Its been more than forty years since the last release of a new Shelby GT350, and its been worth the wait. Shelby and Ford first teamed up back in 1965 but only after a few years Ford took over the Shelby production and ran it into the ground before the decade was over. Ever since Ford and Shelby got back together a few years ago, the lingering question in every car enthusiasts mind was, “Where is the GT 350?” Well the the 2011 Mustang GT 5.0 was just recently unveiled and it is every thing the people at Shelby America needed to kickstart their efforts. All we know now is that  base sticker price of the new Shelby will be $63,000 but expect to pay a lot more for the available upgrades.  The 2001 Shelby GT350 will go from 0-60 in an estimated 4.2 seconds, but other than this there is not much known about this recently revealed car. Carrol Shelby recently said, “We’ve come full circle with the GT350….Some people will be building their hydrogen cars and electric cars and hybrids. But Shelby will not be going down that road….We’re about performance and this car is built around the latest technology from Ford and the new 5.0 liter engine.”  Whatever the car delivers, expect it to be something special.

It has been a few years now since the Ford GT arrived, lived its short life in production and then passed through the gates into supercar Valhalla. But as awesome as the GT was, it may not have even been the best performance model Ford had in its arsenal. The car that helped reinvigorated the automaker’s performance future, and paralleled the GT’s production, was actually one that was never built: the Ford Shelby GR-1.

Now that the calendar reads ‘2009′ and summer is upon us, we can already begin shutting the book on the first decade of the new millenia. All the cars that will be produced have either made it to dealerships or have half a dozen reviews already printed in some magazine collecting dust on your shelf.

This decade closes much like the 1960s, in an atmosphere of uproar and protest, with rumors of war and peace and revolution at hand. The auto industry has experienced a second Golden Age, bigger and grander than the first, and has again sunk into crisis, darker and dimmer than the one Baby Boomers remember. And enthusiasts young and old fear that a similar fate awaits them in the coming years with news of outrageously stringent CAFE standards, and fear-mongering legislators fuel anxieties that we’ve already seen the best cars of the next thirty some odd years.

So it is that we turn back to this decade already a bit nostalgic. Here lie the future legends, the autos of myth and lore. With the future unclear, we ask ourselves which cars made the glorious 2000’s the decade we will all miss more than we know?

1967 Ford Mustang GT500 "Eleanor"

Students enrolled in a unique degree program at a southeastern Michigan community college are building an “Eleanor” tribute car to benefit charity. With the help of Chip Foose, Dynacorn and Roush Performance, students taking automotive restoration and customization coursework at Washtenaw Community College will finish the car in advance of an October drawing to benefit the Salvation Army of Washtenaw County and the National Kidney Foundation of Michigan.

The performance gurus at Shelby Super Cars have seriously upped the ante with their newest introduction into the supercar fray: the Shelby Aero EV. Powered by an All-Electric Scalable Powertrain (AESP), the SSC Aero EV is capable of producing 1,000 horsepower and 800 lb-ft of torque. Leaving former hybrid performance heavyweights like the Tesla Roadster in the dust, the Shelby Aero EV also boasts the ability to sprint from 0-60 mph in 2.5 seconds before maxing out at 208 mph. Shaving hours off the Roadster’s 3-hour recharge time, the SSC Aero EV’s 150-200 mile-range battery can be fully recharged via a standard 220V outlet in a mere 10 minutes. Scheduled to begin production during the fourth quarter of 2009, pre-production prototypes of the SSC Ultimate Aero EV are expected to debut in June. No word yet on how much one of SSC’s mean green machines will cost, but if previous history is anything to go on, expect it to hurt.

More pics after the jump

Literally outdoing themselves in terms of record-breaking speed, Shelby Supercars has engineered the 2009 SSC Ultimate Aero to be 15% more powerful than last year’s model. Since the SSC Ultimate Aero has already earned the official distinction as the fastest production car in the world, there obviously isn’t any sort of record Shelby is attempting to break (other than how quickly they can make a passenger lose control of their bowels), so 2009’s performance upgrade must be purely because they can, dammit.

Slightly retooled and newly outfitted with a single-piece billet aluminum engine block, the 2009 SSC Ultimate Aero gets a 104 unit boost in horsepower, from 1,183-hp to 1,287-hp. Currently documented by The Guinness Book of World Records with a top speed of 257 mph, Shelby Supercars says the new Aero is capable of reaching 270 mph, shattering its very own record. Pricing for the 2009 SSC Ultimate Aero has yet to be announced, but we expect it the tag to fall somewhere in the current Aero’s $700k range (read: “You still couldn’t afford it even if you offered your firstborn and your wife”)