I purchased this 32,000-mile 1989 Shelby CSX in 1993 for just $5,500.
Last week’s Flash Back Friday featured my 1987 Dodge Shadow Shelby CSX, which might have you thinking I’ve made a typo above and I’m just double-posting about the same car. But no, my 1989 Shelby CSX was an entirely different car. Sure, they shared the same starting point (a Dodge Shadow) and they used the same basic drivetrain (an intercooled, turbocharged 2.2-liter inline-4 mated to a 5-speed manual transmission) but that’s where the similarities ended.
The CSX and GTX made a great pair during Club Clash events at Bandimere Speedway
It’s worth noting that Shelby also offered a 1988 version of this car, but where the first year (1987) CSX was a black-and-gray model offered with an intercooled 2.2-liter to consumers, the 1988 Shelby CSX-T was missing the intercooler and was only offered to Thrifty (thus the “T” in the name) rental car agencies as a throwback to the 1966 Shelby GT350H rental car Mustang. The 1988 Turbo I engine was rated at just 146 horsepower, and 1000 of these CSX models were produced, the same number as the 1987 model.
The 1989 Shelby CSX had more aggressive bodywork than the earlier versions
The 1989 Shelby CSX featured several upgrades from the ’87-’88 versions. First, the intercooler returned to the turbocharged 2.2-liter engine, ensuring more power under a wider range of ambient temperature. Second, the engine featured an entirely new “variable-nozzle turbo” technology. The 1989 Shelby CSX is officially called the “CSX-VNT” though I never heard anyone refer to it that way the entire 4 years I owned mine. This was also the rarest of the three Shelby CSX model years, with only 500 produced.
