast of the throttle scrubs clean the memory of one more interstate Applebee's. Then I come into the pits, thank the Shelby folk, and head to the airport.

Back at McCarran International's rental desks, it appears that there are other ways to rent a badass car. Avis, as part of its "Cool Cars" collection, will loan you a Cadillac CTS, and Thrifty will rent you a Dodge Charger. There are even places in L.A. that will hand over, through a thick fog of Drakkar Noir, something as outrageous as a Bentley Continental GT. Where the Shelby GT-H differs from all these is in the nakedness of its intentions. What we have here is a tuned car, a machine that has been specially prepped and massaged to perform at the ragged edge of the handling envelope. Despite Hertz's coy protestations, this car practically begs you to wail on it.

Hilariously, after 16,000 to 18,000 miles of molestation, cars like this one will go to a Ford dealer auction, whereupon they will be sold to an average Joe. Okay, an average Joe with a personal banker. The lone GT-H Ford made immediately available for public purchase brought $250,000 at auction.

In light of that, perhaps $500 per week for the perverse, antisocial thrill of defiling someone's investment-grade muscle car is a good deal. Truly, the Shelby GT-H isn't merely a rental sled; it is kind of a vacation unto itself.

PRICE $500/week
ENGINE 4.6-liter V-8
TRANSMISSION 5-speed automatic
POWER 325 hp
TORQUE 330 lb-ft
0-60 MPH 5.1 seconds
TOP SPEED 147 mph (electronically limited)

BRIEF Remember every rental car you've ever driven and how it stripped you of your humanity and made you want to kill yourself? Well, this ain't one of those. The Shelby GT-H is an answer to the question: Why is the worst part of every vacation the rental car?

THUMBS UP A snorting V-8 engine is matched with suspension tweaks that make the GT-H handle far better than a stock Ford Mustang GT. Plus, if you can find one to buy, Carroll Shelby's imprimatur gives it instant collector cred.

THUMBS DOWN It's only available in a few markets, it's $500 a week to rent, and you can't buy one until it's been defiled repeatedly by hundreds of renters.

By: Eddie Alterman
(November 2006)