“People wanted to have these race cars that they could drive on the street,” Pardee says.

When Pardee laid eyes on his two-door white beauty in White Plains, N.Y., in 1965, “I knew right then and there, this is something I was very interested in.”

He later bought a second Shelby, also white. And so began his life-long affair with the cult Mustang car.

The cult status stretches beyond America's borders.

“Even right now with the lower value of the [American] dollar versus the Australian dollar , a lot of cars are flown to Australia,” says Pardee.

Defining Cult Status

So what separates a mere auto collectible from a bona fide cult superstar?

“One indicator of cult status is what kind of cultural vestiges are left over,” says Heitmann, vice president of the Society of Automotive Historians .

In other words, cult cars go beyond the auto lexicon and seep into the broader American landscape of literature, music, movies and television, says Bob Casey, senior curator of transportation at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich.

“The key," adds Heitmann, "is that intangible kind of design and product and quality that somehow come together, that essentially makes it the object of desire.”

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