shelby american summer 2010

The SHELBY AMERICAN SUMMER 2010

The SHELBY AMERICAN #82

The magazine of the Shelby American Automobile Club

SUMMER 2010

ON THE COVER. Two Dragon-snakes... no waiting. The drag racingportion of SAAC-35 attracted a numberof noteworthy cars but none more sothan a pair of original Cobra Dragon-snakes. Drew Serb of Orinda, CA (inthe north) brought CSX2357, the sec-ond factory team car. Lynn Park of LaCanada, CA (in the south) hadCSX2248. The two cars had faced off onthe strip in 1965 and Park and Serbrecreated that scenario on the Fridayafternoon of the convention, much tothe delight of the crowd of spectatorswho lined the wall. It was another oneof those once-in-a-lifetime conventionmoments that you have to be there toexperience.

Copyright © 2010 Shelby American Au-tomobile Club. All rights reserved. Nopart of this publication may be repro-duced or translated without prior ex-press written permission from theShelby American Automobile [email protected]

THE MAIL SAAC. 12 pages. We scour the globe (and the Internet) for items ofinterest in the world of Cobras and Shelbys. How about some pictures of the re-trieval of a 427 Cobra that landed upside down in a creek in Texas. It was allover the forums and blogs for about fifteen minutes after it happened but wedug a little deeper. We’ve also gone behind the scenes to tell the story of theGT350 station wagon.. a false alarm barn find... Goodyear’s use of a DaytonaCoupe as a traveling display... another crunched Ford GT... and more.

SHELBY AMERICANA. 7 pages. Long time automobile photographer andSAAC member Curt Scott spills his guts with the secrets to good automobilephotography. If you have a car and a camera, you’ll want to read this. The on-going Eagle Eye slugfest between the potentates of indolence, Jim Hutchisonand Ken Young continues. Also, how about some info on the only way to get DanGurney’s autograph. And a bunch of other neat stuff that just makes you shakeyour head.

SAAC-35. 23 pages. Complete convention coverage: everything from behind-the-scenes planning to day-by-day narratives. If you weren’t there, by the time youread this you’ll feel like you were. Photos? We’ve got ‘em, thanks to the wondersof the Internet. Publishing on-line means never having to edit anything good outof the article. We can use everything, so you get the full story. And it’s all here.This one will keep you up late.

GT/CS TIME. 2 pages. SAAC-35 had a convention-within-a-convention. We in-vited California Special owners to the party and GT/CS-meister Paul Newitt wasthe first one onboard. We asked him to put his impressions into a brief articleand this is what he came up with. We suspect we made some SAAC converts thatweekend. How will we know? If we start seeing GT/CS cars at future conven-tions.

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The SHELBY AMERICAN

SAAC-4. 9 pages. Another trip down Memory Lane, this time to Downingtown,Pennsylvania for a look in the rearview mirror at SAAC-4, which took place June28-29-30, 1979. The convention started the day before, when the early arrivalswere just pulling into the hotel lot and the departing guests were leaving. That’swhen the geezer in the Buick backed into the rear fender of Pardee’s ‘65 GT350,leaving a tennis ball-sized dimple. He then tried to drive off and was cornered bywitnesses. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves...

MORE FOURS. 4 pages. GT40 J-Car production continues. Say what? Well, un-less you have your copy of the Cobra/GT40 registry this will probably news toyou. Mike Teske started a project to recreate a batch of MK IVs to original spec-ifications. Seven of them, continuing after the last original car, J-12, and builtwith the help of ex-Kar Kraft and Ford guys. A lot of people scoffed and doubtedthat it would ever happen. Well, fooey on them. Check out these pictures!

PARALLEL UNIVERSE. 2 pages. How do we describe this one? Gerald Roushedited the Ferrari market Letter for half of his life. In an editorial last year, hedescribed his thoughts on that milestone. Someone sent it to us and suggestedwe read it because there were a lot of parallels. There were more than a lot. Wecould insert Cobra/Shelby every time he used Ferrari and not much wouldchange. That is spooky.

THE NIIHAU SHELL NECKLACE. 7 pages. If you’ve been to most conventionssince SAAC-20 in Atlanta you’ve probably seen a black Cobra with Hawaiianplates running around. This isn’t someone who slaps those plate on a car theydrove 100 miles. Kei and Miki IInuma have cross-crossed the U.S. in their Cobra,usually hitting a SAAC convention along the way. Their trips make for some veryinteresting stories. Here’s one of them.

PARALLEL UNIVERSE

PARALLEL UNIVERSE

SUMMER 2010

The SHELBY AMERICAN Summer/2010 1

Notes from theSAAC Mailroom.

This has been one of our favoritebumper stickers for a while, and astime passes it has acquired more andmore significance. We realize thatwhen it comes to the cars that Shelbybuilt between 1962 and 1970, SAAC isthe foremost recognized authority.Over the past thirty-five years we haveacquired an excellent reputation forknowledge and accuracy. So, nobodyshould be surprised (least of all us),when someone beyond the SAAC’sgravitational pull has a question, weare the first one they turn to. Not aweek goes by that we don’t get a ques-tion about something Shelby-related.Most of them come from hapless soulswho are not a SAAC members. Theyhave stumbled on something that theythink is valuable because of some realor imagined connection to Shelby. Theyare not inquiring about its historicalsignificance—all they want to know is,what is it worth? At one time we found this a littleannoying, because it seemed like wewere being bombarded by a steadystream of people who were coming upwith the weirdest assortment of itemswhich they envisioned as being theequivalent of the pot of gold at the endof the rainbow. For example, Shelby was involvedwith an aftermarket wheel company inthe mid-1970s. They made dished alu-minum wheels with kidney bean cut-outs which have “SHELBY” cast on theback. When a non-SAAC Neanderthalstumbles across a set of these wheelsat a swap meet, the first thing that en-ters his mind is the Shelby he saw onTV at the Barrett-Jackson auction sell-ing for $300,000. He suspects that thewheels he paid $25 a piece for areworth $250 each—and he gets a bittesty when we tell him they are not.

THE DEFINITION OF A BAD DAY

Dateline: Arlington, Texas; July 11,2010. Once a year the University of TexasFormula SAE Team invites student engi-neers from other schools to a weekend ofcompetition between student-built For-mula-style race cars. Each team designs,builds and tests a prototype based on veryexplicit rules. Cars can amass a total of1,000 points, awarded in the followingareas: design, cost and presentation; mov-ing competition includes points for accel-eration, skid pad, autocross, fuel economyand endurance. A large parking lot on cam-pus is used for the event. As best that can be determined, basedon these pictures and a report posted byMatt Hardigree on jalopnik.com, theowner of this polished aluminum-bodiedKirkham 427 Cobra was doing a drive-byof the event when his throttle struck. Thecar spun around a few times, hit a curband flipped into a creek. The driver wasnot hurt and the car appears not to havesuffered monumental damage. Onlookers were attracted to the scenelike moths to a porch light as soon as thefire department called in an industrialgrade wrecker. Their pictures quicklymade it onto the Internet (of course), andby extension, onto the SAAC Forum. Howthey chose to extricate the car was a mostinteresting and instructive exercise... notthat it is information you will ever be ableto use—unless you have similar bad luck.

I USED TO

GET ANGRY

NOW I’M J

UST AMU

SED


Anyone who has had the misfortune tobe on the receiving end of a wrecker’s hookknows that, as a general rule, wrecker op-erators are not long on sympathy. Notdoing more damage to an already damagedcar isn’t very high on their priority list.But it appears that the Kirkham’s ownerwas lucky in this respect. The car washoisted up by the mounting points of itslower A-arms. After the water drained out(and there was apparently a lot of it be-cause the hood and trunk remainedclosed), it was gently lowered down(whoops—there goes the windshield) sothe front two straps could be removed. Itwas hoisted up again, this time nose down.A roll-back truck was positioned under itso it be lowered gently onto the back.

Every Falcon, Fairlane, Thunder-bird, Bronco or Ranchero that some-body slapped a Shelby or Cobra badgeon becomes a potential long lost proto-type. Cars with repro Shelby VINplates are even worse. People see thisas absolute proof that the car is gen-uine. When we politely explain that itis not, we get an argument, as if we aretrying to cheat an orphan out of theirinheritance. Then they play the trumpcard: their car is a secret prototype andthey demand that we prove it is not. We have been called on to verifymore “Cobra-in-the-barn” finds thanwe can count. Here’s the latest one. Thefirst email said only, “A friend of minefound a [sic] AC Cobra in a barn. TheVIN is CSX3707. Could you tell mewhat the VIN means please?” Our response was pretty straight-forward: “The serial number you pro-vided, CSX3707, is not one of theoriginal Cobras that Carroll Shelbybuilt. So it is something else. Withoutseeing it, it is impossible for anyone totell exactly what it is, but my guess isthat it is some kind of a Cobra replica.” We received a hurried reply thefollowing day with these two pictures. And so it goes.

One of these days we’re going tosee someone find a REAL Cobra-in-the-barn. But it wasn’t today.


The errant Kirkham didn’t es-cape without a few crinkles, butconsidering that it did the auto-motive equivalent of a half-gainer into a shallow creek, itgot off pretty easy. The car’sowner/driver was probably tornbetween the desire to bewhisked away in the back of theambulance into relativeanonymity, and sticking aroundto make sure his car was treatedgently to keep additional dam-age to a minimum. Which onewould you choose? Hopefully,that’s a decision you’ll neverhave to make.


The very first issue of SAAC’s mag-azine (Volume 1 #1, December 1975)contained an article which was envi-sioned as the beginning of a series. Theywould be tongue-in-cheek parodies cen-tering around some never before re-vealed piece of Shelby American history.The tip-off that they were put-ons wasthe author’s name, Jacques Hughoff.That turned out to be a little too subtlefor some members who, instead of read-ing it as “Jack You-off” as intended, in-terpreted it as “Jakes Hug-off,” therebymissing the initial clue that the articlethat followed was a hoax.

– by Jacques Hughoff (Ed. Note: Mr. Hughoff may quite possi-bly be one of the earliest fans of ShelbyAmerican. In 1962 he lived in an apart-ment almost directly across from theVenice plant and as a hot rod enthusiastand diehard ‘Ford man,’ viewed the day-to-day happenings with more than a ca-sual interest. When the Shelby juggernaut out-grew its floor space and moved to theWest Imperial Highway location,Jacques, by then hopelessly addicted,moved too. He took up residence in a loftdiagonally across from the airport fac-tory. He soon became a ‘regular’ atShelby American and became friendlywith everyone, especially Pete Brock,Chuck Cantwell and engine wizardCecil Bowman. The Shelby American AutomobileClub is indeed fortunate to be able totap the heretofore untapped resourcesof a man who, indeed, literally had his‘ear at the factory window.’

No doubt all Shelby enthusiastsknow that the last GT350s to be runthrough the assembly line at ShelbyAmerican in September 1966 wereGT350 convertibles, one of which wasused as personal transportation by Mrs.Carroll Shelby. Fewer, probably, know that six or-ange notchbacks found their way downthat September. But the number of per-sons who know about those two 1966GT350 station wagons is remote indeed.

The story begins back in August1962. Pete Brock, the young ShelbyAmerican employee in charge of design-ing and advertising at the Cobra worksordered one of the then recently intro-duced Falcon sedan deliveries with the260 V8 option. The day he accepted de-livery Pete started Cobra-izing the littleFord V8. In fact, Hot Rod magazine ranan article on this very machine in theOctober 1963 issue, titled “Bolt-On 80Horsepower.” The Falcon became arolling test bed for engine components,as did a ‘64 Fairlane that Carroll, him-self, tooled around LA. Pete liked theuniqueness of the distinctive body styleand it was from this seed that the flowerthat became the GT350 wagon grew. Pete did some renderings of how aMustang would look as a station wagon.He approached “the Boss” with themsometime in February, 1966. The Bossliked what he saw and gave the ok to getone prototype made, possibly believingthat because of the success of the origi-nal Mustang model, Ford intended tocome out with a wagon in 1967. A ‘66wagon, Shelby-ized, of course, wouldgrab the publicity for both Ford andShelby American. Being a resourceful in-dividual, Pete had two wagons built; onefor the company and one for himself. Henever forgot that sedan delivery. The two station wagons were com-pleted sometime in May of ‘66. Bothwere, naturally, Wimbledon White withGuardsman Blue stripes, but Shelby’shad an automatic while Brock’s had afour-speed. An unbelievable series ofmisfortunes befell both cars, explaining

why no photographs ever reached thepublic. One of the Shelby American staffphotographers shot a color layout of thecar for use in Sports Car Graphic to ac-company a road test by Jerry Titus. Thedevelopment process was somehow com-promised and the negatives were all ru-ined. When he returned to reshoot, hewas told that the car had been parked inthe lot and crunched by a truck backingup to make a delivery. The rear of thetruck struck the left rear of the wagon,pushing it into another car. Thus, thewagon was damaged at both ends and onboth sides. Brock’s wagon did not havethe image Shelby wanted to project (ithad side exhausts, competition suspen-sion, 15˝ wheels and a roll bar, plus some385 horses under the hood, topped off bythose nasty Webers) so the decision wasmade to put the pictures on hold. Thewagon was moved into the shop andplans were made to begin repairs. Asluck would have it, a break in the flow ofparts caused the wagon to be strippedand when the ‘67 models began to arrive,the car was hauled off. Brock’s wagon was stolen within thesame week and never recovered. Shelbysubsequently found out that Ford did notplan to introduce a station wagon intothe Mustang line-up so the project wasforgotten. Pete Brock said he enjoyed thefeel of the car almost as much as the R-Model. After Hertz broke the GT350mold with the GT350H, Brock wanted tocall the wagon the GT350W, but Shelbyreminded him, “...we already have one ofthose.”

EAR AT THE FACTORY WINDOW

Life imitates art. After this photo (which we have no details on) was posted on the Internet,we began getting questions about the GT350 station wagon from people who had recalled see-ing something about it in a back issue of the club’s magazine. It is obviously time to shine thelight of truth on this subject.

SHELBY’S GT350 WAGON

The SHELBY AMERICAN

Kopec remembers: When we startedthe club and began putting together thefirst issue of the magazine, I had thefeeling we were taking things (includingourselves) far too seriously. It was a cluband this stuff was supposed to be fun. Assomeone who passed through adoles-cence accompanied by the latest copy ofMad magazine and went through collegebeing entertained by the National Lam-poon, I thought there was room for littlelevity here and there in The ShelbyAmerican. A short spoof in each issuewould make the magazine well rounded.I should note, at this point, that was aminority opinion. I envisioned creating some guy—notan employee—who would pop in atShelby American and see things that no-body knew about. Then, ten years later,he recalls some of the things he saw andwrites about them in a column in theclub magazine. For example, when I sawthe 1965 publicity photo of a streetGT350 and an R-Model side by side,with a ‘65 Rambler in the background, Istarted thinking about Shelby Americanbeing contacted by AMC to create a highperformance model of their own basedon the Rambler Classic: Chuck Cantwelldoing the engineering... Ken Miles test-ing it at Willow Springs... Mark Donohueand Roger Penske talking about racinga couple of them (ok, maybe that was astretch). But once that kind of thinkingbegan, the article almost wrote itself. I recalled Car and Driver’s October1966 cover, which showed a one-off, IvyGreen Mustang station wagon. A whiteand blue-striped GT350 version came tomind, for some now forgotten reason.

The GT350 Station Wagon articlewas only a small portion of the brandnew magazine. The Marque was re-ceived with a lot of excitement by SAACmembers who had never seen an actualmagazine dedicated solely to “their”cars. Because of this, the wagon piecewas initially overlooked. There was noforum back then to carry a buzz. Word ofmouth spread much slower. Add to thisthat a lot of members failed to catch thesubtle play on words of the author’sname. Jakes Hug-off went over theirheads and before too many questionscould be asked or the cat let out of thebag, there was another issue in the mail. The second issue also contained asecond “Ear At The Factory Window”and a few more people either caught theHughoff play on words or if they didn’t,they were set straight. The article wasabout some of the pranks the Cobrateam pulled (all ficticious, of course).Like one of the team drivers showing upat a driver’s meeting reeking of alcoholand weaving around. He had the pole ina Daytona Coupe. He drove to the falsegrid in fits and starts, jerking andstalling the car. The other drivers fig-ured he wouldn’t last a lap, so they lethim go. He took off ahead of everyone,maintained the lead, and won the race. “No one knows who ordered 100 piz-zas in the name of the Ferrari team atSebring. The pizzas arrived just prior tothe start of the race and in the confusionthat ensued over the bill, some lastminute preparations were neglected.When the car pitted prematurely, themechanics were so bloated from eatingthe pizzas they could not fit under thecar.” “While dynoing engines prior to the‘65 LeMans race, Shelby American en-gine builders found that the moon’sgravitational pull affected the float lev-els in the carburetors. If the cars werejetted to compensate for this, the enginewas found to yield some 15 to 30 morehorsepower. As only Daytona and Le-Mans are run at night, little was evermade of this data, but more than once agypsy was seen in the engine room priorto LeMans.” Anxieties about causing confusionand the magazine not being taken seri-ously because of stuff like this wereenough to pull the plug on JacquesHughoff. I had plenty of other ideas, butat that point it didn’t make sense toswim upstream. As they say, the juicewasn’t worth the squeeze. “Ear At TheFactory Window” quietly disappeared.

A prank article has to be believable,so some explanation had to be inventedas to why the wagon prototypes werenever photographed. And why the actualcars never turned up. To add a littlemore credibility, I put a piece of tracingpaper over the C/D cover and did a trac-ing of the car. Then I added Shelby/Cra-gar wheels, side scoops, side exhaustsand LeMans stripes.

Summer/2010 5

The SHELBY AMERICAN

Things continued to percolate inthe new club and after a year or so Ihave to admit that I had completelyforgotten about Jacques Hughoff. Thenone day I got a phone call from some-one [who will remain anonymous be-cause I feel no need to publiclyembarrass him; I will, however, saythat his name would be familiar to justabout anyone reading this magazine].Let’s call him “John.” After the usualhi-how-ya-doin’ small talk, he askedme if I had a phone number for PeteBrock. I asked him what he wanted itfor. In those early days we were veryprotective of former Shelby employeeswe had contact with. We realized thatthey were nowhere near as interestedin these cars as we were and one sureway to tick them off was to start pass-ing their phone numbers around so afew thousand enthusiasts could delugethem with questions or favors. John said he needed to ask PeteBrock a few questions about the ‘65GT350 station wagon he had readabout in The Marque. He was in theprocess of building one and needed toknow what kind of latching mechanismwas used on the tailgate. I wasstunned. This guy really should haveknown thew article was just a hoax. “You don’t have to call him.” I said.“I can tell you as much about those carsan anyone because I made it all up.That article was a joke. There neverwere any GT350 station wagons.” The next thing I heard on the linewere crickets. Then, after the bad newshad sunk in, there was a weak, “Oh.” Iasked John how far he had gotten onthe car. He said that just about every-thing was done except the tailgate andrear window. I never heard from himagain but someone told me that he dideventually complete the car. Since then I have received photosof a couple of other attempts. One wason display in a large car show (theKnott’s Berry Farm “Fabulous Fords,”if I recall). The owner even had three-foot-high enlargements of the Marquearticle on easels next to the car. Evi-dently this was another guy who didn’tcatch the name of the author in the ar-ticle. Or couldn’t pronounce it correctly.The car pictured on the previous pageis probably the nicest example of themall. But when I look at it I can’t helpwondering if the guy who built it reallyknows the entire story behind theGT350 station wagon.

Summer/2010 6

You can never tell when thisstuff will turn up—or where.Forty-two years after thesepictures were taken theyshowed up on HemmingsMotor News’ Internet blog<www.blog.hemmings.com>In 1966 John Murphy of Oak-land, Maine was drivingthrough a residential neigh-borhood in River Edge, NewJersey when they spotted thisgreen Mustang stationwagon. He said that as he wastaking the pictures a secondMustang wagon pulled up, awhite one with wood trim.The driver got out andstarted yelling at him that hewasn’t allowed to take pic-tures of the car. Murphy andhis pal took off without argu-ing. This was before the carappeared on the cover of Carand Driver; thus the desirefor secrecy. It turns out the cars werebuilt by the coachbuilder In-termeccanica in Turin, Italy.The project was commis-sioned by J. Walter Thomp-son, an advertising agencyheadquartered in Detroitwhich had the Ford account.The idea was to present thecars to Ford as an idea for afuture model. Intermeccanicahad also been contracted byJack Griffith to build a re-placement for his TVR-basedGriffith, but that companyclosed after only a handful ofcars were built. The idea of a Mustangstation wagon, based on the1965-1966 models, continuesto spark the imagination andto spawn clones.


SHELBY AMERICAN’S TWO-CAR TRANSPORTER

Ever seen this Shelby Americantransporter? We hadn’t, so whenSAAC member Kieth Champine sentus an e-mail with it attached, we satup and paid attention. We recalledspeaking with Bernie Kretzschmar, atsome point, about testing each com-pleted R-Model at Willow Springsprior to delivery. When two cars werecompleted at the same time, theywere brought out to Willow to betrack-tested on a dual-car trans-porter. On this trip, however, it was apair of 427 S/Cs getting the ride. Kretzschmar doesn’t have a com-puter so we e-mailed a picture to ourgo-to guy, Chuck Cantwell. He con-firmed that this was the transporterused when they needed to bring twocars to the track to test. We then wentback to Champine and asked himwhere he saw the transporter pictureand he retraced his steps along theInternet information highway. He hadoriginally been searching “Riverside1963” and found a picture of CarrollShelby and Miss California SportsCar, Lori Campbell at the RiversideGrand Prix in October 1963. This pic-ture came from an unusual site (mag-neticbrain.blogspot.com). Among theweird collection of photos on this sitewas the transporter picture.

Champine followed “blogspot’s”source, which led him to the “clubco-bra” website. They had a bunch ofphotos which were supplied byRichard Messersmith. We recognized that name.Richard Messersmith was the origi-nal owner of CSX3018. He purchasedit in March 1966. It is the Guards-man Blue 427 comp car on top of thetransporter, and this photo was takenas the car was on its way to WillowSprings to be track-tested by KenMiles. After that, Messersmithpicked it up and went directly to theCarroll Shelby School of High Per-formance Driving to take that course.He then went back to Chicago andbegan racing it in SCCA events. In fact, when we were searchingfor an original 8” x 10” plaque that allgraduates of the school received,Messersmith still had his and wasgood enough to loan it to us so wecould have exact duplicates made bySAAC member David Felstein. Oncewe had an original we announcedthat copies would be made for asmany people who wanted them.About 30 or so members jumped inand we had exactly that many made.They were engraved with each per-son’s name, just like the originals.


STOP THE PRESSES - HELL HAS FROZEN OVER!

The buzz around Northwest Arkansaswas punctuated with exclamation pointsas word began to spread that 6S1936 wasbeing exhumed from its more than twodecades of interment in Alan Christman’sgarage. Christman was something of alocal hero when he bought the ex-Hertz carmore than 36 years ago for a figure re-ported to be just shy of $1,000 (a not incon-sequential sum back in those days). Thetest drive consisted of a 100 mph blastthrough a Fayetteville residential areaearly in the morning with empty beer cansrattling around on the floors and newspa-pers swirling. It was the stuff of which sto-ries are told and retold to where theybecome an integeral part of a car’s history.

backed by a T-10 four-speed. The originalaluminum oil pan will be replaced with aCanton steel pan. Christman found theoriginal alternator with a large-diameter-pulley that had been tossed in the bushesby his brother decades ago—long beforeparts like this were deemed rare and ac-quired the value they have today. We’ll be reporting on 6S1936 asprogress continues. We have a mole keep-ing an eye on things.

Twenty years ago Christman parkedthe car with the intention of eventuallygiving it a complete once-over. That in-cluded swapping the 2x4V set-up for a ‘65Cobra intake and a 715 Holley and refur-bishing of everything else. But like a lot oflong range projects, the longer it sat thefarther away actual the actual startingpoint got. Things were piled around it andbefore anyone noticed, it became entombedand almost forgotten. Then something happened. Details onthis epiphany are hazy but they it’s likelyChristman experienced a moment of clar-ity during which he realized that he wasn’tgetting any younger and neither was hisGT350. If we wanted to see the actual re-sults of twenty years worth of day dreamshe better get started. Everything wasstripped out of the car in preparation for avisit to the body shop for torque boxes anda floorpan transplant. The original engineis being replaced by a 327 CID stroker 302

Here’s an interesting sidenote: in vir-tually every long-term project there is al-ways some obscure part or detail that isaddressed which seems out of place whencompared to everything else. A misplacedpriority. Christman’s stroked 302, yielding327 cubic inches, prompted this uniquetake-off on the 289 Hi-Po air cleaner decal.Most people would see this as a finishingtouch, added at the end. But maybe it is atalisman, used to bring good luck to theproject and inspire continuing momentum.


MIS TRANS-AM TRAGEDY AND THE MYSTERY ‘66 GT350

BLACKTOP NATIONALS IN WICHITA, KANSAS

A good friend of SAAC member RonRoehm of Elkins Park, PA recently senthim an original race program from thefirst Trans-Am race of the 1969 season, afour-hour event at Michigan InternationalSpeedway on May 15, 1969. Inside was ayellowed newspaper clipping reportingShelby team driver Horst Kwech’s tragicaccident early in the race. Kwech’s ‘69 Boss302 spun in the rain and went through awooden fence into a crowd, killing onespectator and injuring a dozen more. The photo in the article showed someof the injured victims still on the ground,around a mud-splattered ‘66 GT350 whichappears to have escaped being damaged.Roehm scanned it and emailed it to ‘65-’66registrar Howard Pardee, who passed it onfor inclusion in here.

Parnelli Wins; Fan Killed, 12 HurtCambridge Junction, Mich.–

(UPI)–Against the backdropof tragedy on a rain-spatteredcourse, Parnelli Jones chuckedaside human error and cameup a winner.Jones won the Trans-America

race at Michigan InternationalSpeedway yesterday after offi-cials upheld a Ford MotorCompany protest that his lapswere counted incorrectly in thefour-hour race.

But the Torrance, Californ-ian’s victory, declared nearlyfour hours after the race wasfinished, was marred by an ac-cident in which one spectatorwas killed and a dozen othersinjured.

Horst Kwech, driving a

The other injured, includingFletcher’s wife, Lorna, 48,were in fair to good condition.Three persons were treatedand released.

Jones’ turnabout victorycame when raceway officials,under protest from the Fordteam, rechecked timing andscoring charts.

“We have reviewed the offi-cial scoring and found a dis-crepancy,” officials of the MISsaid as they slipped markDonohue, Media, Pa., fromfirst to second place.

“It Was Human Error”“It was a human error,” one

official simply explained.Jones was thus awarded top

prize money of $5,000 in the344-mile, 104-lap race after atotal purse of $35,000 in theinitial race of the Trans-Am se-ries. Averaging 85.99 MPH asthe leader of a four-man teamof Mustang drivers, he whippedthrough in four hours and 10seconds.

Donohue completed 103 lapsin the Roger Penske ChevroletCamaro for $3,500 prizemoney and six points towardthe manufacturer’s champi-onship compared to Jones’nine.Placing third in a Pontiac Fire-

bird was Jerry Titus , Encino,Calif. with 103 laps. One lapoff that pace was Bob Tullius,Falls Church, VA. in a Javelin.

Shelby Boss Mustang, lostcontrol at the 12th lap whilegoing 120 miles per hour. TheGurnee. Ill. driver threw thecar into a skid to reduce hisspeed but it spun around andrammed broadside thorough awooden fence into a crowd ofstanding spectators.

Boy, 12, Among InjuredDurward Fletcher, 43, an

American Motors Corp. dealerfrom lansing, died shortly af-terwards at Foote Hospital innearby Jackson after sufferinghead injuries.Reported in critical condition

was Dean Yinger, 12, of Livo-nia, in University Hospital inAnn Arbor.

The Blacktop Nationals was a three-day extravaganza sponsored by FoMoCo inWichita, Kansas this past August 26-29. Itconsisted of a car and bike show, drag rac-ing, a cruise night, a collector car auction,manufacturer’s midway and a few morefamily-oriented events. One of the high-points was the unveiling of Ford’s 2012Boss 302 Mustang with the Laguna Secapackage. Over 700 cars and motorcycles ofevery type were on display: street rods,customs, sports cars and probably everyspecial interest vehicle for 300 miles.


SAAC member Fred Hilbert was invited by Ford to put his R-Model, 5R094, on display for the weekend.


MEET THE HOT ONES

To paraphrase Forrest Gump, our in-box is like a box of chocolates. We neverknow what we’re going to get. SAAC mem-ber Tony Porte of Monee, IL passed alongsome photos that were taken by a friend’sfather in the mid-1960s. The guy workedfor Goodyear, in the corporate headquar-ters in Akron, Ohio, and one of his assign-ments was to transport some race carsaround the country, showing them at vari-ous Goodyear dealers to promote the tirecompany’s involvement in racing. The events were called “Meet The HotOnes,” and two of the cars were a CobraDaytona Coupe and one of the All Ameri-can racers’ Gurney Eagle Indy cars. Thesephotos were taken at a Goodyear dealer’ssomewhere in Pennsylvania. Tony asked,“Can these cars be identified somehow?” You came to the right place, vulcan-breath. The Gurney Eagle was an easyone.We only had to google “1967 Indy 500”to come up with a list of entrants. Car #42was driven by Jerry Grant. He finished20th. He went out on Lap 162 with a bro-ken piston. He qualified 30th. The winner,by the way, was A.J. Foyt in a Coyote-Ford. Identifying the Daytona Coupe was al-most as easy. A quick check with the latestregistry revealed that the car wasCSX2299. At the season’s end, 2299 wasreturned to Shelby American and sporadi-cally used for promotional purposes. It wassent to the Goodyear Tire Service Center(Indianapolis, IN) in 6/67 to “remain onsemi-permanent loan to Goodyear for dis-play at various shows which they antici-pate having in the near future.” Obviously,these photos were taken at one of the stopson the schedule. According to the registryfootnote, it was rumored that Goodyearshipped the car to Florida for a show, fol-lowing which the car sat at a Ford dealer-ship until they called Shelby American toask exactly when they were going to comeand remove it. The response was, essen-tially, “Thanks—we lost track of it and for-got it was out there.”


BUILT FORD TOUGH

SAAC’s Ford GT registrar, Jeff Burgy,sent along these “before” and “after” pho-tos of an ‘06 Ford GT Heritage model. Ap-parently the Ford F-150 isn’t the onlyvehicle that Ford builds “tough.” It’s diffi-cult to imagine, but the driver of this carwalked away from the accident. After leav-ing a Southern California highway back-wards at an estimated 65 mph and takingout a few trees along the way (note the dri-ver's door and rear clamshell), the GTplummeted to the bottom of a ravine andlanded on its wheels. The driver was a West Coast tunerwho specializes in Ford GTs. After the dustcleared it was discovered that the afore-mentioned tuner did not carry business in-surance to cover the accident, leaving thecar’s suddenly unhappy owner to arm-wrestle with his own insurance company—even though he was a thousand milesaway from his car when the accident oc-curred. There are three things you shouldtake away from this incident: 1) Make sureyour insurance policy is in force and up-to-date (with a current appraisal on file). 2)Be very cautious who you let drive yourcar. 3) No SAAC member is likely to buythis wreck once it is repaired withoutknowing what he or she is getting, becausethe registrar keeps track of things likethis—by VIN. Just because a car has a clean CAR-FAX doesn’t guarantee that it’s a virgin. Ifthere is no police report, and the owner hasthe resources (which most Ford GT ownersdo), a car can be “brought back to life” withno record of the damage. While some Fo-rums discourage (or outright outlaw) dis-cussion of accidents in order to “protect”their members, you have to wonder if theywouldn’t be better serving their membersby letting them know about accident-dam-aged vehicles. The Shelby American issue #77,Spring 2009, carried an article titled “TheWhoops Factor.” It carried photos of four-teen Ford GTs which had suffered seriousdamage, mostly due to poor judgement bytheir drivers. One of the points made in thearticle was that about 25% of these carsmay have been involved in accidents—from minor to horrendous—because theyare fast, powerful, and can get away froman inexperienced driver in the blink of aneye. This is something to keep in mind asthese cars travel down the food chain, fromowner to owner, as “used cars.” And it isone of the reasons why it is so importantto maintain an accurate registry—some-thing that only a club like SAAC can do.


SHELBY AMERICANA

There is a difference between a photo-graph and a snapshot. A snapshot is whatyou get when you put your eye to yourcamera’s viewfinder or hold the camera upand look at the image on the screen andsnap off a shot. A photograph, on the otherhand, is what you get when you consideraspects other than the car you see in theviewfinder. You plan the photograph beforeyou press the shutter. It is the result ofsome forethought, not just a pleasant co-incidence of standing behind your cameraand pointing it in the direction of your car.Lately we’ve been looking at hundreds andhundreds of images of cars as we put theregistry together. Most of them are snap-shots. Only a few are photographs.

To take a really good photograph youdon’t have to have a thousand-dollar cam-era. And you don’t have to read a thickbook on photography, or have years of ex-perience. Our pal and SAAC member CurtScott, a professional photographer, is shar-ing all of the things he has learned overthe last thirty-five years. He wadedthrough over 30,000 photographs to findthe worst of the worst for the “don’t dothis” examples and the best of the best toshow you what is possible—and why. He’spacked it all into a seventeen-page PDF. Tosee it just click on the link in the yellowbox at the top of this page.

Curt Scott’s hefty resume includesbeing an automotive photo-journalist forthe past twenty-plus years. He’s writtenseveral books and hundreds of articles andhe’s shot thousands of photographs. Healso runs a website you’re probably famil-iar with www.CobraCountry.com

If you want to sell or buy a Cobra or areplica, this will either be your first stopor the website you eventually get to whenyou’ve been disappointed by all of the restof the places you’ve looked.

This is the best condensed photogra-phy guide we’ve seen, so we’re happy thatwe were able to strong-arm Curt into let-ting us provide it to you as a PDF. He sentalong a note stressing that the overriding

http://www.CobraCountry.com/CobraPhoTipsDipStix.htmlF

We asked Curt to provide us with a couple of what he considered “good” photos to use to illustratethis article. The first thing we noted about both pictures, CSX4022 [top] and CSX4758 [bottom]are the lack of shadows we usually see under most of the photos we receive. Those shadows makeit impossible to see the outline of the tires, or on dark cars, where the car’s bodywork stops andthe shadow begins. Also note the neutral background with no distractions: no mailboxes, garbagecans or telephone poles. When someone takes a picture of their car, when they look through theviewfinder all they see is their car. And they love what they see. The problem is that they don’t seeanything else.

factor in automobile photography is light.Color photography is about light—not

shadow or darkness. Curt reminds us thatAnsel Adams passed away long ago. Forautomotive photography you need lots ofevenly-distributed light. Low-angle andhorizontal light is always better than high-overhead midday sun. Always. Set yourcamera permanently on forced flash, sothat the flash goes off every time you pressthe shutter. No exceptions, and especiallywhen you’re out in bright sunlight.

Your camera’s flash is almost alwayspositioned higher on the camera than thelens, so for almost all auto (and people)shots you should turn the camera upsidedown. This directs the flash where it’sneeded—down low under the bodywork—so you can eliminate the harsh shadowsunder the car. It also brightens up thegrille opening. This is just one of his com-mon sense tips.

You should read this guide before youtake another picture.

The SHELBY AMERICAN

What has become a good-natured EagleEye war between Jim Hutchison and KenYoung continues. They seem to be attempt-ing to out-do themselves with every issue,but we see their pickings as getting a littlethin in places. After all, how much of thisstuff can they find? One thing seems cer-tain: no one else has stepped into the ringto challenge them.

THE EAGLE EYE SLUGFEST CONTINUES

One of the things in this month’s bag ‘otricks sent to us by Jim Hutchison is thecover of this 1993 clothing and accessoriescatalog. You shouldn’t have to look too hardto see the (aftermarket) Cobra steeringwheel in the upper right.

Ken Young got his hands on a copy of thelatest Toscano mail order catalog (www.de-signtoscano.com). How he got on theirmailing list is a story for some other day.This catalog originally carried unique wallhangings and garden sculptures, mostbased on medieval subjects or Egyptian ar-tifacts. But the last few years there hasbeen a subtle shift towards heavy gothitems; lots of skulls, swords, witches andgargoyles. We wondered where these gothsgot this stuff because Halloween onlycomes once a year. But not for Young. We’llhave to keep an eye on him. Somebody saidthey thought they saw him wearing ablack hooded cape one night at the conven-tion. The faux-gilt finish of this 11” x 16”cobra sculpture is, should we say, striking.It sticks out of the wall a full foot. At$89.95 it’s not exactly cheap.

How can you overlook the “Tristar Cobra Force” shotgun? Hutchison couldn’t. He spot-ted this Turkish-made scatter gun in the August 2010 issue of American Rifleman mag-azine. It’s a 12-gauge, of course and it looks like it has all the bells and whistles of atactical shotgun: 20” barrel, pistol grip, flash suppressor and extended magazine. Butthe magazine only holds five rounds, so it’s not everything it seems. Very uncobra-like.

Cobra foot fetish? You came to the rightplace. Hutchison spotted these shoes in aNeiman Marcus catalog. With all the cata-logs he looks through, when does he findtime to drive CSX3327? These are made byCole-Haan, low wedge with 1” heels if youmust know. At $158 a pair, you won’t seethe wearer scuffing them across the con-crete floor as she lays on her back andhelps you align the transmission you arereinstalling. “A little to the right, honey.That’s perfect. Hold it right there...”

Is it our imagination or is there just a lotof stuff in catalogs these days? Young spot-ted this model of a 427 Cobra engine in aGenuine Hot Rod Hardware catalog. Nosurprise as he is heavy into street rods.The description states that the model is 71/2” long, 4 1/2” wide and 6 1/2” high. It’scorrect down to the finned valve covers,dual quads and headers. It is wired andplumbed and the pulleys turn. It has evenbeen “inspected by the Shelby EngineeringGroup for authenticity.” This is somethingthat you can put on your desk and fiddlewith during those long, sleep-inducingphone calls.

Summer/2010 14

The SHELBY AMERICAN

No one can deny the high interest (and cor-responding participation) in classic carauctions today. You have only to refer toBarrett-Jackson, Russo and Steele, RM,and especially Mecum, which, through themagic of cable television, seems to be hold-ing an auction every week (we know... weknow—these programs are repeated oftenon cable; we said “seems”). So it shouldn’tsurprise anyone that Carlisle Productionsis jumping into the auction business. Wereceived this brochure in the mail adver-tising an auction during this year’s fallmeet. If it is successful, you’ll see one in thespring. We have to admit that we’re notsurprised. Large automotive swap meetshave been slowly shrinking over the pastfew years, due to the increasing use of In-ternet auctions like eBay, and the dwin-dling number of NOS and used partsavailable after 30+ years of swap meets.Evolve or die. And how about thatbrochure cover? We’ve made this observa-tion numerous times before. Whoever putthis promotional piece together had theirchoice of every collector car you canname—and there are hundreds. So whichone did they pick to grab your attention?

When Roger Mitchell of Spokane, WA was working on his car, 67411F4A02563, he hada sense that it looked familiar. Sure enough, the cover of The Shelby American #67 useda factory photo of the production line with a car positioned almost exactly like #2563.He had his camera handy and sent us thia picture.

Summer/2010 15

The SHELBY AMERICAN

BROCK OF THE MONTH CLUBOk, all of you Dan Gurney acolytes—

listen up. If you ever wanted to have DanGurney’s autograph, this may be your onlychance. Mr. Gurney recently stopped giv-ing autographs because he didn’t like theidea of signing things for what he thoughtwere his fans, only to see them being ped-dled on eBay for a hefty premium becausethey had been autographed. So, if you sendhim something you’d like him to sign, itwill be politely returned. Who can blamehim?

But all is not lost. Brock Racing Enter-prises presently has a few dozen posterswhich have been signed by both Dan andPeter Brock. In case you don’t recognizethe photo, it’s the famous Jesse Alexandershot of Gurney driving into the sun inCSX2286 at LeMans in 1965. The poster isblack & white, 24” x 36” and when they aregone, so will your change to get Dan Gur-ney’s autograph... unless you want to getgouged on eBay. www.bre2.net

Summer/2010 16

And speaking of Dan Gurney, he was honored at this year’s Monterey Historics and they managed to assemble 20 cars that spannedhis racing history. Getting such a large number and wide variety of cars together at the same time is no small feat. You can onlywonder how much they had to shell out in travel expenses to get these cars there. Viewed from another perspective, however, if youhave a race car that was driven by someone like Dan Gurney, there is no better way to solidify its value than bringing it to a tributelike this for display and possibly having him take it out for a few laps. Short of driving it yourself in a vintage race or putting it onstatic display in some museum, what else can you do with such a car? No matter: it’s great to see all these cars appear in public.

The SHELBY AMERICAN

MUSCLE CARS by Mike Mueller. 6˝ x 8˝softbound; 239 pages; 387 color photos.Published by Motorbooks, Minneapolis,MN; www.motorbooks.com $19.95

Shelby Mustangs didn’t just pop upout of nowhere; they weren’t the first mus-cle car on the scene. This book providessome context and background about thehistory of the American muscle car. It’s notheavy on Shelbys—in fact the only one pro-filed is a 1966. But let’s not obsess on that.

This is a very nice little book: compe-tently written (although a couple of errorsjumped out at us, like a production figureof 561 cars in 1965—but we’ll overlookthat). It is organized into six chapterswhich use examples of various muscle carsto provide the context. The cars are notpresented in chronological order and atfirst we thought this was odd, until we sawhow Mueller was approaching the subject.Each car gets four pages, most of which aretaken up by photographs. They are ex-tremely clear and crisp, and Mueller, wear-ing his photographer’s hat, proves heknows his way around a camera. The carshe chose are also perfectly restored exam-ples which appear to be absolutely correct(to our eye). One of our biggest criticismsof books like this is that the cars alwaysseem to have one or two “imperfections.”An owner has chosen to overlook some de-tail (something is the wrong color or finish,or a part is incorrectly installed). Thank-fully the cars in these photographs exhibitnone of this. That alone makes this book astand-out.

The first chapter is titled, “MuscularMilestones” and it begins with the 1955Chrysler C-300, one of the first real musclecars. Within the chapter the cars are pre-sented in chronological order (‘61 ImpalaSS409, ‘64 GTO, ‘64 Olds 442, ‘64 1/2 Mus-

tang Hi-Po, etc. all the way up to a ‘74Trans-Am 455 Super-Duty. It is an excel-lent representation of basic muscle cars.

The next chapter is “Factory HotRods” and it contains cars that were a stepbeyond the standard production line offer-ings: ‘62 Dodge max Wedge 413, ‘64 Thun-derbolt, ‘65 Mustang SOHC A/FX, ‘67Camaro Z-28. ‘69 Boss 429, ‘69 MercuryCyclone Spoiler II, ‘70 Plymouth Super-bird.

The third chapter, “Let’s Get Small,”starts with the ‘64 Barracuda Formula Sand runs through the ‘67 Camaro SS396,‘68 1/2 Mustang Cobra Jet, ‘69 Dodge dartSwinger 340, ‘69 Nova SS396 to the /70Duster 340.

Chapter four is titled “In Cahoots” andcontains only six cars: a ‘66 Shelby (repre-senting the Carroll Shelby story), a ‘67Nickey Camaro, a ‘69 Yenko Camaro, a ‘69Hurst/Olds and ‘69 Hurst SC/Rambler anda ‘69 Dodge Dart 440 GTS built by Mr.Norm’s Grand Spaulding Dodge.

The fifth chapter, “Supreme Season,”features cars built near the end of the mus-cle car era, all 1970 models: ChevelleSS454, Buick GNX, Olds 4-4-2 W-30, Ply-mouth Hemi-Cuda, Camaro Z-28, Torino429 Cobra Jet, Boss 302 and Cougar Elim-inator.

The final chapter is rounded out withthe three surviving muscle cars: an ‘07Shelby GT500, an ‘08 Dodge ChallengerSRT8 and a ‘10 Camaro SS. An appropri-ate end point.

The whole concept of this book works.The mix of cars is well thought out and theorder of appearance is logical. The photog-raphy is worth the price all by itself. Itwould have been nice to see this book in alarge, coffee table format because that’swhat these photos demand, but we reallyshouldn’t quibble. All in all, a job well done.If you like muscle cars—and who amongthe readers of this magazine doesn’t?—thisbook is worth reading. And the pictureswill make you drool, so have a hand towelnear by.

Summer/2010 17

The MUSTANG DYNASTY by John M.Clor. 11˝ x 9 3/4˝ hardbound; 160 pages;130 color photos, 48 black & white; one CDand 15 special reproductions of Mustangmemorabilia. Published by Becker &Mayer, Bellevue, WA www.beckermayer.com $24.95

Not many people know more about theMustang-Ford connection than John Clor.He was a Detroit newspaper writer andlater moved to Autoweek as an editor. Healso worked in public relations and mar-keting communications for Ford. Today hemanages Internet communications for theFord Performance Group and Ford Racing.

John has been involved with Mus-tangs almost since the very beginning andas such, he has a unique perspective onboth the car and the company. It is a dif-ferent perspective than any you’ve read inany other Mustang book. It melds the car,its engineering and its marketing aspects.It is chronologically ordered and it in-cludes every model change. If you thoughtyou knew everything about Mustangs,think again. There’s one book missing fromyour reference shelf: this one. The beginning of each chapter has two or threereproductions of Mustang memorabilia: patches,tickets, a warranty card, press announcementsand the like. Pictured are the cover of a ‘65 Mus-tang owner’s manual and a brochure for theoriginal Mustang. This is a neat touch whichwe’ve never seen in any other book.


One of the neatest things we’ve seenin a long time was recently shown to us byDoug and Kathy Cresanta. It is a small,hardcover book that is 20 pages long, andit is filled with nothing but color photos ofDoug’s car, 6S188. So, how can you get onefilled with photos of YOUR car? And whatwill it cost you?

Good news on both fronts. All you needto do is take about 100 good quality detailshots of your car. In Doug’s case he justhappened to have a friend who was a pro-fessional photographer. Once you have thephotos go to www.shutterfly.com for thedetails.

A book like this is the ultimate egomassage. Imagine a coffee table type bookwith photos exclusively of your car. The fin-ished product will set you back about $30.If you want five copies just multiply by 5.Let’s see... one for you, one for your son,one for the guy who painted your car, onefor your neighbor who was so understand-ing during those late nights and, oh yeah—a little salt in the wound for the car’sprevious owner.

The SHELBY AMERICAN

Those were the days... As he was makingplans to attend this year’s convention atInfineon Raceway, SAAC member EarlMorris of Richmond, VA came across thispicture posted on the SAAC forum. It wastaken by Don Johnston the last time wehad a convention at the Sonoma track.That would have been at SAAC-13, inearly July 1989. Earl [in white shorts] ispictured watching the on-track action atSears Point. He drove 6S2301 cross-coun-try from Virginia to Los Angeles, and thentook the Pacific Coast Highway north tothe convention. And then back home. Bythe time he arrived his odometer washeavier by 6,700 miles.

Not much gets past Tony Spina from Glen-dale, NY. He found these Cobra cable tieson a hardware company’s website and wasimmediately lost in a wistful reverie aboutdetailing the wiring harness of a CSX4000.He was especially taken by the “sleekCobra head” on the ratcheting end.

Summer/2010 19

CSX2299 - June 20 & 21, 1964 - 24 Hours of Le Mans - 1st GT / 4th OA - #5 - Dan Gurney & Bob Bondurant

Once in a while we get a question from someone who is not exactly sure what our ref-erence to an “Eagle Eye” is when we use the term in this column. We’ve been throwingthat around for 35 years and it hasn’t really changed. Essentially it is someone who hasthe ability to pick a Shelby or Cobra (or a reference to one of those names) out of some-thing much larger or that has nothing to do with those cars. Here’s a good example:Seiji Kishi of Los Angeles is clearly an Eagle Eye. He was browsing ESPN’s web pageon the Internet and this news item popped up on his screen. The picture showed riotingLA Lakers fans spilling into the street and holding up traffic. One of the cars? A newwhite and blue-striped Shelby GT350. THAT’S an Eagle-Eye!

One of the neatest things we saw at SAAC-35 were these full color lithos printed oncanvas. They look like original art, readyfor framing. For more info contact MichaelHolmes:

[email protected]

AAC-35 had to be a West Coast con-vention. There was no doubt aboutthat. The only questions were, “where”and “when”? While it always gave us

a warm and fuzzy feeling at a conventionto announce where the next one would beheld, truth be known, at SAAC-34 wedidn’t have a clue. August of 2009 foundSAAC in a transitional phase. The legalproblems with Carroll Shelby had been putto bed. As much as we chafed at the ideathat we could not discuss the details of thesettlement—and members continuedto ask, almost non-stop—it was partof the agreement that we signed andwe had to live with it. Besides, therewere plenty of other, more importantitems on the front burners. The clubhad been reconstituted as a not-for-profit corporation. There was a newboard of directors who were taking ahands-on approach to running theclub on a day-to-day basis. We werealso struggling through a sea changefrom printed and mailed material tousing the internet and email for com-munications with club members, andwe had not yet found a comfortablebalance. We did, however, discoverthat when we jokingly referred tothose without computers in their livesas “mossbacks and Luddites,” anysense of humor they might have hadinstantly evaporated.

One of the agenda items on theBoard’s list at the beginning of Sep-tember was the need to form a con-vention planning committee. This would bean important first step regardless of wherethe convention would be held. What hap-pened next was the equivalent of liningeveryone up and saying, “Whoever wantsto be the convention director, please takeone step forward.” Everyone exceptHoward Pardee quickly took one step tothe rear.

The next piece of the puzzle turned upin September, when Kopec received a callfrom Bob Shaw. For those not familiar withthat name, Shaw is a Southern California

SAAC member who is the sparkplug be-hind the Shelby American employee direc-tory which helps Shelby American’salumni keep in touch with each other. Healso organizes the annual reunions whichallow them to gather every year. Shaw puton the 11th employee reunion at theNHRA Museum in Pomona, California atthe end of March, and during that eventthe talk had turned to the possibility of aSAAC national convention in SouthernCalifornia, which could host another huge

reunion, like the ones that had taken placeat California Speedway at SAAC-27 andSAAC-30.

“What have you got going in 2011?”Shaw asked. 2011? Heck, we didn’t haveanything going for 2010! Shaw had spokenwith Lynn Park at the Pomona reunion.Park puts on the twice-a-year Cobra Own-ers Club of America (COCOA) open trackat Willow Springs, and he was willing togive SAAC his spring date for a nationalconvention. Now the ball was in SAAC’scourt. Kopec called Lynn Park, and told

him that we had no plans for 2010, and aconvention at Willow was possible. The lasttime we were there had been SAAC-9 in1984.

SAAC’s newly minted convention di-rector made a junket to Southern Califor-nia in October for an up-close and personallook at the track, the hotels and theCOCOA event. The date for SAAC’s con-vention would be May 8, 9, 10th—Mother’s Day—of 2010. This was a coupleof months earlier than usual for us. In the

past, a big consideration was thatmost members would prefer not tohave a convention when their kidswere still in school. The result wasour customary summer date. How-ever, it was pointed out that as theclub’s membership has aged, anearly date was no longer a problembecause most members’ kids were nolonger in school. They now had kidsof their own, so grandpa’s conven-tion date wouldn’t have much of anaffect on them.Pardee roughed out a schedule

and had meetings with the hotelsales managers. He was joined byForrest Straight and Gary Under-wood, both of whom had previouslyhad seats on SAAC’s board and hadassisted at past conventions. Thenthey met with Lynn Park. Meldingthe SAAC convention into Park’sevent would neither be easy norseamless. He usually ran between100 and 125 cars during his two-day

open track, which was primarily a partici-pants’ event. Only a handful of spectatorsshowed up. SAAC would need to accommo-date close to 300 open track drivers with,perhaps, 1000 or more spectators. Wewould need to find a place for two carshows (the COCOA events had no carshows) and we expected a number of largesemi-trailers—both car carriers and man-ufacturers’ displays—which would over-whelm Willow’s paddock. There were a lotof other issues that would require compro-mises and by the time Pardee returned

The SHELBY AMERICAN SUMMER/2010 20

S

with a fistful of notes, it had become obvi-ous that holding SAAC-35 at WillowSprings would not be a slam-dunk. TheMay date would require an acceleratedwork schedule and would cut down on thetime people would have to make plans andpre-register.

A conference call was held as soon asPardee returned from his recon. SAAC’sboard (Ron Richards, Dirk Gasterland,Curt Vogt and Jay Talbott) along withKopec (now a director emeritus) listened toPardee’s travelogue and then tried to arm-wrestle with the logistics. Meanwhile,Kopec was sending out back-channel feel-ers to SAAC’s Northern California region.They always scheduled their Mini Nats inAugust or early September. Would they beinterested in sharing their date withSAAC?

It turned out they would. Webegan to sketch out a convention atInfineon Raceway at the end of Au-gust, while, at the same time, start-ing to throttle back on planning forWillow Springs. Comparing the two,it turned out that there were fewerlogistical problems at Infineon, andthat was good. The track was muchmore expensive to rent (on the orderof about $30,000 a day) and that wasbad. But the late August date al-lowed plenty of time for conventionplanning and also for participants tomake their plans and register at amore leisurely pace (good). We alsoestimated that having the conventionup north would draw more peoplefrom the south than an event downsouth would draw people from thenorth, and a large attendance wouldbe necessary to help pay the tab.When everything was considered,there were just more pros to havingSAAC-35 at Infineon than at WillowSprings.

The change from south to north, un-fortunately, left Bob Shaw—who had orig-inally lit the fuse—to have to plan hisannual Shelby American reunion aroundthe COCOA’s Mother’s Day event at Wil-low. Most of the Shelby American alumnilived in the south, and as they were allwell into their 70s (and older), travelingany distance (such as to Northern Califor-nia) was problematic. Shaw knew thatkeeping the reunions in Southern Califor-nia would ensure high participation. Mov-ing it away would just about guaranteethat no more than a handful of formerShelby guys would attend.

Once the decision was made, LynnPark was informed and he was then free tomake plans for his event at Willow without

a long list of additional requirements. Ourattention turned to Nor Cal. The regionalleadership appointed Chris Davis to act asa liaison between the region and the na-tional, and we began putting together listsof questions, a rough schedule and a check-list of requirements. On paper, SAAC-35looked like a real winner. It would havesomething for everyone.

By the time the convention rolledaround, the three days were filled with asmany activities as we could squeeze intothe schedule. The normal open track eventwas complimented by a vintage race. TheHistoric Trans-Am Group also acceptedour invitation to join the festivities. On topof that, Infineon normally hosted majorleague drag racing events and could be re-

configured into a quarter mile strip in lessthan a half hour. This allowed an almostfull schedule on Friday morning and earlyafternoon, and by 3 p.m. cars could bepaired off and smoking their tires downthe quarter mile. Throw in a swap meet, amanufacturer’s midway, two car shows andspecial guests like Peter Brock, LewSpencer, Bob Bondurant and ChuckCantwell and we were on our way. All thatwas left was a massive amount of planningand a monumental amount of hard work.

SAAC conventions sometimes have away of taking on a life of their own. At firstwe envisioned Thursday as an arrival day,with a cruise through some of the morescenic highways surrounding the track. Werealized it wasn’t something that everyonewould want to participate in, but it was ap-petizing to those who had never been to

the area before. Twenty cars—a mix ofnew, old and rental cars—assembled at thehotel at about 5:30 p.m. and took off on apre-planned route of almost exactly 60miles. It meandered along the ShorelineHighway to Muir Beach, Stimson Beachand Point Reyes Station. It was a scenicdrive and everyone who participatedthought it was well worth the time.

Infineon Raceway was being rentedduring on Thursday by some kind ofdriver’s school and SAAC did not have ac-cess to the paddock until around 4 p.m. Itwas important to get the big rigs into placefirst, before the single-car trailers createdan obstacle course. People who had rentedgarages were also anxious to settle in. Be-tween 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. there was a lot of

activity in the paddock and garagearea as early arrivals staked theirclaims.Meanwhile, back at the hotel,

Mark Hovander had planned a spe-cial program which revolved around5R002, which its recent new owner,John Atzbach, brought to town forthe convention. Hovander had col-lected every photo he could get hishands on of 5R002 (probably about ahundred) and assembled them into apowerpoint presentation. He also as-sembled Peter Brock, ChuckCantwell, Jerry Schwarz (the headfabricator of the GT350 race cars)and Bernie Kretzschmar (who alsoworked as a fabricator on the cars).‘65-’66 registrar Howard Pardee wasalso there and Rick Kopec was at hiselbow, to keep him honest. The presentation began with a

showing of the 1965 movie “ShelbyGoes Racing With Ford.” It was fol-lowed by the photos. As one wasshown on the screen, everyone took

turns making observations and commentsabout as many details as they could pointout. Hovander took the role of moderator.The presentation started about 7 p.m. andbroke up about 10 p.m. In three hours, justabout everything that could have been saidabout 5R002 had been said. About a dozenother enthusiasts had been invited to at-tend (it was after, all a “privately spon-sored” event). But when the lights came upat the end of the evening, about thirty ad-ditional convention attendees had quietlyslipped into the back of the darkenedroom, drifting in singly or in pairs. Someenthusiasts seem to have a well-developedsixth sense about “special events” like this,and like sharks able to detect one drop ofblood in a hundred million gallons ofwater, they find it despite the hotel’slabyrinth-like layout.


The SHELBY AMERICAN

The headquarters hotel, the Embassy Suites inSan Rafael, was a first class facility. Nor Caluses it whenever they have an event at Infineon;it’s only about 20 minutes from the track. Every-one especially liked the happy hour every nightfrom 5:30 to 6:30 (free drinks in the atrium) andthe complimentary breakfast buffet every morn-ing (including eggs cooked to order).

Gentlemen, start your engines. The road tour was organized by Nor Cal member Earl Castillowho was familiar with the area’s more scenic roads. It was about sixty miles and everyone whoparticipated had a great time. No speeding tickets were issued.

Thursday’s tour was one of the early indicators of what kind of a convention it was going to be.Chuck Cantwell brought his newly refurbished ‘66 GT350, 6S796, and couldn’t wait to hit theroad. Just knowing he was in the group made it a Big Deal.

We’ll send a modest prize to everyone who cor-rectly identifies what the letters on Brock’s li-cense plate stand for. Email your guess [email protected]

Peter Brock drove his Superformance DaytonaCoupe from Washington State. Rumor has itthat the car is now powered by an alien methodof propulsion. He refused to open the hood allweekend.

The Thursday Afternoon Road Tour

SUMMER/2010 22


After winning Lemans in 1966, Henry Ford II decided to defend thechampionship by coming back the following year—with a totally newcar. The MK II GT40s had reached the outer limits of development sothe MK IV was created. The first one, #J4, was entered at Sebring in1967, driven by Mario Andretti and Bruce McLaren. It won runningaway. J4 was another of the Miller Museum cars.

There is history everywhere at a national convention, but you have tolook for it. One of the six original Cobra Daytona Coupes was there,CSX2299. This Coupe was entered in more races than any other one (10)and racked up five 1st Place GT wins and three 3rd Place wins. It wasone of three pieces of rolling history brought to SAAC-35 by the goodfolks at the Larry Miller Museum in Tooele, UT.

CSX2431 was a USRRC competition roadster. Ken Miles modified thesuspension using adjustable Heim-joints and he campaigned it in thelatter part of the 1964 season and throughout 1965. It was used as a de-velopment car and represented the final evolution of the small blockCobra race car. SAAC member Tom Benjamin brought it to the conven-tion to display it during the three days.

CSX2385 is another USRRC cutback door Cobra. It was originally racedby Mack Yates, a Ford dealer from Kirkwood, MO. It was purchased fromhim a few years ago by former Ford dealer and Cobra racer Dan Gerber.Gerber had raced CSX2488, another USRRC car, in 1965 and bought itback in 2000 with the intention of vintage racing it. However, before therestoration was completed, Larry Miller made him an offer he couldn’trefuse and he sold it. Gerber then bought CSX2385 and put it in thesame livery he raced CSX2488 in. His son Frank had it at SAAC-35 andentered it in the vintage race.

Gordon Gimbel has been racing his USRRC roadster, CSX2514, justabout forever. He bought the car in 1976, displayed it at SAAC-1 in Oak-land and raced at the Monterey Historics the following week. He hasraced it in Monterey just about every year since then... and in everySAAC convention vintage race on the west coast.

The first of six Shelby American Cooper-Monaco King Cobras was at In-fineon. Bill Hartman’s car, serial number CM-1-63, was restored exactlyas it was in the fall of 1963 when Dave MacDonald drove it to win twoout of the three West Coast Fall Series events, Riverside and LagunaSeca. Continuing those winning ways, the car won 1st Place in the Spe-cial Interest Competition class.

In 1967 Shelby American formed a Can-Am team. Three tubs were builtby race car designer Len Terry. Two were completed and Jerry Titusdrove one at Riverside. The car was full of innovations but suffered froma lack of development prior to the race. In 1967 it looked like this.

The second Can-Am King Cobra went through a few owners before beingrestored to vintage race. Greg Mitchell brought it to SAAC-35 and wonthe 3rd Place award in the Special Interest Competition class.

Shelby American History: Pay Attention – Class is in Session.


CSX3022 is an original 427 Cobra competition car that was raced byBob Grossman in 1966, 1967 and 1968. After wrecking his original 427comp car, CSX3016, at Watkins Glen, Grossman bought a replacementto race. It was painted gold with a black stripe. After Grossman stoppedracing it he sold it, and at one point it received a 427 SOHC engine.Drew Serb bought it and painted it silver with Grossman’s signaturethin red/white/blue center stripes, the same livery that CSX3016 hadraced in when it finished 10th overall/1st in class at Sebring in 1966.

5R002 made it’s debut at a SAAC convention. It had been very recentlypurchased by SAAC member John Atzbach of Redmond, WA. The carhas been untouched since it was discovered in a lean-to in Mexico in1989. The next time you see this car it will very likely be restored backto the way it appeared in 1965.

If CSX2128 looks familiar, maybe that’s because you’ve seen it on the“Hey Little Cobra” album cover. It was first raced at Sebring in March1963 by Dan Gurney, Lew Spencer and Dave MacDonald. It continuedto be raced as a team car until late 1964. It was one of four historicalcars brought to the convention by the Larry Miller Collection.

5R106 was originally purchased by Richard Jordan and raced in mid-west SCCA events until 1970. At that point he put the car in storageuntil 1986. It was purchased by SAAC’s concours chairman Paul Zim-mons who restored it. It won a Gold award at SAAC-18. It went througha series of owners who showed it. Finally Colin Comer bought it in 2007and rescued it from the show circuit, vintage racing it at Roads Amer-ica—a track where it had initially been raced by Jordan.

CSX2021 was raced by its original owner. By the time Frank Zizzo gothis hands on the car it had also been used as a tow car for a Stanguelini,drag raced, and driven on the street. Zizzo prepped it for vintage racingand at one point he stripped off the paint to repair the body and decidedto race it “naked.” The raw aluminum body looked nastier than a junk-yard dog and the name stuck. It has Weber side-drafts and a magneto.

SFM5019 was the first non-factory car to race in B/P on the west coast.The original owner, Dick Carter, wanted to race a GT350 and wasn’twilling to wait his turn for an R-Model, so he bought a very early streetcar and prepared it himself. His first race was in early May of 1965, be-fore most of the early production R-Models had even been delivered. RonTredway has been vintage racing it on the West Coast, on and off, sincehe bought it in 1983.

SUMMER/2010 25The SHELBY AMERICAN

Friday Afternoon Quarter-Mile Action

Randy Gillis of Anaheim, CA became SAAC-35’s “Dragmeis-ter” and nobody else could have done a better job. In 1974 hebought 6S477, a white Hertz car, for $1,000. It had been dragraced for the previous seven years. Gillis continued using it forthat purpose and bracket-raced it every day that Orange CountyInternational Raceway was open for 21 straight years. The car’sbody and chassis are still totally stock and he can crank out 10-second quarter-mile runs all day long.

When word went out that the location of SAAC-35 hadchanged to Infineon, Gillis was all over us like $2 perfume on ahooker. He realized that our experience with drag racing wasabout the same as our experience with astrophysics, and he vol-unteered to oversee a drag racing program. We thought aboutthat for about ten seconds—the time it takes him to run a quar-ter-mile—and we agreed. He already knew the people at thetrack who handled drag racing and he set the wheels in motion.Once word spread that there would be actual drag racing at

SAAC-35, interest grew geometrically. Suddenly we went fromworrying not about filling the staging lanes up to worrying abouthaving to turn people away. Thankfully, it didn’t get to that.Randy Gillis’ experience made everything run like clockwork.The track was shut down about 2:30 p.m. and in less than a half-hour the concrete barriers had been moved and the track wasready for the first pair of cars.

The stars of the show were, of course, the two perfectly-re-stored Cobra Dragonsnakes which looked like they had justemerged from a time capsule. There were also a number of all-out drag cars and a surprising number of original Shelbys anda Cobra or two whose owners had gotten quarter-mile fever. Thestrongest showing was by the now generation of Shelbys, al-though it was sort of surprising that not all of their owners haddrag race experience. The cars were very responsive but the driv-ers quickly learned that there were tricks to successfully launch-ing these cars and making a full run. It was a lot different fromtromping down on it and blasting off to the next stoplight. Butthey quickly got the hang of it. All it took was practice.Probably the biggest surprise were the new Ford GTs. Man,

were they fast—especially one stand-out with a tweaked super-charger. It was dipping into the very low 12-second range. Hook-ing up wasn’t easy: they smoked all the way through first andhad to be pedaled through second and third and those were theonly gears they used. But did they fly!

CSX2248 was another factory Dragonsnake, one of only five. Its racingdays ended in 1968 and it was put in storage. The warehouse caughtfire a year later and the car was pulled out before it was totally de-stroyed. It was parked outside. A dozen years later Carroll Shelbybought it with the intention of using the chassis (and legitimate serialnumber) as the basis for a McCluskey Daytona Coupe. Before that couldhappen it was rescued by Lynn Park who had Mike McCluskey totallyrestore the car to it’s 1965 “El Cid” drag racing livery.

CSX2357 was the second factory Dragonsnake. It was a rack-and-pinioncar, replacing the worm-and-sector model. For 1965 it was given a coatof deep blue with plenty of metalflake. Drew Serb restored it exactly theway it was in 1965.

In 1965, at the AHRA Winternationals in Phoenix, the two Dragon-snakes faced off and the factory car trounced El Cid. SAAC-35 was theperfect opportunity to recreate the historic match-up.


Midway through the 1968 year Ford unleashed the Mustang 428 CobraJet. The purpose was to provide a car that would dominate the NHRA’ssuper stock ranks, and it did for a while. The Cobra Jet engine was BobTasca’s idea; it combined a 428 block with medium-riser designed heads.Ford rated it at 335 h.p. but the real number was actually closer to 400h.p. and the ruse didn’t fool the NHRA for long. Ford put the engine inthe Mustang creating a special, mid-year model. A total of 1,299 weremade (1,128 in Dearborn and 171 in San Jose) in three body styles: 1,044fastbacks, 221 coupes and 34 convertibles. The factory drag cars werewhite with a wide black stripe in the center of the hood. Curt Vogt loadedhis early Cobra Jet on his transporter in Connecticut specifically tostretch his right leg at Infineon. He was rewarded with a trophy for thesecond fastest reaction time of the day.

J Bittle has owned ‘67 GT500 #1917 since 1975. He found the enginelessShelby in a field in New Jersey. He installed a 427 low-riser and wentstreet racing. That was then, this is now. At SAAC-35 it was powered bya very strong 427 tunnel-port. Bittle is no stranger to the quarter-mile.His car was the Shelby equivalent of shock and awe.

Owners of the newest generation of Shelbys and Ford GTs were quar-ter-mile addicts. They came to the tree time after time. Was their enthu-siasm bolstered by factory warranties? The cars were quick. A Ford GTturned 11.543 @ 127.78 going through the traps in third gear.

There’s nothing like the sound of a big block Cobra to make the hair onthe back of your neck stand up. Every time Colin Comer turned up thewick on CSX3127 the crowd in the grandstands came to their feet.

R-Model? Not quite, but it was the most accurate clone you’ll ever see.Michael Holmes of El Segundo, CA obviously sweated the small details.

Even though 5019 has spent it’s life as a road race car, Ron Tredwaycould not resist the lure of the drag strip.

You would be hard-pressed to find someone more enthusiastic than KeiIinuma. When someone complains that the convention is too far awaywe put that excuse to rest by pointing to Kei, who lives in Honolulu,Hawaii, has driven to almost every convention since SAAC-20 at At-lanta. And the car get exercised on the track—or strip.

The SHELBY AMERICAN

Concours Competition

Class

Cobra‘66 Shelby‘67 Shelby‘68 Shelby‘69 Shelby

BossComp

GT/CSAverage

Authenticity

551.5562.2559.3571.3582.3566.5600.0586.5571.5

Workmanship

295.5287.3278.3282.0287.6263.3273.0288.0278.8

Total

847.0846.5819.5853.3869.9829.8873.0874.5849.0

High

876.0885.5885.5872.0886.0835.0873.0874.5

Low

818.0807.5753.5833.5845.8824.5873.0874.5

SAAC-35 Averages by Class

SAAC-35 Overall Point AveragesYear2010

2009200820072006200520042003200220012000199919981997199619951994199319921991199019891988198719861985198419831982

Max. Pts

900

900 900 900900 900450450450450450450450450450450450450450450450450450450300300300300300

Authenticity Avg.

570.0574.5547.1547.8568.2536.4280.1273.3263.9282.5264.4282.4283.7274.3273.6269.1266.3280.4253.3269.3266.1271.9258.9276.2180.0174.0167.6162.8

Workmanship Avg.

SAAC-35

SAAC-34SAAC-33SAAC-32SAAC-31SAAC-30SAAC-29SAAC-28SAAC-27SAAC-26SAAC-25SAAC-24SAAC-23SAAC-22SAAC-21SAAC-20SAAC-19SAAC-18SAAC-17SAAC-16SAAC-15SAAC-14SAAC-13SAAC-12SAAC-11SAAC-10SAAC-9SAAC-8SAAC-7

Total848.0858.8823.9816.3840.1805.4415.3411.2401.2416.2404.9414.5422.9416.2415.2408.4403.0420.6378.8397.5396.3400.4385.6411.5260.4254.3244.7236.6248.5

CA

PANJUTVACAMITNCANCCTMINCWICTGAINNYORNCMIPACANCMINJCAMINJ

278.0284.3276.8268.1271.9 269.0135.2137.5137.3133.7140.5132.1139.3141.0141.6139.3136.7140.2125.5128.0130.1127.8127.1135.580.080.577.374.0

Premiere Award – Michael Poston, 67400F7A02793.

Silver Award – Dan Nissim, CSX2553.

Premiere Award – Michael Smith, 9F02M482594.

Silver Award – Ed Kwiatkowski, 6S1761

Silver Award – Hank Perry, 9F02R481847.

SUMMER/2010 27

The SHELBY AMERICAN

DIVISION I - STOCK ORIGINAL/NOS CARSPremiere - 1967 GT500, 67400F7A02793

Michael Poston, Lee’s Summit, MO Premiere - ‘69 GT350, 9F02M482598

Michael Smith, Fayetteville, ARGold - ‘66 GT350, 6S2377

Linda & Len Perham, Campbell, CAGold - ‘69 GT500, 9F02R481166

Daryl Royer, Edmonton, Alberta, CanadaSilver - 289 Cobra, CSX2553

Daniel Nissim, Danville, CASilver - ‘70 Boss 429, 0F02Z142806

Todd Sprague, Bend, OR DIVISION II - STOCK NON-NOS CARSGold - 289 Cobra, CSX2472

Linda & Len Perham, Campbell, CAGold - ‘66 Shelby - 6S2265

John Atzbach, Redmond, WAGold - ‘66 GT350, 6S242 Michael Querio, Alamo, CA

Gold - ‘68 GT500KR, 8T02R201807-02466 Steve Fowler, Lee’s Summit, MO

Gold - ‘68 GT500KR - 8T02R216194-04425 Michael Herman, San Diego, CA

Gold - ‘69 GT350 - 9F02M481897 Dan & Josafina Collins, Modesto, CA

Gold - ‘69 GT500 - 9F03R481539 Luis Chanes, Newport Coast, CA

Gold - Competition, ‘65 GT350 R-Model, 5R106 Colin Comer, Milwaukee, WI

Gold - ‘68 GT/CS, 8T01S156529 Mike Jewell, Chicago Park, CA

Silver - ‘66 GT350H, 6S1211 Michael Fazio, San Carlos, CA

Silver - ‘68 GT500KR, 8T02R210277-03661 Ben & Stacey Wagoner, Bakersfield, CA

Silver - ‘69 GT500, 9F02R481847 Hank Perry, Fresno, CASilver - ‘69 Boss 429, 9F02Z150430 Robert Leenstra, Kent, WA

Silver - ‘66 GT350, 6S1761 Edward Kwiatkowski, Pacific Grove, CA

Bronze - ‘67 Gt500, 67400F5A01717 Russ Mayer, Novato, CADIVISION III - ORIGINAL UNRESTORED/SURVIVOR

Chairman’s Award - 289 Cobra, CSX2227 Hank Williams, Fontana, CA

Chairman’s Award - 289 Cobra, CSX2289 Tom & Susan Armstrong, Issaquah, WA

Chairman’s Award - ‘65 GT350, 5S116 George Mariotti, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Chairman’s Award - ‘66 GT350, 6S1084 Dan Schneeweiss, Studio City, CA

Chairman’s Award - ‘66 GT350, 6S2268 Bill Blair, Escalon, CA

Chairman’s Award - ‘67 GT500, 67412F5A00589 Bill Campbell, Lake Havasu City, AZ

Chairman’s Award - ‘68 GT500, 8T03S177986-02444 Jerry Banicki, Tempe, AZ

Trophies generously provided by: Tony D. Branda Performance, Altoona, PA www.cobranda.com and Cobra Automotive, Wallingford, CT www.cobraautomotive.com

SAAC-35 Concours Winners

Silver Award – Ben & Stacey Wagoner, 8T02R210277-03661.

Gold Award – Daryl Royer, 9S02R481166.

Gold Award – Len & Linda Perham, 6S2377 Silver Award – Robert Leenstra, 9F02Z150430

Gold Award – Len & Linda Perham, CSX2472 Gold Award – Michael Herman, 8T02R216194-04425

Silver Award – Michael Fazio, 6S1211

SUMMER/2010 28

The SHELBY AMERICAN

Gold Award – Mike Jewell, 8T01S156529Gold Award – Steve Fowler, 8T02R201807-02466

Gold Award – Dan & Josafina Collins, 9F02M481897

Silver Award – Todd Sprague, 9F02Z142806

Gold Award – Michael Querio, 6S242

Gold Award – John Atzback, 6S2265

Gold Award – Luis Chanes, 9F03R481539.

Bronze Award – Russ Mayer, 67400F5A01707.

Gold Award – Colin Comer, 5R106.

SUMMER/2010 29

The SHELBY AMERICAN

Survivor – Dan Schneeweiss, 6S2268

Survivor – Bill Campbell, 67412F5A00589

Survivor – George Mariotti, 5S116

Survivor – Jerry Banicki, 8T03S177966-02444

Survivor – Hank Williams, CSX2227

Survivor – Bill Blair, 6S2268

Survivor – Tom & Susan Armstrong, CSX2289

Original Unrestored/Survivors

SUMMER/2010 30

The SHELBY AMERICAN

Saturday Afternoon Trans-Am Race

The Historic Trans-Am Group is unique in the vintage racingworld. A bunch of owners of 1966-1972 Trans-Am cars formed aloose-knit organization which allows only cars with proveableTrans-Am history (a car has to have been entered in at least oneTrans-Am race and the owner must be able to prove it). Next,the car must be restored to the way it originally raced—both cos-metically and mechanically. And third, the group self-polices it-self and there is a zero tolerance policy for updates, rules-stretching and state-of-the-art go-fast tricks. When these guysgo racing it is as close to going back in time as you can get. It’sas good a show as you’ll see in vintage racing. That’s why wewere thrilled when they decided to put SAAC-35 on their dancecard this year.

Another notable aspect is that when they go racing, the Trans-Am guys go as a group. Vintage race organizers provide them aspot in the schedule and they guarantee a minimum number ofcars on the grid. They run their own driver’s meeting and handletheir own tech inspection. Every season they agree, in advance,on how many events they will do. This year they had a hole intheir schedule between the Monterey Historics and Coronado.A lot of these guys are SAAC members, and most live on theWest Coast, so we invited the group to join us at SAAC-35. Infi-neon is a very popular track with the Trans-Am guys and theconvention was an excellent excuse to get on it one more time.Seeing those Trans-Am cars mix it up on Saturday afternoonwas pure joy—especially for Boss 302 owners and enthusiasts,because almost every other car was a Boss car.

SUMMER/2010 31

SAAC-35 Historic Trans-Am Race Results

GARY GOERINGER....................................‘68 Mustang T/A notchback

FORREST STRAIGHT.................................‘69 Mustang Boss 302

JIM HAGUE..................................................‘72 AMC Javelin

KEN ADAMS................................................‘69 Mustang Boss 302

MIKE EISENBERG......................................‘63 Falcon Sprint

CRAIG CONLEY...........................................‘70 Mustang Boss 302

BRIAN FERRIN............................................‘69 Mustang Boss 302

JAY BITTLE..................................................‘68 Mustang T/A Notchback

CARL STEIN................................................‘66 Shelby Notchback

GORDON GIMBEL......................................‘69 Mustang Boss 302

DREW ALCAZAR.........................................‘70 Mustang Boss 302

JOHN WATKINS..........................................‘65 Mustang fastback

DALE MATHERS.........................................‘69 Mustang Boss 302

STEVE EFTINOU........................................‘69 Mustang Boss 302

NICK DE VITIS.............................................‘68 Mustang T/A Notchback

JOHN BARNES............................................‘70 Mustang Boss 302

WALT BOENINGER.....................................‘67 Shelby Mustang T/A Notchback

BOB MAREK................................................ ‘67 Shelby Mustang

22

57

2

45

5

25

15

29

91

85

70

22

23

21

28

1

31

67

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

DNS

DNS

DNS

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

DNF

DNS

DNS

DNS

8

8

8

8

8

8

8

8

8

7

7

7

6

4

QUALIFYING POSITION

FORREST STRAIGHT................

GARY GOERINGER...................

JIM HAGUE................................

MIKE EISENBERG.....................

KEN ADAMS...............................

CRAIG CONLEY.........................

DAVE MATHERS........................

JOHN WATKINS.........................

DREW ALCAZAR.......................

STEVE EFTINOU.......................

NICK DE VITIS...........................

GORDON GIMBEL.....................

BRIAN FERRIN..........................

JAY BITTLE................................

CARL STEIN..............................

JOHN BARNES..........................

WALT BOENINGER....................

BOB MAREK..............................

FINISHING POSITION LAPS COMPLETED

Race winner Forrest Straight in his ex-Danny Moore ‘69 Boss 302. The car runs as good as it looks. And Straight is no slug, either.


Originally a Mark Donohue/Roger Penske car, this Javelin was pur-chased by Roy Woods Racing and driven by George Follmer and VicElford. It is owned by SAAC member Ken Epsman but was driven by hispal Jim Hague. Seeing the car was like old home week for ex-Shelby fab-ricator Jerry Schwarz who was on the Roy Woods team as crew chief andworked on this car.

Gary Goeringer’s ‘68 notchback is the ex-Bill Maier car. Long time en-thusiasts remember Maier as one of the early purveyors of Mustang andShelby parts in the late ‘60s-early ‘70 when they were difficult to get.He probably sold more early GT350 Pitman and idler arms than Shelby.

When he’s not racing, Drew Alcazar is the guy who runs the Russo andSteele auction company. They specialize in Shelby and Ford performancecars and now you know why. This is the ex-Warren Tope car.

JBA – Jay Bittle American is another well known name in the Shelbyworld. Jay has been a SAAC member since the very beginning. His well-known speed emporium in San Diego produces exhaust headers as wellas doing performance car work. His car is a rolling example of his work.

Mike Eisenberg’s early Falcon is deceptively fast. His MAECO Motor-sports race shop is one of the top go-fast shops in Southern California.They probably prep more vintage racers than anybody else in the area.

Ken Adam’s Boss race car was one of a handful of “body-in-white” racecars Ford built expressly for the 1969 Trans-Am series. They were allsold to race teams.

Gordon Gimbel’s Boss race car gets a lot of exercise now that he’s retiredfrom captaining an oil tanker to Alaska and back on a weekly basis.Early on he ran a business called Cobra Performance which was one ofthe only sources for Cobra parts in the early 1970s.

Nick DeVitis drove the ex-Dean Gregson ‘68 Trans-Am Mustang. Priorto that Gregson piloted GT350 R-Model 5R101 in the Northeast. He wasthe performance sales manager at Tasca Ford and later at Harr Ford—both Shelby dealers.

Everyone in SAAC knows Craig Conley for his Paradise Wheels com-pany. They restore and reproduce Shelby wheels and are also the one-stop shop for Paxton superchargers and parts. His Trans-Am Boss is afrequent competitor on the Historic Trans-Am circuit.

The SHELBY AMERICAN

Saturday Evening Program at the Embassy Suites

Saturday’s 7 p.m. dinner was preceeded by a cocktail hourand no sooner were the almost 450 or so people seated than at-tentive waiters began to set plates down on the tables. It quicklybecame obvious that this year’s evening program would be a lit-tle different than previous ones. The large screen at the end ofthe ballroom was a sure sign of this. A video camera was trainedon the podium so that, like a JumboTron in a sports stadium orrock concert, people in the audience who weren’t able to get agood look at what was taking place could see it up on the screen.It was, for SAAC, a novel approach.The program began with a brief recounting of the SAAC-35

Olympiad story. It had started out as an April Fool’s prank: aconvention competition comprised of five “events” (one drag run;one timed lap at speed around Infineon’s road circuit; a 35-mileroad rally where questions were asked about things seen alongthe way; a scavenger hunt in the flea market; and a blueberrypie-eating contest). Points were to be assessed for each activityand the winner would receive a new 2011 Shelby GT350. Was itreal or not? More than a dozen eager contestants quickly signedup and they were told that information, details and rules wouldbe forthcoming. That left them salivating. A few days latereveryone in the club received an e-mail blast—on April first, asit turned out. Some members figured it out immediately butsome held out hope that it was for real. A side-note that theevent would be covered by “Top Gear” and shown as a half-hourprogram added to the credibility and increased the excitement.Then came the Hitler video parody. The whole thing doubled-back on itself again. Was it a prank or wasn’t it?Things settled down as convention plans were made, and the

Olympiad drifted quietly into the background. Until the Satur-day evening program. Then it was announced that it had notbeen a trick and that ten entrants had been selected and hadactually competed, albeit surreptitiously, over the past two days.The points had been tallied and a leaderboard was shown onthe big screen, looking very official. The winner was announcedand Forrest Straight came forward to a round of applause, ten-tative at first because there was still some doubt as to whetherthe whole thing was on the up-and-up. He was wearing a t-shirtsmeared with blueberries, and appeared to have come directlyfrom the pie-eating contest. He was awarded a new 2011 ShelbyGT350—a Hot Wheels version which was somewhat smallerthan the real car. So, it had been all a hoax all along. We had four special guests for the evening program and, one

at a time, each was invited up to the stage where they were “in-terviewed” by Rick Kopec or Ron Richards. Lew Spencer, ChuckCantwell, Bob Bondurant and Peter Brock all needed no intro-duction as their roles in the Shelby American organization werealready well documented. They proved to be very entertainingand very knowledgeable as they fielded specific questions abouttheir experiences at Shelby American, racing, and other ex-ploits. The video camera at the other end of the ballroom zoomedin on the speaker and projected the image into the large screenon one wall. It was a little different from past conventions andit definitely worked. Thanks go, here, to Ron Richards for theidea of incorporating this into the program. It was actually afall-back position because what Richards had originally outlinedfor the program was beyond the physical limitation of the ball-room. The dinner was sold-out ahead of time and tables hadbeen squeezed together to allow more people to join in, so therewas no room for the production Richards had envisioned. He putit aside, hinting that it would likely be used at a future conven-tion. We can hardly wait.

SUMMER/2010 33

Kopec’s opening comments were intended to make everyone think aboutthe future, rather than dwelling on the historical past. What would aSAAC convention be like forty years from now? He used many Star Trekanalogies, describing things we now take for granted (GPS, cell phones,stealth aircraft technology, MRIs, Bluetooth and Tasers are a few exam-ples) which had not been invented in 1967 when the television seriesdebuted but which are common today. What would there be in 2050 thathas not yet been invented? Beam me up, Scotty.

Peter Brock has led an incredibly interesting life—both before and afterhis Shelby American days— and Ron Richards [right] tossed a few ques-tions at him which brought some of those experiences into sharp focus.This was a chapter of history coming to life, and it’s part of what makesattending a SAAC convention so memorable. There’s nothing like hear-ing these stories directly from the people who lived them.

All of our guest speakers were interesting and we regret that we don’thave photos of each one.

The SHELBY AMERICAN

Sunday’s Vintage Smackdown

SAAC’s A/Production-B/Production-A/Sedan vintage race is one of the highpoints of every convention—for spectatorsand drivers alike. At SCCA national eventsback in the 1960s, these classes were usu-ally combined because there were notenough entries in each class to justify aseparate race. Our problem is just the op-posite: we have plenty of entries but notenough time in the schedule for separateraces, So we have to combine them. Therule-of-thumb used by the SCCA is 22 carsper mile, so Infineon’s 2.5-mile road coursecan safely accommodate a grid of 55 cars.That was our outside limit.

The car on the pole was a CSX4000Challenge car. These cars have becomesomething of orphans because the basicconcept of a bunch of spec-race Cobras,slugging it out on televised races nevercaught fire and attracted a major sponsor.The idea was to sell the cars to owners whowould then contract with a driver from theseries’ pool (retired big name drivers—names like Mario Andretti, Bob Bon-durant, Emerson Fittipaldi, Bobby and AlUnser, Parnelli Jones, Tom Sneva, KevinCogen, George Follmer, John Morton,Johnny Rutherford and Danny Sullivan.They would compete in support races at amajor series like CART or NASCAR. Theyneeded a major sponsor to bankroll theproject, which they never got.

SUMMER/2010 34

Race winner: Tom Barnard

Second Place: Curt Vogt


TOM BARNARD.................................CSX4000 Challenge Car/Orange

CURT VOGT.......................................‘66 GT350/White

SCOTTY HACKENSON.....................‘’70 Boss 302/Silver-Blue

GARY MOORE...................................‘66 GT350/White

VINCE DEAN.....................................CSX4000 Challenge Car/Blue

JOHN WATKINS.................................‘69 Boss 302/Blue

COLIN COMER..................................‘66 GT350/Black

JEFF ABRAMSON.............................‘66 GT350/White

JERRY STRECKERT.........................CSX4000 Roadster/Maroon

BILL GODWIN....................................‘66 GT350/White

DAN LUCKOW...................................‘66 Mustang Fastback/Black

KEVIN SITTNER...............................‘65 Mustang Fastback/Black

TOM FRY...........................................‘66 GT350/White

BERNIE KRETZSCHMAR.................‘65 Mustang Fastback/White

JAY BITTLE........................................‘68 Mustang T/A Notchback/Silver

DALE MATHERS...............................‘69 Boss 302/Orange

LORNE LIEBEL.................................289 Cobra Roadster/Red

RICHARD RAVEL..............................CSX4000/Blue

CHARLES MCKEE............................‘65 Mustang Fastback/Burgundy

DREW ALCAZAR...............................‘66 GT350/Blue

RAY BANKS.......................................‘65 Mustang Fastback/Dark Green

CHARLIE LILLARD............................‘66 GT350/Yellow

JERRY YOST.....................................‘66 GT350/Black

TONY NAVARRA...............................‘67 GT350/White

JON CAREY.......................................‘66 GT350/Black

BOB STOCKWELL............................‘65 GT350/White

DON PLYMAN...................................‘69 Boss 302/Red

BOB MAREK.....................................‘67 Mustang/Green

MANNY SAMANIEGO.......................‘66 GT350/White

JEFF NICHOLS.................................‘65 Mustang Fastback/Red

RON TREDWAY.................................‘65 GT350/White

SCOTT RUST....................................‘67 Mustang Fastback

BRIAN KENNEDY..............................‘66 GT350/White

FRANK LEWIS...................................‘65 Mustang/Yellow

STEVE EFTIMIOU.............................‘69 Boss 302/Orange

TOM BENJAMIN................................‘64 Cobra USRRC Roadster/Blue

SAAC-35 Vintage Race Results

QUALIFYING POSITIONS FINISHING POSITIONS

1

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5

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13

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30

DNS

DNS

DNS

DNS

DNS

DNS

81

530

1

98

83

22

51

165

31

153

99

18

289

61

29

23

100

119

99

42

382

31

200

138

5

15

02

67

69

60

27

512

94

71

21

61

TOM BARNARD

CURT VOGT

VINCE DEAN

GARY MOORE

SCOTTY HACKENSON

KEVIN SITTNER

DAN LUCKOW

COLIN COMER

JERRY STRECKERT

TOM FRY

DALE MATHERS

JOHN WATKINS

JEFF ABRAMSON

BILL GODWIN

LORNE LIEBEL

JAY BITTLE

RAY BANKS

CHARLES McKAY

DREW ALCAZAR

RICHARD RAVEL

JERRY YOST

CHARLIE LILLARD

MANNY SAMANIEGO

BERNIE KRETZSCHMAR

JON CAREY

DON PLYMAN

BOB STOCKWELL

BOB MAREK

JEFF NICHOLS

TONY NAVARRA

1st

2nd

3rd

4th

5th

6th

7th

8th

9th

10th

11th

12th

13th

14th

15th

16th

17th

18th

19th

20th

21st

22nd

23rd

24th

25th

26th

27th

28th

29th

30th

About a half dozen of the cars weresold and suddenly they had no place torace. We’ve always welcomed them atSAAC conventions, even though theyare a little wide of the mark. They wereinitially powered by 351 engines butnow that they have no rules to restrainthem, the engines in some of them havegrown.

We were able to make use of thetrack’s transponder system (virtuallyevery track has one today). A wire runsacross the start/finish line, just underthe surface. Most cars has transponders(a small electrical box about the size ofa deck of cards) which transmits anelectrical pulse downward that is pickedup by the wire at the start finish line.Each car’s transponder is on a differentfrequency, and it sends a signal to acomputer every time it crosses the wire.That signal is computed as the time be-tween signals, which is that car’s laptime (to the nearest thousandth of a sec-ond). The transponder system elimi-nates dozens of humans in the Timing& Scoring building with stop watches.

Cobra Automotive brought a few50-foot transporters from Connecticutpacked full of race cars and that cer-tainly have the an event a national fla-vor. It wasn’t just a bunch of West Coastracers mixing it up among themselves.These guys are the cream of the EastCoast crop. The gauntlet had beenthrown down: it would be an East-Westdust-up.

It wasn’t much of a surprise whenthe pole position went to a TomBarnard’s CSX4000 Cobra Challengecar. It was lightweight and packed withplenty of horsepower. Second on the gridwas Curt Vogt’s maxed-out GT350 vin-tage racer. It is consistently a top fin-isher in east coast events. They ranone-two for every lap and pulled awayfrom the rest of the field, but Vogt justdidn’t have the steam to get by the or-ange Cobra. Eight laps literally flew by.

Race Distance: 8 lapsPace Car: 5R095 driven by Bob Bondurant


Jon Carey Gary Moore

Jerry Streckert

Manny Sanmaniego

Tony Navarra

Drew Alcazar

Bill Godwin

Dan Luckow

Vincent DeanBob Marek


Sunday Popular Vote Car Show

289 COBRA1st - Gordon Gimbel, USRRC roadster, CSX2514

Roseville, CA2nd - Jay Hawkins, CSX2124

South Lake Tahoe, CA3rd - Jim & Jan Schield, CSX2544

LaHabra, CA427 COBRA1st - Colin Comer, CSX3134

Milwaukee, WICSX4000/7000/80001st - Larry O’Brien, CSX4163

Modesto, CA2nd - Randy Winter, CSX4200

Clovis, CA3rd - Morgan LeBlanc, CSX4766

Fresno, CA1965 SHELBY1st - Mark Hovander, 5S003

Seattle, WA2nd - Howard Pardee, 5R095

Waterford, CT1966 SHELBY1st - Richard Wilson, GT350H

Fremont, CA2nd - Lee & Sara Nevill. GT350H

Boise, ID3rd - Doug Abbott

Rochester, MN1967 SHELBY GT3501st - Richard Falk

Walnut Creek, CA2nd - Anthony Giannetto

Napa, CA1967 SHELBY GT5001st - Russ Mayer

Novato, CA2nd - Jim & Kathy Orsburn

Gold River, CA3rd - Dan Jones

Portland, OR1968 Mustang GT/CS1st - Bob Teets, High Country Special

Arvada, CA2nd - Richard Whiteman

Napa, CA3rd - Ryan McGuire

Visalia, CA1968 GT3501st - John Rocha

Clovis, CA2nd - Rick McGuire

Visalia, CA3rd - Ray & Ann Clark

Oregon City, OR1968 GT500KR1st - Brian Evans

Fairfield, CA1969-1970 GT3501st - Chuck Sellman, 1969 GT350

Dublin, CA

2006 - PRESENT SHELBY GT500/GT500KR1st - Aaron Aldridge,

Phoenix, AZ2006 - PRESENT SHELBY GT/GT-H/GT3501st - Dave & Sherri Calkins, ‘07 GT/CS

Mountlake Terrace, WA2nd - Michelle Yates, ‘08 GT/CS

Bakersfield, CA3rd - Rick Yates,

Bakersfield, CA1969 - 1971 BOSS 302/351/4291st - Bob Leenstra, ‘69 Boss 429

Kent, WA1964 - 1973 MUSTANG/STOCK1st - Linda Gillette, ‘66 Mustang coupe

Hayward, CA2nd - Nelson & Sheri Cardodro, ‘69 Mustang Grande

Tracy, CA3rd - Mark Herman, ‘69 Mustang Mach I

Orangevale, CA1964 - 1973 MUSTANG/MODIFIED1st - Jeanette Fleming, ‘70 Mustang “Boss Tribute”

Visalia, CA2nd - Steve Allen, ‘69 Mustang Mach I

Rohnert Park, FL1974 - 2004 MUSTANG/STOCK1st - Curt Partain, ‘68 Mustang coupe

Madera, CA2005 - PRESENT MUSTANG/MODIFIED1st - Doug Williams, ‘07 Mustang GT

Rocklin, CA2nd - Thomas H. Raber, ‘05 Mustang convertible

Tustin, CA3rd - Vic Bustabade, ‘06 Mustang convertible

Rocklin, CASPECIAL EDITION MUSTANG, 1993 - PRESENT1st - Cori Partain, ‘07 Mustang GT/CS

Madera, CASHELBY MUSTANG REPLICA1st - Brian K. Green, ‘65 Mustang fastback

Visalia, CASPECIAL INTEREST1st - John Swanson, ‘68 Cougar

American Canyon, CACOBRA/FORD REPLICA1st - John Bauguess, NAF Cobra

Oroville, CA2nd - Dave Donovan, ‘07 Cobra S/C

San Carlos, CA3rd - Dave & Yvonne Little, ‘66 Cobra 427 S/C

Martinez, CASPECIAL INTEREST COMPETITION1st - Bill Hartman, ‘63 Cooper Monaco King Cobra

Yuba City, CA2nd - Terry & Rosemary Krystofiak, ‘66 GT350

Meridian, NV3rd - Greg Mitchell, ‘67 Shelby Can-Am King Cobra

Watsonville, CA

The SHELBY AMERICAN

Bob Bondurant was no stranger to Infineon Raceway. Back before thename change he had located his school at the track, so saying that heknew his way around the circuit was an massive understatement; likesaying “Hold onto your drink—we might a little wet” as a 50´ tsunamibears down on your beach chair at 100 mph. Car owners asking Bob totake them for a few laps during the passenger sessions quickly filledup his dance card.

Until the recent change to Corvettes, the official Bondurant school carwas a Mustang and the orange cars have developed a cult-like followingas open track fans discovered they were the perfect track car. They hadbulletproof drivelines, roll cages, they never overheated and were eco-nomical with both tires and gas. What more could you want? And theyhad Bondurant’s name on them.

Howard Pardee [right] never misses a beat at conventions, and he isespecially astute when it comes to adding history to his R-Model,5R095. He asked Bob Bondurant to do the honors, driving it as the pacecar for the Sunday vintage race. Track hound that he is, Bondurantquickly accepted. However, Pardee was also aware that the combinationof Bondurant’s heavy right foot, a track he could drive blindfolded, andsomeone else’s car was a potentially toxic blend, so he insisted that Bobsign a statement attesting to his car’s flawless mechanical conditionbefore he was handed the keys. Pardee also required Bob’s new wife,Pat [center] to witness the signing of the document.

Part of the Friday evening welcoming mixer was an autograph session.The table held down by [front to rear] Peter Brock, Lew Spencer, ChuckCantwell and Bob Bondurant had a crown three-deep all evening. Con-vention participants was given an 8”x10” color sheet, featuring photosof these guys back when, to get signed as a memento of the event. Wehad 500 printed and by evening’s end they were all gone.

Bernie Kretzschmar [above, left] and Jerry Schwarz [right] were re-sponsible for most of the work on the R-Models and Trans-Am notch-backs. Back then, as mechanics and fabricators, they never dreamedthat they would be treated like rock stars by owners of these cars someforty years later.

Peter Brock is known for more than the Daytona Coupe. His BRE(Brock Racing Enterprises) Datsun 510 Trans-Am team won the Under2-Liter championship in 1971 and 1972. Many current 510 owners haveturned their cars into “tribute BRE team cars” and one ot two show upwhere ever he does.

SUMMER/2010 39


SAAC-35 photographers: Jeff Burgy, J.Stephen Gray, John Guyer, Mark Jan-son, Sarah Johns, J.D. Kaltenbach,Rick Kopec, Don Odiorne, Dave Red-man.

Shelby American’s display was a veritable supermarket of cars and performance-improving kits.Included was a sample of the Super Snake and the new 2011 GT350. It was a dizzying array ofproducts with, quite literally, something for everyone.

Superformance rolled out their product line which included big block Cobras, small blocks andtheir version of an updated Daytona Coupe. Back in 1965 it would have been impossible to imagineanything like this being available forty-five years later.

It was a memorable convention for ChuckCantwell [above] because it was the first one hehad his GT350, 6S796 [below] at. He acquiredthe car last year and pulled it out of a garagewhere it had been hibernating for some 25years. After a cosmetic and full mechanicalrestoration, Chuck has been driving it every op-portunity.

Could there have been a better convention tohave a Bullitt Mustang at? That’s doubtful. Thecity of San Francisco was about an hour southof the track and it would have been too easy forsomeone to slip away and find some of thestreets where the original movie was filmed.And if you did, you would have surely encoun-tered one of those green Volkswagen Beetleswhich were, apparently, all over the place.

The SHELBY AMERICAN

One of the reasons so many SAAC members from the EastCoast and the Midwest look forward to attending conventionson the West Coast is because there seems to be more ownerswho are less restrained by the compulsion to keep their carsbone-stock. Let’s face it—what works for a concours entry is sortof boring when you’re looking at row after row of cars. We liketo see cars that surprise us with details like non-stock paint orexotic mechanicals.

SUMMER/2010 41

The SHELBY AMERICAN

SAAC-35 T-SHIRTS & HATS

Couldn’t be there but you want everyone to think youwere? Didn’t get one when you had the chance? Need ex-tras? No matter. We’ve got them. T-shirts are printed onboth sides. Original art by Larry Gardinier. Hats? Blackwith SAAC and Nor Cal logos. They’re nice! T-shirts avail-able in S, M, L, XL and XXL. The price for t-shirts andhats is $20 each and we pop for postage. Shipping outsideof the U.S. is additional.

Send a check (“payableto “SAAC”) to:

SAACPO BOX 13271Lexington, KY 40583

Want to use a creditcard? E-mail us for instructions:[email protected]

We can also handlePayPal. Email us fordetails.

SUMMER/2010 42

You have to keep your eyes peeled ata convention because stuff shows up thatyou can’t possibly expect. Sure, some peo-ple bring wierd or obscure items to showoff; “Hey—look what I have!” But mostlyit’s a matter of sharing. And you’re guar-anteed to see things you never knew ex-isted.

Does the name “Hollywood SportCars” ring any bells? This was the busi-ness that Ken Miles ran before he went towork for Shelby American. It’s one thing tofind a license plate frame like this in suchgood condition. But it’s something else,again, to recognize the dealership it repre-sented back in the late 1950s/early 1960s.Back then, sports cars were not exactlycommon, and not all dealerships soldbrand new cars. Miles’ shop specialized inused cars which he often bought in need ofrepair and then gave them the once-over.

The Shelby Cycle Co., in Shelby, Ohio,started producing bicycles in 1895. Theycontinued building them through the “bal-loon tire era” and into the 1950s. Theywere the first manufacturer to use chromeplating. They have developed a strong fol-lowing in the bicycle collecting world—andnot just for the name.

We don’t know how many of theseCobra radios were made but it certainlycouldn’t have been very many. Our guessis about 150 on small block cars and prob-ably less than a half-dozen on big blockcars. That shouldn’t be very surprising:who could hear them in an open roadsterwith a solid-lifter small block or a boomingbig block?

hen the logistics of SAAC-35 werebeing put together, the idea of a“GT/CS Mini-Convention” was con-

jured up, and the seed was planted on theSAAC forum. I included a mention of theupcoming event in a mailing to my GT/CSRegistry Members. What really kicked upthe enthusiasm, however, was the lobbyingefforts by the newly-crowned GT/CS "So-cial Director” Mike Jewell. Mike also hap-pened to win the GT/CS Concours awardat SAAC-35, but we’re getting ahead ofourselves. Mike beat the drums, makingphone calls and sending emails to folkswho had attended his two previous GT/CSpicnics up at his Sierra Foothills pad.

As the event approached, Mike hadabout eight responses of owners who wereseriously interested in attending. Toeveryone’s surprise and appreciation, hisdaughter, Amber, was willing to bring herfifth-wheel RV trailer, as well as a BBQgrille and other GT/CS-convoy equipmentto set up a base camp that we designatedas “GT/CS World Headquarters.”

On Friday afternoon, Mike and en-tourage arrived for the first time at Infi-

neon Raceway. They were directed to a spe-cific area in the Paddock, to be greeted bySAAC’s convention director Ron Richards,who told them to pick wherever theywanted to set up, and if they needed any-thing, just ask! This was above and be-yond Hilton-quality concierge service!We'd arrived at Shelby Nirvana, and ourcousin-connected Mustangs were em-braced like it was old-home week. So farso good.

So, the anchor was dropped from thefifth wheel, and tables, cones and policecrime scene tape was erected for arrivingGT/CS Mustangs—both original and latemodels—and arrive they did. The rest ofthe paddock area was beginning to fill uparound GT/CS HQ, with Mike holding hisground for our regiment of Mustangs. Onceit became known where we were, everyonethat stopped by welcomed us, and had agood time chewing the fat about... whatelse? California Specials!

Friday evening's “Meet and Greet”was an exciting idea that turned everyoneinto kids in a candy store. I had a chanceto visit with many people who I’d only

known through email, letters or on thephone. The collective experience andknowledge of the vintage Shelby years inthe room was as humbling as it was appre-ciated. Long lines formed for autographsfrom some of the specially invited guests:Peter Brock, Lew Spencer, Bob Bondurantand Chuck Cantwell were happy to meetwhoever stopped by their table, answerquestions and reminisce about photos theywere shown. I personally found it an honorto visit briefly with Lew Spencer andChuch Cantwell and talk about the TransAm days, and that 10 minutes of '68 GT/CSracing history. I also had a short visit withJeff Burgy and to see some of his workwith the late model Ford GTs. Of course, abig hello to Vincent Liska, SAAC’s 1968-69-70 registrar, to thank him for all hishelp with my book, and my appreciation ofhis hard work finding all the details thathelp to complete the story of these cars.

Early Saturday brought that cold“right through you” morning wind as a SanFrancisco welcome for the out-of-towners.It quickly burned off into a beautiful day.To my pleasant surprise, when I arrived,there were a few GT/CS Mustangs sittingon our designated tarmac from both yeargroups, with owners in their chairs, orstanding around munching on our morn-ing donut and cookie selections. We noticedimmediately that the excitement was in-toxicating, not just within our group, butwith the sound of vintage racers fromacross the field! This set the tone andtempo for the entire convention--a type ofexcitement that you'd never get from a reg-ular car show.

By mid-morning, a few more GT/CSMustangs arrived. People we either didn’tknow or remember, but who knew aboutthe event from the SAAC site, my mailersor just word of mouth. This was good. Weproudly lined up the cars like fighter air-craft on a carrier deck. Mike's HighlandGreen 390GT concours designate wasthere, as well a JBart’s 2008 “Super


WCalifornia Specials help make this California Convention Special !

This was GT/CS ground-zero for SAAC-35. As with their Shelby cousins, there was a good mix be-tween “original” cars and the newest variants.

– Paul M. Newitt

GT/CS" that made the trip all the wayfrom Idaho.

Once GT/CS HQ was establishedthere was a whole sea of Shelby heritageand excitement there to explore. So, afterthe necessary greetings, hellos and wel-comes (and a little book promoting), I ven-tured out beyond the impersonal world ofInternet contacts, snail mail and phonecalls and, like jumping into a page fromThe SHELBY AMERICAN, I went for it!It was like something out of a race day inthe 1960s, with race cars being preparedfor the next event on the track. Engineswere growling and snarling in every direc-tion. You literally couldn not walk in astraight line without coming into directcontact with Shelbys, Cobras, Trans AmRacers, GT40s and every manner of raceMustangs. If you squinted, you were backin the late 1960s watching a Trans Amrace. There were three ‘69-’70 Boss 302sthere that were insanely tearing up thetrack and eliciting runaway excitement Ifyou knew your engines you could literallyhear the difference between an FE, a Bossmotor and small block. Until you heard J.Bittle’s nasty little 2x4V Tunnel Port 302.It was something else!

To my amazement and within all ofthe confusion, I spotted a Highland Green‘68 GT/CS jacked up like a three-leggeddog in one of the garages. Underneath itwas Joe Praxil, yanking out a bad starter.It wasn’t some track rat, either: glossypaint, ten spoke wheels and “685” meat-balls on the doors. It was just too cool. An-other Lime Gold GT/CS (#68) was on atrailer getting ready for open track. Whatthis meant to all of us “invited GT/CSguests” was that the real Shelby heritagewas in our faces and in our ears at over120 decibels! I didn’t have to say “get it?”

It was self-evident to everyone in our

universe that the GT/CS was born fromthis real world of hands-on Ford andShelby engineering, styling and racing his-tory. And although our GT/CS Mustangswere a trickle-down version, they have acloser tie to this heritage that most mightthink. This, I think, has left such a marque[pun intended] on those GT/CS ownersthat have never seen, driven or ridden inthese cars on the track that they are noware infected with this newly found SAACspirit. One couple that brought a redGT/CS to sell, decided to keep it after at-tending the convention. A few others weregiving tilted-head looks to their GT/CSs,pondering ways to modify them for track,or for at least for some improved streetperformance!

The aspect of not only seeing Con-cours-quality GT/CS Mustangs, butfantastically restored ‘65-’70 Shelbyspiqued a lot of interest for us as well. MikeJewell's Highland Green 390GT 4-speedGT/CS, I think threw a learning-curve ballat the judges, since it was a San Jose-pro-duced ‘68 Mustang, as opposed to theMetuchen and A.O. Smith-produced ‘68-‘70 Shelbys to judge. Some four hourslater, Mike discovered that his car had wona coveted Gold Award. This thrilled every-one in the group.

The convention experience for the at-tendees was overwhelming. To a person,we would be happy to lobby for a returnvisit from SAAC here in California in thenear future. By late Sunday afternoon thelast of open track runs were starting towrap up, and our GT/CS contingent allwent to the grandstand to cheer on JBartand his Super GT/CS on the track. As theday drew to a close we all were the last toleave, packing away our great memoriesand looking forward to more of the samevery soon! There wasn't a single complaint

that I heard from anyone during the wholeconvention. Not a whine or whimper. Justthe voices of “We had such a great time...”


Paul Newitt is the GT/CS go-to guy. He has ded-icated most of his life to the study of theseunique cars. In April 2008 he was recognized bybeing awarded the Lee Iacocca Award “for dedi-cation to excellence in perpetuating an Ameri-can automotive tradition.” He had it with himand rumor has it that he even sleeps with it!

It’s taken Paul Newitt three years togather up everything that could possi-bly be known about these cars and putit into a hardcover book. “Complete andcomprehensive” doesn’t begin to de-scribe it. It is both a history and a reg-istry; 224 pages with color photos;describing the history, specifications,people involved and the individual pro-duction details of every car, includingthe 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2011 editions.There will be only one printing andbooks will only be available throughNewitt, Tony Branda and Galpin AutoSports. Forget about eBay, Amazon orbook stores. Our advice: order one now.$100 each plus $5 postage. Checks only.

For most of the GT/CS owners, it was their first SAAC convention. They would never be the sameagain. Their enthusiasm shows in this group shot with Mike Jewell's 390GT GT/CS in the fore-ground. It won a Gold award in the concours.

GT/CS: The Book

Paul M. Newitt GT/CS RegistryPO Box 427 Danville, CA 94526

t’s almost time for our 2010 summer va-cation on the mainland. Miki and I hada little time on our hands before prepa-

rations for SAAC-35’s open track and dragracing events at Infineon Raceway in Au-gust (we’re not entirely uncomfortablewith the name change; it’s still Sears Pointto us). Our grandsons had no soccer, bas-ketball or football practice/games on ourcalendar. So, in June, we were overcomewith the urge to do a cross-country drivein our Cobra from Sunnyvale, California,to Jamestown, Rhode Island. We weregoing to surprise our friends Paul andSuzie Andrews.

The origins for this visit actuallybegan back in Hawaii, on the island ofKauai in 2003. Paul had purchased a veryrare Niihau shell necklace that was neversent to him in Rhode Island as promised.Paul and I weren’t very successful in get-ting it sent to him but after seven years,the situation was finally rectified. In Juneof 2010 the necklace was finally sent to usat our daughter’s home in Sunnyvale, Cal-ifornia. Paul was expecting us to forwardthe necklace to him in Jamestown.

Since Paul likes surprises (especiallywhen he is the one doing the surprising)this was an opportunity to “turn the ta-bles” on him with a surprise visit. Thuswas born the plan to drive cross-country todeliver the necklace in person.

The plan looked really good untilMiki asked, “What about the leakingtransmission?” Paul was expecting thenecklace in a few days and I had no timeto diagnose the problem, so I told Miki,“No worry, we can chance ‘em.” I hoped thesynthetic transmission oil would cling tothe syncros and gears long enough for usto make it back and forth, We could workon the transmission when we got back toCalifornia.

We estimated that a leisurely 3,400-mile road trip to Rhode Island would takeapproximately six days. Leaving on Sun-day, June 27, we planned to arrive at theAndrews’ doorstep by Friday. And we did.Suzie was at home. She was tipped off toour arrival by their daughter Nikki, whosaw our Cobra pull up in front of theirhome. They greeted us warmly, expressingtheir surprise at our appearance. The lasttime we saw Suzie was during SAAC-31 atVirginia International Raceway during theopen track event. Miki and I had been in-vited to spend a few days with them attheir home in Ocean City, New Jersey.We’ve been seeing Paul, off and on, at otherSAAC events as well as at Carroll Shelby’sbirthday party at the Peterson Museum.But Paul wasn’t at home. He was in Mas-sachusetts when we arrived but Nikki con-tacted him and got him to return homewithin the hour. When he arrived it was arare moment: he was at a loss for words.He greeted Miki and I with great big bearhugs.

Mainlanders often ask how theweather is in Hawaii. I respond, “It’s par-adise.” I tell them it’s because of the warm,constant weather, tempered by ourtradewinds. I don’t make comparisons withother tropical locations because I haven’tbeen there, but those who have and havevacationed in Hawaii have never contra-dicted me. Ironically, Miki and I have not

been home in Hawaii during the summermonths for the past fifteen years.

Jamestown was, well, just gorgeous.Picture postcard gorgeous; large, lavishand full of beauty. Flowers were in bloomeverywhere and the manicured lawns,fronting almost every home from modestbungalows to huge mansions, were bor-dered with picture perfect blossoms ofreds, whites, purples, and pinks—andevery color in between. Mansions overlookand some border, Narraganset Bay, wherean America’s Cup Challenge yacht pliedthe waters showing off it’s sails to scores ofsmaller sailing vessels. The blue waters,and the contrasting multitude of light-col-ored sails, the beautiful homes, the touristsstrolling on the beach, on the sidewalks,sitting in little cafes sipping this and that,and taking in the sights was a scenestraight out of the movies. Did I saymovies? Two were made there recently:“Dan In Real Life” and “Meet Joe Black.”(We’re going to get those DVDs.)

The Andrews’ residence, centrally sit-uated atop a wide, slopping, grassyfrontage was flanked by a stately home onthe left, and three others on the right, over-looking Narraganset Bay. Their front lawnis privately owned but is easily mistakenfor a local park, slopping down until itreaches the main boulevard that runsalong the Bay. The locals call their home“the big red house on the hill” and it hasbeen the subject for postcards from theJamestown area.

We had planned to stay just a coupleof days and planned to drive to Kentuckybefore heading back to California and wehad made arrangements to stay at anearby motel. We forgot that it was the 4thof July weekend and Paul insisted that wespend the weekend at his home and enjoythe fireworks display from his veranda.How could we say “no”? Who wouldn’twant to spend the weekend in a place likethat?

Formerly owned by one of “The Whar-tons,” the home had originally been ownedby Mary Mapes Dodge, the author of “HansBrinker or the Silver Skates.” With large


– Kei Iinuma

A quick trip around the country in CSX8007 turns into anything but that.

I

living and dining areas, the home has fivesuites. It was a challenge for Suzie to dec-orate with the Andrews’ collection of an-tique furniture and collectibles. We touredthe neighborhoods of beautiful mansions;some in wooded areas and some totally se-cluded. All were perfectly kept. Paul enter-tained us with stories from his Greekheritage. As a footnote, Suzie kept us wellfed. She loves to cook and this translatedinto wonderful meals enjoyed on the airyveranda overlooking the Bay. She alsomixed perfect Mojitos that she and Mikiwould sip during their reflections and ru-minations.

After spending those few days withgood friends in such a setting, Tuesdaymorning arrived too soon. It was “wagontrain time” again, preparing the Cobra andpacking up all the stuff in every possibleinch of space available. I made sure the airshocks were at 80 lbs. so we wouldn’t bot-tom out on the highway snags, and we hadenough gas to get to the next stop. Wethanked Suzie and Paul for the wonderfuland unforgettable experience. We headedto Kentucky and hopefully, would misssome of the anticipated thunderstormsforecast to pummel the East Coast.

On a long trip you always forget onething. I forgot to bring some extra engineoil. After about 4,000 miles, the 427 Wind-sor “stroker” was about a half quart low.Running at highway speeds—between 65to 75 mph and occasionally 80 to keep upwith traffic—the stroker had been consum-ing engine oil. Although it has a roller cam,I only use Amsoil’s high zinc/phosphorusoil. Where do you get it? Not in any retailstore, that’s for sure. At a gas stop in Mary-land the clerk told us to check out the localauto parts store in Cumberland. It was agood thing, too, because, although wecouldn’t find a store stocking our oil, atleast we were in a touristy part of Mary-land.

Why “good thing, too”? With a clunkand a crunch, and a grinding sound ofsomething as I attempted to accelerate, thetransmission gave out on the entry ramponto I-68 West. The gear shift froze in first,or second—I can’t recall which. No matter:the Cobra wouldn’t budge. At the firstclunk I had pulled over to the side of theroad, out of the way of traffic. I was unableto get it out of gear, I knew what happened.Looking at Miki, I exclaimed, “There wentthe trans.” The gears and syncros over-heated and then galled, probably due tolack of oil. The transmission had beenwarning me through the last thousandmiles as I down-shifted through syncrosthat felt “dry” or “gritty.”

It was over 105 degrees that day.

Luckily we rolled to a stop under an over-pass. Five minutes later, while I was on acall to AAA, a Harley rider pulled upalongside and parked. Tim, an off-dutystate trooper, offered assistance. I askedhim if he knew of an auto repair shop thatmight be willing to loan me a stall to workon the Cobra. I had all the tools in mytrunk that needed to do the job, except foran engine/transmission lift.

“Sure do,” said Tim. “L&T Transmis-sion Service can do any work you need ona transmission. The owner, Larry Judd andI are family. Tell Larry that Tim told youto call him.” He didn’t know whether Iwould be allowed to do my own work. A fewminutes later, a local guy stopped by in apickup. He offered his garage to do thework. I thanked him and he left me hisname and phone number. An hour and ahalf into our “ordeal,” Officer Mullaneystopped by in his cruiser. He asked if I hada tow and I told him that AAA said a towwould be available in twenty minutes. Hegot on his police radio to dispatch, andwithin ten minutes a tow truck arrived.While waiting for the tow, I asked officerMullaney if he knew of a garage willing todo work on the Cobra. “Sure,” said Mul-laney, “L&T Transmission can do the workand tell them I sent you ‘cause I live righton the corner before you get to their shop.Larry Judd has a good reputation for doinggood work.”

It was after 5 pm. The tow operatoralso knew Larry Judd at L&T and told methat, “Larry can fix any transmission.”Then he and Officer Mullaney attemptedto call L&T Transmission. They wereclosed for the day. We decided to have theCobra towed there anyway, and left thereovernight. We could contact L&T in themorning.

Officer Mullaney offered us a ride to aHoliday Inn, one block away. Miki and Irode in the back of his police cruiser. Mikiwas thrilled because she never rode in theback of a police car, which was normally re-served for “perps.” She loved it. Theflatbed, with the Cobra secured atop, pre-ceded us to the Holiday Inn. We arrived be-hind the flatbed and emerged from the

police cruiser “escort car” and, while re-moving our luggage from the trunk of theCobra, provided the hotel residents andpassersby with a little entertainment. Theflatbed left with the Cobra and I had a feel-ing it was in safe hands. Officer Mullaneywished us Godspeed and continued his pa-trol duties. We check in and called the localcar rental agency to reserve a car for thenext week...or two. So far, it’s been a goodday: the Cobra is safe and so are we.

Next morning we took delivery of ourrental car, a nice little blue Kia. UsingMapquest, we got directions to L&T Trans-mission Service. It was approximately twomiles away, off of I-68 East, and we foundMorningside Drive. It was a one-lanepaved road snaking through a forested val-ley. An utterance escaped from my head,“Are we in the right place?” Miki said shehoped so. There were horses in a pasture,goats nibbling at grasses, and birdssinging in the trees. It was a scenic drive,but in less than five minutes we saw theL&T Transmission sign fronting a drive-way that opened onto the premises situ-ated on the upper part of this valley. To theleft, a large white, two-story home with theAmerican flag prominently displayed infront. On the right are structures housingnine work bays, and there are two otherdetached, large storage buildings. Therewere what appeared to be nine or ten ve-hicles parked across the shop area await-ing repairs. The bays we could see hadvehicles perched atop the lifts. The shopareas were clean and neat. I wonderedhow to convince the owner to let me workon the Cobra by myself.

The Cobra was parked in front of thesecond bay. Two men were standing nearit, talking. I parked the Kia and Miki andI got out. I walked up to the men and in-troduced myself and Miki. One of them isLarry Judd, the owner. I explained toLarry what I believed to be the problemand asked if he would allow me to do myown work. I told him that I had all thetools necessary for removing the engineand trans, but need an engine hoist. I of-fered to sign a waiver of liability, knowinghis insurance provider would not allow


“civilians” to do their own work on hisproperty. He old me that all of his workbays had vehicles in various stages of re-pair, and that his workers had their handsfull because they were still trying to catchup with the repair work that was waiting.Before I had a chance to open my mouth toconvince him that I had the skills to do myown work, Larry had made up his mind.

“Tell you what,” he said, “You can usethe bay normally reserved for my race car.”I found out later that no one other thanLarry was allowed to use this space. It hada synthetic, checkered patterned floor; youknow, the kind you see on TV with the hostof the show working in an environmentnormally associated with big timeNASCAR work areas. I told him I didn’tknow whether I could keep his floor clean.He said not to worry. “It’ll clean off easy.Just dont tell anybody around here that Ilet you use this space cause nobody is al-lowed in there except for my race car.”

I thank him but words really couldn’texpress how thankful I was. He told hislead worker, John, to assist with my needs.“Help him with whatever he needs, andwhen it’s time to pull the motor, give hima hand with the engine hoist.”

For Miki and I, having spent summers

“on the road,” and mostly in a Cobra forthe past twenty years, we’ve often foundourselves in a hot rodder’s “Twilight Zone.”I suspect that this has occurred as a resultof our always stopping when we see an-other car by the roadside apparently introuble. I explained to Miki that this recip-rocal universe recognizes what goesaround comes around. It also helps to bedriving a 289 “slabside.”

After we push the Cobra into thisspace, I notice the trophies, plaques andphotos on the walls. Larry races NHRAPro-Stick. His ‘65 Nova runs 9.63-secondETs. He has won numerous Pro-Stickcompetition events against formidableodds, as well as a ton of other competitionevents. He has not only won major NorthEast drag races, but is notorious for hiswheel-standing abilities and winning reac-tion times (.500).

We had already been introduced toJohn, later Jay, and then “Hoss.” Theywere friendly and often asked if I neededanything. L&T was an 8-to-5 operation:when it’s 8, you started and when it’s 5 thedoors were locked. Saturday and Sundaysoff. It was already Thursday, so I startedremoving nuts, bolts and parts in prepara-tion for pulling the engine/trans. Later in

the afternoon, Larry’s wife returned homeafter work, at the local Department of Ed-ucation. She made us feel at home.

After “work,” Miki and I stopped bythe local Auto Zone and bought rolls ofshop towels, cans of brake cleaner, caulk-ing/gasket making material, Loctite andanti-seize. No need for coolant because theEvans NPG can be used over and overagain. Friday arrived and it was alreadywarm. When I got there Jay pointed to hiswrist, the universal sign of “you’re late forwork.” I started making excuses and hestopped me. “Oh, I forgot—it’s 2 a.m. inHawaii.” I should have thought of that. Itried a smart response and requested over-time because I was early. He told me, “youdon’t get any.” I started working and re-moved all the hardware necessary to pre-pare the engine/trans for removal. Afterlunch we began the removal process. Jayand I maneuvered the engine hoist fromatop. John went under the Cobra andmuscled the tail end of the transmissioninto a better position. It was a ten-minuteoperation with these guys. I was little morethan a spectator. The whole shebang cameout in one piece, without a single ding toany part of the engine bay. Well, of course,I was working with a couple of pros.


I removed the top cover of the Tremec3550, I saw......NO oil. I noticed there wasa bit of oil around the drain plug. It wasHAND TIGHT! I surmised that during thehead gasket replacement, after it blew inSeptember, 2009 at Laguna Seca’s Turn 8,I had replaced the transmission oil butfailed to tighten the plug as it should havebeen. That must have been it. Anyway,there was no time for recriminations. Imade a call to Don Walsh at D&D Perform-ance in Michigan. We talked a little bitabout the good ole days. He was 73 and didsome really heavy duty drag racing untilhe was about 60. He turned over the racingto his son who was driving quicker. I de-cided to get a Tremec TKO600 transmis-sion. It had road race, close-ratio gearing,but with a more street friendly .64 over-drive. The TKO has a 26-spline input shaft(up from the 10-spline 3550) and Don sug-gested an upgrade to a Kevlar disc. He feltthat my Centerforce Dual Friction pres-sure plate at 10.5-inches would be compat-ible. Don also threw in a new yoke sincethe TKO had a 31-spline output, where theold 3550 had 26. He promised to get thetrans to me in two working days.

Next I called Jimmy G in Gilroy tosend me some Amsoil for the engine. Hepromised to get it to me in a couple of days. The engine bay was a mess. Crossing theU.S.A. we were forced to drive over new,freshly tarred, road surfaces. Small peb-bles, covered with soft, sticky and oozy tar,had been thrown everywhere and intoevery nook and cranny. By the time we gotto Rhode Island, it had all solidified. Itmelted on hot surfaces like the intakemanifold. Cleaning tar off of a cast alu-minum surface after it had solidified wasa real chore. Brake clean worked some-what, but paint thinner worked better.With a small brush and lots and lots ofshop towels, I attacked the black tar balls.Some melted into splotches. It was every-where. Some of the tar balls were hiddenbehind some components that I had to re-move to clean. Miki helped me clean up

and by the end of the work day on Friday,at 4:45 p.m., all we were thinking aboutwas, “Where are we going to eat dinnertonight?” On trips like this, this questionis the one that is asked the most.

We had dinner at the Holiday Innrestaurant three nights in a row andlunches were bought at the local Foodland.I love fried chicken, but after three days ofa steady diet of fried chicken, cole slaw, po-tato salad and Pepsi, I was ready for some-thing else. We went to the local RoyRogers. I had their fried chicken.

Since L&T was closed on Saturdayand Sunday, we decided to do some touristthings in town. We did some shopping, andcruising through the community. Sundaywe heard about a car show/charity eventin a nearby town. There were about 25cars; some hot rods and some late models.We spent about an hour there. The week-end came and went without incident.

On Monday, I spent the whole day—again—cleaning the engine bay. By Tues-day the engine bay was clean enough andcoincidentally, the transmission, Amsoil,and related parts had arrived. Don andJimmy G. had kept their word: I got thetrans and oil in two working days. By theend of day most of the new componentswere bolted on and we were ready to rein-stall the Cobra’s engine. On Wednesday,John and Jay again provided the muscleand expertise in getting the engine/transback in. I spent the rest of the day re-at-taching parts. Miki and Teresa poured overfamily pictures on Teresa’s laptop. Theytraded family histories and discussed com-mon political issues.

By Thursday, the Cobra was startedup and test-driven. A small modification tothe shifter had to be made. On Friday,while Miki cleaned up the tools, I gave theCobra a good washing in preparation forus to leave. After taking some group photosand saying our final farewells, we droveout of Cumberland. It had been a wonder-ful ten days spent.

We headed out for Kentucky and

hoped to bypass the impending thunder-storms and heavy weather. When we fi-nally reached Kentucky, in late afternoon,it was around 8 p.m. Storm clouds weregathering and the wind started to pick up.Our dinner of Subway sandwiches, chipsand soda was interrupted. Miki asked,“What’s that sound?” Pap, pap, pap, pappa-papap, papapapapap. We slid open themotel curtain and looked outside to theCobra. Half-inch-sized hail was fallingwith the rain, peppering the Cobra. Mikiand I ran outside and she grabbed some. Itwas melting fast. We had never seen hailbefore so we took some pictures of it. Wehad always wondered what it would be liketo be hailed on. Thankfully, the Cobra wasundamaged. It was a good thing theweather bureau’s predicted golf ball-sizedhail did not materialize.

The rest of our trip back to Californiawas relatively ho-hum. And it was hot.And humid. From the East Coast throughthe Midwest. At times temperatures ranwell over 105 degrees. That never used tobother us on prior trips. Maybe we’re get-ting older? We make it back “home” safely.

I am convinced that this experiencecame as a result of connected relation-ships. It began as a result of my obsessionwith Carroll Shelby’s Cobra. It includedDonna Yamane, an Aloha Mustang andShelby Club of Hawaii member, insistingthat we join the Aloha Mustang Club whenshe saw me driving a Cobra. That led toour meeting Don Johnston, Hawaii’s SAACRep. He introduced Miki and I to Paul An-drews who made it possible for us to pur-chase CSX8007, and ultimately to meetingthe Judds in Cumberland, Maryland.

I’ve often wondered what we’d do if acatastrophic event occurred on one of ourcross-country jaunts. Now I know. Duringthe relatively short time we spent with theJudds, with John, Jay and Hoss, welearned about their families and the simi-larities of the pain and suffering we allshare through our lives. I have been re-minded, once again, that you cannot know


a book by its cover. And again, we havemade good friends who reaffirmed our be-lief in the goodness of men, and women.And that car guys are all the same underthe skin. It is an interesting phenomenon,that a mechanical device opens the doorsto relationships. Like I said, this was thebest trip ever.

P.S.: When you have a partner like I doin Miki, the miles go by faster, and fun-er.There’s a reason for her being named “wifeof the year” by some of the other Cobraowners.

JOINING SAAC“They won’t make it.” “Who’s betting they won’t make it?”

That illustrates some of the thoughtsof those who never drove their beloved Co-bras more than a few blocks or even maybea few miles to the local cruise-in. This iswhat we heard when Miki and I reportedto our Cobra friends that we were going toparticipate in SAAC-20, in July 1995, atthe Atlanta Motor Speedway. We would bedriving our Midstates Cobra kit car crosscountry, from Sunnyvale, California, to At-lanta, Georgia. We were going to ship ourCobra from the Port of Honolulu to thePort of Oakland, using our daughter'shome in Sunnyvale as a jumping-off point.Then we would drive cross country to At-lanta for the SAAC convention. Thisturned out to be the first of many moreSAAC national conventions.

Bob Kallio, owner of Midstates ClassicCars and Parts, had reported in the Mid-states Owners newsletter that a number ofMidstates owners were planning to partic-ipate and Robert Allen would be a localhost. He was going to have a barbeque athis home in Atlanta and we could use hisgarage and facilities if work was needed onany of our cars. We also needed to be SAACmembers to preregister and/or participatein open track event, which was one of thereasons we were going. We have renewedour membership with SAAC every yearsince 1995.

I’ve always wanted a Cobra but I re-ally never planned to get one. When Mikiand I got married in 1966, with our 1956Austin Healey 100-4, the 427 Cobra cost

about $8000 at Honolulu Ford. That waswaaaay over our transportation budget.The little Healey had been crashed a cou-ple of times due to excessive speed and/ora lack of brakes, or possibly a lack of skill.Because of the Cobra influence, I stuck a327 Chevy in it. With the two-speed pow-erglide, it went pretty quick in a straightline, and handling was not bad consideringthat before we got married I owned a ‘631/2 fastback Galaxy with the 425 hp 427.That went quick in a straight line butother than a NASCAR oval track, it wasgood only for cruising. As in, boat-likecruising. Miki's pregnancy obliged me tosell the Healey for $350 to a student at-tending the University of Hawaii so wecould get a real car. That turned out to bea ‘63 Chevy station wagon.

Twenty years later the idea to own aCobra by way of a kit came to mind. It wasthe summer of 1985. While thumbingthrough a Kit Car magazine, I was drawnto a photo of a kit Cobra utilizing the Mid-states Cars and Parts fiberglass Cobrabody and a hand-fabricated frame. This kitwas constructed in Canada and I studiedthat article countless times. In the monthsto come I poured through countless kit carand replica magazines. Gradually my in-terest escalated into an obsession, and cul-minated with the “Plan To Own One”(PTOO). With Miki’s help. She startedscheduling our vacations to begin in Cali-fornia where we could use a rental car tovisit kit manufacturers.

In 1990 we visited Ron Butler’s Cobramanufacturing shop in Goleta, CA. Mikihad yet to see a Cobra close up. We weregiven a shop tour and we came to Butler’s

display Cobra. It was a deep, dark redstreet car, and the overhead lights accen-tuated every compound curve. Miki asked,“Is this a Cobra?” Yep. “Can we get one inblack?” We looked for two more years, andin 1992 we contracted with Midstates’owners Lauri and Bob Kallio for a kit 427Cobra “roller” with a 351 Cleveland en-gine, top-loader transmission and 3.50nine-inch Ford/Lincoln Versailles rear dif-ferential and other incidentals. I envi-sioned painting it in our carport.

Lauri, who has since passed away,used to promise that his Cobra bodieswould last 100,000 miles. We currentlyhave 127,500 miles on the Midstates andthere has been no stress-related deteriora-tion nor anything noticeable. We’ve al-ready driven the Cobra to every State inthe U.S.A. several times over, including ashort trip to Alaska via Canada.

Canada was kind of spooky. It was alot of wilderness and gas stations were fewand far between. But we did accidentallyrun into a local car show in Dawson Creek,Canada. It was July 2002, and we were lowon gas, in the middle of a great forest inthe wilderness of Canada, heading for, wehoped, Dawson Creek. With a sigh of reliefI spotted a sign coming up a few hundredfeet ahead. “Rotten Robbie’s” gasoline sta-tion. The station attendant asks us if wewere heading for the car show in town. Iexplained that we were just drivingthrough, but could he direct us there? Itturned out that Dawson Creek was a goodplace to spend the night.

We found the car show. It was in themiddle of the small town of Dawson Creek.Population, maybe, about 10,000. The car


show was like a large cruise-in back home:about a hundred cars. We entered theparking area to park but a parking officialmotioned us to stop. He asked where wewere going and when I explained I neededto park so we could look around, he said noway—that we should park inside with theother show cars. Our Midstates Cobra wascovered with mud and dirt and squishedbugs all over the front end from the hun-dreds of miles of wilderness driving. I triedto explain this but the parking official wasnot deterred. He told us to tell the show of-ficials that, “Bill said to park inside.” Wefound a nice place to park, and with ourHawaii license plates we got a lot of atten-tion. We had a great time at the show, andmet a lot of people. It was fun talking withthe Canadians, eh?

Anyway, back to Atlanta, 1995. Theconvention we almost didn’t make. Whiledriving through the Mojave desert, theMidstates needed gas. During the routineengine oil inspection, I noticed the smell ofgasoline. The brand new, brand name, “hi-performance” all-chrome fuel pump wasleaking gasoline from several placesaround it’s perimeter. Since I carried theoriginal fuel pump as a spare, I did a fif-teen minute swap and the original fuelpump went on working for another20,000+ miles. It always pays to keep sparestuff. I not only carry every tool I used tobuild my car, but I also carry a spare fuelpump, fuel regulator, master and slavecylinders, nuts, bolts, wire and lots of otherauto-related safety things.

Getting the Midstates was easy. TheKallio’s promises and attention to detail,were chronicled with videos sent to us ona regular basis and after driving it for thepast 17 years, we know we got a good deal.It is easy to maintain because all of theparts are extremely accessible and replace-ments as well as used parts are readilyavailable.

During our PTOO, we were also luckyin being able to take our vacations to-gether. As the Registrar for the St. An-drew’s Priory School for Girls, Miki hadthe summer months off. I had the nightshift at the State Child Protective ServicesHotline, investigating reports of childabuse and neglect. At the same time, I hadvolunteered my time to the Honolulu Po-lice Department and completed the HPDrecruit training program, so I was swornin as a commissioned police officer (reservestatus). In Honolulu, unlike other jurisdic-tions, a reserve officer is indistinguishablefrom a regular officer, and is required topass a recruit training program to performthe same duties. In all honesty, this was areally cool way to do a community service.

I have been assigned to Narco-Vice, Juve-nile Crime Prevention, Auto Theft and fi-nally, supervising the District 1Subpoena/Warrants Detail. I retired after25 years of service.

During our PTOO we were able tomake many cross country trips between1989 through 1992, visiting differentCobra kit manufacturers. A couple of shopsreminded me of an overstuffed car guy’sgarage, and others were obviously wellkept, hi-tech manufacturing facilities. Onething though: the final result, the fit andfinish of most of the Cobra kits were simi-lar, despite their origins.

HURRICANE INIKIIn 1992 one of the most costliest

storms hit the island of Kauai. HurricaneIniki totally devastating the islands trans-portation and communications infrastruc-ture. I was sent by the State Dept. ofHuman Resources, with teams of stateworkers, to assist at the Disaster Assis-tance Centers in providing emergency fi-nancial assistance to individuals who wereaffected by the hurricane. During mymany months there, I made a lot of friends,locally as well as from other parts of theworld who came to Kauai to assist in theclean up and rebuilding. I discovered thatthe locals were really accommodatingwhen it came to government services. Un-like many local bureaucracies, a Kauai of-ficial would rather say yes, than no.

What does this have to do with Co-bras? You cannot register a kit in Hon-olulu, but as it turned out, you can onKauai. Why? Because one provision in thelaw was that the law did not apply to anycounty with less than 100,000 persons. So,when the Midstates “roller” arrived inHonolulu, I immediately completed thewiring and safety construction then bargedit to Kauai. I flew to Kauai the next dayand picked up the Cobra at the harbor,drove it to the Kauai registration officeand got it registered. Then I drove it backto the harbor, caught a taxi to the airportand returned to Honolulu. Within the nextcouple of days the Midstates arrived inHonolulu, fully registered.

YOUR CAR IS ILLEGALWhen we got the Midstates in 1993,

there was no practical way to title/registerany kit/replica/special interest vehicle inHonolulu in light of the reconstructed ve-hicle law that had been in effect for thirtyyears, since 1979.

So I had circumvented the law. TheState Reconstructed Vehicle InspectionStation has been, for the past 30 years, the

most hated and reviled location in the is-lands for any car guy, and sometimes forthe ordinary car owner. The inspectorshave been variously described as officious,arrogant, imbecilic, contentious, and everyother foul and obscene expletive in be-tween. A couple of them were described asbeing fair and decent, but these were theguys who decided whether your vehiclemet all the requirements to make it streetlegal. They had determined, years ago,that any replica of a Cobra just could notbe registered.

So, one day in 2002, a kit Cobra ownerwho wanted his recently purchased kit carlegally registered, objected to the law bypointing out the fact that our Midstates,license plate, RCOBRA, has been seendriving around for years. So why can’t he?Well, you know what happened next. Wedidn’t get our registration reminder butwere told, instead, that we would have toget clearance from the “recon” guys (whomay have let our Cobra slide knowing thatI was a cop and had affixed a sticker givingthe Cobra authorization to park on thefirst level of the Police Station parkingarea to the inside the windshield).

Knowing that the DMV on Oahuwould not register the Cobra, I thenshipped the car to Maui (exempt from thelaw) for a safety check, and then broughtit back to Oahu for registration and toldthem the car was on Maui. Now it wouldbe safe for another year. I had just retiredfrom the Child Protective Services. I toldMiki that I had enough of this law and if ittook suing the State of Hawaii to do so, Iwas going to get this law changed.

CHANGING A LAWWhile attending a local cruise-in for

the Toys for Tots campaign, I ran intoBryan Miller, another kit Cobra guy whowas passing around a copy of a bill he hadrequested his local representative presentto the Hawaii legislature making registra-tion of replica Cobras possible. He had pur-chased a Factory Five kit Cobra and foundout he could not legally operate the vehicleon Oahu. I saw this as an opportunity toend our fear of the recon establishment. Iresolved, at that moment, to spend my re-tirement days at the State legislaturedoing whatever was necessary to changethe existing law.

Miki and I lobbied the State legisla-tors, met with transportation and law en-forcement officials, and also with a groupof kit Cobra, dune buggy, and hot rod own-ers. We presented them as a group to reha-bilitate the existing law relating tospecialty vehicles.


THEY SAID IT COULDN’T BE DONESome in the legislature said it couldn't

be done. Others told us that laws usuallytake between five to seven years to be en-acted. “Be patient” was not our motto. Wechallenged the State to provide documentssupporting their opposition to our effortsto liberalize the current law. We met pri-vately with department heads. We gainedtheir trust in our ability to apply only prov-able data or information to each aspect ofthe law, and made them aware that cur-rent owners of these vehicles reflect a con-servative demographic and a change in thelaw would benefit all parties. We overcameproposed policy changes, inappropriatechanges to the bill, and last minute admin-istration wavering. On June 16, 2004 Gov-ernor Linda Lingle signed our bill into law.Currently, any replica of a vehicle, pre-1968, may be titled or registered in theState of Hawaii. It took us less than a year.

127,500 MILESOur Midstates Cobra had participated

in 1995, at SAAC-20 in Atlanta. In 1997SAAC-22 was at Road America. That yearwe circumnavigated the U.S.A.—10,700miles in 25 days. We stopped by ElkhartLake, Wisconsin for the SAAC conventionand open track. In 2000 we did SAAC-25at Lime Rock, Connecticut and in 2002 wedid SAAC-27 at California Speedway. Inbetween we participated in the WoodwardDream Cruise. It is a biiiiiig cruise: 50,000cars and 1 million visitors. It’s held everyyear in Detroit in August and it’s a ten-mile cruise.

JOINING A LOCAL CLUBIt’s 2000. Driving into the parking

structure at work, we are stopped byDonna Yamane. She identified herself asa member of the Aloha Mustang andShelby Club of Hawaii and she insistedthat we join the club because they wouldlove to have Cobra owners. I explainedthat Miki and I already belonged to a na-tional club and we went to conventions onthe mainland and that kept us satisfiedwith car events. She sold us on the ideathat we can meet other people, locally, withsimilar interests and they are all Fordguys. She extolled all of the virtues of be-longing to a club. We are impressed by herenthusiasm and submitted our member-ship application. We have been membersever since.

THE SAAC REP’S CONNECTIONSDonna introduced us to Don Johnston,

the Hawaii Representative for the SAAC,who was very impressed by our driving tonational SAAC events with our MidstatesCobra. Don is the region’s GT350 residentexpert. He owns an original GT350. At onecar event he introduced Miki and I toDavid Dempster, a Ford engineer accompa-nying John Coletti, then-SVT chief, whobrought the “SuperStang” prototype for anexhibit at the 2001 Mustang Madness all-Ford Show at Mike McKenna’s Ford deal-ership in Kailua, on Oahu. It was Davewho introduced us to the WoodwardDream Cruise. When we got there, Davegave us a ride in the BOSS Mustang, aone-off experiment by SVT.

GETTING A SHELBY CAR. . . FINALLYIn 2003 Don Johnston showed me a

printout from the internet announcingthat Carroll Shelby would be releasing areplica of his 289 Street and 289 FIA Road-sters. I immediately informed Miki, whoagreed that we needed to look into this. Inanticipation of future financial needs, I se-cured funds via a home equity loan. Then,coincidentally, Don suggested that we goout to lunch with him and Paul Andrews,a Cobra owner and one of Shelby’s author-ized dealers. Of course we were there. Paulwas an affable guy; easy to like and to thepoint. Want a 289 street car? He asks fornote paper. On a scrap he lists threeamounts we would be willing to pay for thecomponents to a complete car. I circle one,telling him that was what we would beable to pay right now. He explained that hewould make a list of everything our agree-ment called for then we can write him acheck. We agree on a handshake and wehave never been sorry.

CSX8007It turned out that we would be getting

car #7 (of about 31 which were going to bebuilt) 289 street roadster manufacturedby Shelby American, Inc. It would be areplica of their 1962-to-1965 289 streetroadster. Paul ordered the components andby September, 2003 the components weredelivered to our daughter’s home in Sun-nyvale, CA. Unlike our Midstates Cobra,where we received regular updates withphotos, the Shelby American response wasfinally received, but not until after DaveDempster inquired as to 8007’s status. Re-lationships are helpful.

In May, 2005 CSX 8007 is finally con-structed in our daughter’s garage. It wasthen shipped to Hawaii for titling and reg-istration, and then sent back to Californiawhere it was prepared for SAAC-30. We’vesince been to SAAC-31 in Virginia; SAAC-32 in Utah; SAAC-33 in New Jersey;SAAC-35 in California; two Mid-AmericaFord Nationals (open track and drag rac-ing) at Tulsa, Oklahoma; one Virginia HillClimb; one COCOA open track event; threeNor Cal Shelby open track events; and oneWSCB open track event.

After 67,000 miles, CSX8007 hasgiven us transportation, entertainment,and most importantly, opened doors to re-lationships. We’ll be headed for Alaskasoon. This will be the fiftieth state we’vedriven in.


CSX8007 was at SAAC-35 at Infineon. Kei droveit on both the drag strip and the open track.When we see those Hawaiian plates we have toshake our head when someone who lives 400miles away tells us it’s too far to drive.

or SAAC’s fourth convention we headedback to the East Coast, towards theclub’s largest population center. Wewere initially planning to go back to

Hershey again for 1979—that would havemade convention planning a lot easier—but we encountered some fairly significantproblems, one of which was finding an ac-ceptable date within our late June-through-late August window. With mostmembers having school-aged children,holding a convention when schools were insession was a recipe for attendance disas-ter. We were not able to resolve these is-sues with the Hershey Motor Lodge, so itbecame necessary to look elsewhere.

Based on our membership demo-graphics, the general area that could be ex-pected to provide the largest attendancewas Pennsylvania with the nearby statesof New York, New Jersey, Connecticut,Massachusetts, Delaware, Maryland, Vir-


FDow ningtow n, Pennsylvania June 28-29-30, 1979

The Graybeard Chronicles

ginia and Ohio making up the bulk of theclub’s membership.

We needed a facility with at least 400rooms, and Mickey Rooney’s DowningtownInn in Downingtown, Pennsylvania fit thebill. It was a little west of Philadelphia—close enough without being in what wouldbe considered that city’s urban area. It hada layout that was conducive to a group likeours. Their brochure depicted a niceenough place, and since at that time in ourhistory we were not concerned with racetracks, it was as good an anywhere tospend a weekend. We even entertainedthoughts of a guest appearance by “TheLittle Mick” at the evening program andmaybe having someone give him the rideof his life in a Cobra roadster.

We signed a preliminary contract inthe fall and scheduled a reconnaissancetrip in February to eyeball the place. Weneeded to solidify things with the hotel’ssales director and banquet manager, andalso to have a look around to visualize howthings would shake out in late June.

However, between October 1978 andFebruary 1969 things had changed radi-cally. The “second oil crisis” was on us (thefirst having taken place in 1973). It grewout of a strike in November of 1978 bysome 37,000 workers at Iran’s nationalizedoil refineries. That country’s leader, theShah of Iran, fled the country and a newregime took over. Production volume de-creased (from about 6,000,000 barrels to1,500,000 barrels a day), causing priceseverywhere to increase. Domestic produc-tion was increased in an attempt to com-pensate but there was still a shortfall. Thisput a huge crimp in this country’s oil sup-ply; prices increasing from $16 a barrel toalmost $40 and prices at the pump in-creased proportionately.

Almost overnight, there were longlines at gas stations and many sold outtheir allocations before the end of eachmonth. Crudely lettered “No Gas” or “GasPumps Closed” signs were common. Manypeople believed that the shortage was ar-tificially created by the oil companies in aneffort to boost prices—and profits. Politi-cians began talking about rationing and,in fact, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylva-nia and Texas actually instituted an “odd-and-even” system whereby cars withlicense plates ending in even numberscould only purchase gas on even-numbereddays of the month.

We put a couple of ten-gallon cans ofgas in the back of our SUV and headed tothe Downingtown Inn in February. Thingsdid not look good. To begin with, the con-vention was scheduled for the very end ofthe month, exactly when most gas stations

ran out of their allocations and closed up.We pictured convention attendees in gas-swilling high performance cars, coastinginto the Downingtown Inn on fumes andhaving a very difficult time filling up tobegin the trip home. Or worse yet—whole-sale cancellations by SAAC members fig-uring that attending the convention justwasn’t worth the trouble and the uncer-tainty of possibly being stranded on theside of the road in their Cobra or Shelby.

After receiving a lot of positive feed-back following SAAC-3 and its open trackevent at Ontario Motor Speedway, mem-bers looking forward to SAAC-4 expressedthe hope that there would be some type ofdriving event at this convention. It becameobvious that we could no longer rely on

only a swap meet, seminars and a largeparking lot full of cars to keep conventionparticipants entertained.

There were no road circuits in thearea but there were several drag stripswithin an hour or so of Downingtown andwe chose the closest one, Atco Raceway.The plan was to have drag racing on Sat-urday and the distance from the hotel tothe track was far enough to provide apleasant ride for those who would only becoming to watch. Of course, the fly in theointment was the gas crisis.

We drove from the hotel to the strip,judiciously keeping track of the mileage.Driving time was a little over an hour.That was a problem. If someone left thehotel with a full tank of gas, drove to the


strip and drag raced their car most of theday, they might not have enough gas to getback to the hotel. And with the conventionscheduled for June 28-29-30—the tail endof the month—there was no guaranteethat the gas stations between the strip andthe hotel would have gas available. Thatgave us something to think about on theway home

After kicking around all of the prosand cons, we decided to scrub the drag rac-ing portion of the convention. This wasn’tan easy decision because we had alreadygiven the track a $500 non-refundable de-posit to hold the date. But there was astrong possibility that the event wouldonly attract a handful of cars, which wouldmean losing four times our deposit.

Gas crisis or not, we were concernedthat there would be a lot of angry and frus-trated conventioneers if we put on a con-vention without some type of organizedopportunity for participants to drive theircars. The question was, what could we do—that was still legal?

The answer turned out to be a scav-enger hunt. The basic goal was to providean event which would allow participants todrive their cars, albeit not over a great dis-tance. We came up with a list of specificitems which teams of participants had tocollect. And we provided a serious prize sothe competition would be taken seriously:round-trip airfare, hotel accommodations,a rented car and all convention fees waivedfor next year’s convention. The packagewas nothing to sneeze at.

The list included some things whichwere intended to be difficult, if not impos-sible to find: a Christmas ornament; a re-ceipt with a total of $2.89, $3.50, 4.27 or$4.28; a speeding ticket dated that day; areceipt from the Delaware MemorialBridge dated that day (it was about 25miles away). There were also things on thelist intended to make someone feel stupidfor asking: a business card from a Corvettesalesman, an unused pizza box, a paperBurger King crown. And there were thingsthat we thought might be useful to us atfuture conventions: an orange plastic high-way cone; a Holiday Inn towel; (“All itemson the list become the property ofSAAC...”). There were also a few thingswhich could be used to break ties, such as3-feet of string (the length of which wouldbe interpreted differently based on howmuch the string was stretched). We didn’tknow how many people would want to par-ticipate, or how many of the 100 items eachteam would be able to collect within thefour-hour time limit (11 a.m to 4 p.m.). Ac-tually, there were only 90 items becausethe back page of the last sheet contained

ten questions, the correct answer to eachwas worth one point. They were introducedwith this challenge: “...any Shelby enthu-siast should have no trouble answeringany of them...” Here are a few: Name themale lead in the movie “When The BoysMeet The Girls.” What is Peter Brock’smiddle name? What year was Shelby’s tur-bine car entered in the Indy 500? ShelbyAmerican had a live cobra snake in a cagein the office. What was his name? IdentifyOrmly Gumfudgin. What brand nametachometer was used in the Lone Star.

One of the organizers of a regionalSAAC meet held in the Northeast the yearbefore knew a representative of Allen Test-products. He was invited to bring a refrig-erator-sized engine analyzer to the event

and provided free diagnostic tests for eventparticipants. It proved very popular. Own-ers discovered they had a weak spark plugwire, or that their points were set a littletoo wide. The spring on their mechanicaladvance was weak or the coil was border-line. Things which were not obvious to theweekend shade-tree mechanic (which mostof us were back then). Someone suggestedthat this guy be invited to bring his equip-ment to Downingtown and it sounded likea great idea. It would turn out to be a goodexample of the law of unintended conse-quences.

We send him a note inviting him tobring his toy to the convention. He was lo-cated near the center of Connecticut so itwould be about a four-hour trip for him. He


had seemed enthusiastic at the regionalevent and was constantly remarking howthe cars he was seeing were a lot more in-teresting than the Buicks, Impalas, Dat-suns and Galaxies he was used to testing.We offered to pay his hotel room for theweekend. He asked if he could bring his as-sistant; okay, make that two hotel rooms.When they showed up (the assistantbrought his girlfriend) we gave them threeSaturday evening dinner tickets and toldthem to charge their meals to their room.Little did we know that both of these guyswere boozehounds and every night theyheld court in the hotel’s bar, buying roundsof drinks for anyone within earshot. Andcharging it to their room. The food and barbill ended up costing us more than theirrooms! It was part of our learning curve,and it was something that never happenedagain.

The convention was a Friday-Satur-day-Sunday affair and we got there Thurs-day morning to organize and get thingsgoing. As we were checking into the hotel,the previous pack of guests were checkingout. We noticed a little commotion out inthe parking lot and someone rushed up tothe registration desk and tugged atHoward Pardee’s sleeve. Gesticulatingwildly, he said, “Somebody just backed intoyour GT350!” Pardee was unruffled.

“Yeah, sure,” he responded, not miss-ing a beat as he filled out his hotel regis-tration card. “If you expect me to dropeverything and run outside maybe you’dlike to buy an uranium mine I have for salein New Jersey.” Two others followed thefirst guy in. One told Pardee it wasn’t a se-rious fender-bender; just a small dimple.The guy behind him said that others wereoutside holding the perpetrator who hadtried to drive off. Pardee looked out theplate glass window and saw the scene, andsuddenly realized it was not a prank. Herushed out to discover that an older hotelguest had been backing his large Buickout, and the edge of his rear bumper came

The SHELBY AMERICAN

By SAAC-4 we were beginning to see some ofthe more historical Shelby American cars beingbrought to conventions—and now we knew a lotof what it was that made them historical. Forexample, the ‘67 GT500 called the “SuperSnake” actually was a one-of-one prototype fora 427-powered GT500. By the time the light-weight GT40 MK II engine and everything elsewas poured into the equation, the Super Snake’sprice tag was about $7,500. About the price of a427 Cobra. For the same money, which onewould you choose? And that, sports fans, is pre-cisely why the GT500 Super Snake never be-came Mel Burns Ford’s dealer-generated specialmodel, like the super cars from Nickey Chevro-let in Chicago, Yenko in Pittsburg, Motion Per-formance in Baldwin, Long Island or Mr. Norm’sGrand Spaulding Dodge in Chicago.

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into contact with Pardee’s ‘65 GT350. It was only a small tap, he explained,

and he hardly felt it. He didn’t think therecould possibly be any damage to Pardee’scar, which he described as, “just an oldMustang.” The tennis ball-sized dimplewas pointed out to him and he received aquick tutorial on the difference between aMustang and a Shelby from one of the“witnesses.” Drivers license and insuranceinformation were exchanged and Pardee’sconvention was off to an inauspiciousstart.

When we had first visited the hotel,the name out in front was “MickeyRooney’s Downingtown Inn” and theyplayed commercials for the place on NewYork City radio stations. To get to the mainballroom you went down a formal stair-case. There was a wall halfway down,where the steps split, turning to the rightand left, and then continuing down onemore half-level. Hanging in the center ofthat wall was a large oil portrait of MickeyRooney. However, The Mick sold the placebetween the time we looked at it and whenwe arrived for the convention. It was now,simply, the “Downingtown Inn.” And theThe Mick’s portrait was gone. All that re-mained was a large rectangle of unfadedwall paper where the picture had been.

Another curious side note to SAAC-4was the appearance of Pennsylvania mem-ber Lahr Shawgo. He was so overcomewith SAAC that he had hand-painted a100-foot long banner, 5-feet high, forSAAC-3 that said, “Welcome to SAACCountry.” He described laying it out andpainting it on the roof of a barn—the onlywork space large enough). He shipped itout to SAAC-3 at his own expense. Wewere impressed by his enthusiasm, andtold him so. The banner came with a coupleof unintended consequences. One was thatonce the banner arrived at the SAAC-3hotel in Pasadena, it had to be moved tothe roof and hung over the edge. The topfloor was about twelve stories up and fromthe ground, the banner was just about im-possible to read. Besides, nobody spent alot of time in front of the hotel.

The SHELBY AMERICAN

One of the surprises at the convention was theappearance of CSX3009, the former 1965 EssexWire/Skip Scott, then Ed Lowther/Eger Ford1966 A/P national champion. The 1973 nationalchampion was owned by Sam Feinstein wholived in the next town over and had a Subarudealership across the street from the Downing-ton Inn. Nobody knew where Feinstein lived sohe had not been formally invited to the conven-tion but when he saw the steady stream of Co-bras coming and going from the hotel, he knewsomething was happening. He walked across thestreet, looked around, and the next day cameback with his car. It looked very much like it hadin its last race. Very cool.

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Another consequence was that afterthe convention the banner had to be boxedup (Shawgo had constructed a sturdy boxout of two-by-fours and 3/4˝ plywood) andshipped back (now at our expense). We hadit sent to Shawgo with the suggestion thathe fill in the “SAAC” letters that he hadonly outlined. He said he would have itdone for the next convention, and true tohis word, he did. He brought it with himand we had it hung in the DowningtownInn’s lobby, a visual assault to everyonewho entered. Shawgo’s desire was that thehuge banner would become a tradition, dis-played at every national convention.

It was a seemingly harmless gesturebut once the actual banner was in SAAC’shands it then became SAAC’s responsibil-ity. It weighed more than one hundredpounds (not including its custom crate)and just moving it around was a logisticalchallenge. We had to lug it back to SAACHQ and store it until the next convention,and then have it shipped to a new locationfor the weekend. It had certainly lost itssparkle by that point.

Shawgo was, however, already on tohis next project: a pair of 10-foot diameterSAAC logos. He envisioned one of themhanging behind the podium at the conven-tion’s evening program. The first one wasonly partly finished, but he brought it withhim to SAAC-4 anyway, and then spentmost of the two days finishing the paintwork with the large square of plastic-coated fabric layed out on the hotel’s tenniscourt. Such is the power of high praise. Theround logo had not been completed byshow time, so it would have to wait untilSAAC-5.

SAAC-4 was another conventionwhich saw an inside parts swap but in-stead of limiting it to a specific time, at therequest of (and heavy lobbying from) theprofessional parts vendors, we scheduled itto run all day (8 a.m. to 6 p.m.) on Fridayand Saturday and until 1 p.m. on Sunday.A small number of full-time Shelby partsdealers had materialized. They were con-tinually expanding their inventory, special-izing in the kind of things that your localFord parts department couldn’t seem toget (and in 1979, you could still get most ofwhat you needed to keep a 289 Hi-Po or428 P.I. running). They were also busyfinding sources to reproduce those itemsfor which there was a large demand for but

The SHELBY AMERICAN

The pros loved the idea of the swap meet ex-panding to three full days. The enthusiasts whowere there for the whole convention smorgas-bord—the car show, the seminars and the social-izing—were torn between standing behind theirtable and packing up for a few hours every dayto catch the action that was going on outside ofthe swap meet room.

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a small supply: Shelby Pitman and idlerarms, Koni shocks, wood steering wheelsand unique Shelby emblems and badges.

In between the full time pros like TonyBranda, Gordon Gimbel’s Cobra Perform-ance, Chuck Gutke’s Cobra Restorers andValley Ford Parts and the amateurs whoworked out of the trunk of their car or theback of their pick-up truck, trying to selloff extra parts they had accumulated, bothnew and used, were the part-time vendors.These people worked out of their garage orbasement, so they had very little overhead.If they could wangle a dealer discount attheir local Ford parts department, theycould buy easy-to-sell items like Mustangbumpers, interior trim pieces, batterytrays and Cobra valve covers, markingthem up only minimally and thereby un-dercutting the pros who did have highoverhead costs. There were also the “onenote wonders” —those enthusiasts whohad one item to sell; a poster, t-shirt orbook. Success for them was selling enoughof their inventory to pay their way to theconvention: registration fee, dinner ticket,hotel room and maybe even gas to andfrom the event. But mostly they enjoyedjust being a part of the action rather thanwalking around with their head on aswivel like the rest of the convention atten-dees.

Another side note: most of the photosin the convention coverage article in theShelby American were taken by DonaldFarr. Long before he became editor of Mus-tang Monthly he was a SAAC memberfrom South Carolina. Just a young guywith a healthy interested in Shelbys, Co-bras and Boss Mustangs—and photogra-phy. He was shooting black andwhite—which very few others did unlessthey were professionals. And even backthen it was obvious that Donald had asixth sense for what was interesting andunique, as well as for composition. He wasable to capture the feel of the convention,which can be elusive for most people withcameras. In short, he spoiled us. He startedwriting brief reports of the events he at-tended (and photographed) in the South-east—mostly Georgia, Florida, North andSouth Carolina. They were good and theygot better, so we weren’t surprised when he

The SHELBY AMERICAN

Not every Cobra was a concours example or adaily driver. In fact, there was no SAAC con-cours at SAAC-4. That would not come until1982, at SAAC-7. This “car” pictured was beingsold as a body only. The chassis was presumablybeing “restored” with a new body. Back in thosedays—before replicas and the availability ofbody parts or of entire bodies—cars like thiswere viewed as the beginning of a restorationproject of their own. Such was the stuff dreamswere made out of in 1979.

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told us that he was going to work, full-time, for Mustang Monthly. The rest is, asthey say, history. Donald climbed the lad-der to the point where today he is one ofthe top editors in the specialty car field.We’re proud to say that he got his startwith SAAC.

A large portion of the conventionschedule was consumed by seminars.There were individual meetings for Co-bras, early and late Shelbys, Tigers,Bosses, Panteras, restoration, competition,drivelines, literature and collectibles, con-cours and car shows and even a ladies’seminar. Some went concurrently and theywere about an hour to an hour and a halfeach, allowing people to move betweenthem after asking a question or two.

Keep in mind that, at this point,SAAC was only four years old, and therehad only been three Shelby Owners Asso-ciation (SOA) conventions prior to our firstone. Most of the information we now takefor granted—and which fills thousand-pluspage registries—was either unknown, in-complete or just flat wrong back then.Members we cited as “experts” and askedto sit up front at these seminars, were stillworking their way up the learning curvelike everyone else. Someone might make astatement that, “All early cars had thus-and-such” and a couple of hands in theroom would shoot up. Those guys wouldsay, “Mine doesn’t.” A discussion wouldensue and that’s the way we learned a lotof what we didn’t know. Some of it provedto be correct and some of it didn’t. It was aslow and sometimes painful process butback then it’s all we had. The conventionseminars were as much for collecting infor-mation as they were for disseminating it.

We can’t say, for certain, what tookplace at the Ladies’ Seminar because weweren’t there. But there didn’t seem to bemuch of a demand for it at subsequent con-ventions. SAAC obviously wasn’t the kindof club where the wives and girlfriends ex-changed recipes and tips on cleaning inte-riors. As the club evolved, more and morewives, girlfriends and now daughtersjoined the guys in the open track, graduat-ing from the ladies’ driving school to theregular open track sessions.

The SHELBY AMERICAN

SAAC’s early conventions drew a lot more carsthan they do today. Why? It’s simple: the carswere still “new” enough for owners to drivethem without worrying about wearing thingsout or lowering the value by increasing themileage. Most cars hadn’t been restored yet.There is a direct correlation between a Shelbyor Cobra’s restoration and the resulting de-crease in its being driven. This is one of thethings they are referring to when someone men-tions “the good old days.” In 1979 the value ofearly Shelbys was around $10,000; later carswere bringing $5,000.

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The gas shortage did not have muchan affect on convention attendance as faras we could tell. Pennsylvania’s odd-and-even rule also didn’t have much of an af-fect because there was a lot of license plateswitching in the parking lot so everyone’scar could be topped-off prior to the triphome.

At one gas station down the streetfrom the hotel, one of the young guys work-ing the weekend shift turned out to be aFord enthusiast. They had a five-gallon-per-car limit but when Shelbys and Cobrasstarted to come in, he has happy to fillthem up without any limit. Word spreadquickly back at the hotel and this gas sta-tion suddenly had lines of Shelbys, Cobras,Bosses and Mustangs stretching out intothe street. The attendant was in gas sta-tion heaven because the car show was com-ing to him! By the convention’s conclusionSAAC conventioneers had sucked histanks dry.

Another incident that became fodderfor future convention legends was whenalarmed hotel housekeepers reported find-ing full containers of gasoline being storedin hotel rooms. The weekend managerwent ballistic, fearing a conflagration orworse—a visit from the local fire marshall.A great deal of effort was made to find thehotel guests who were storing gasoline intheir rooms and to get them to remove it.Fortunately, everyone was at the hotel—mostly out on the back lawn where all ofthe cars were parked. The cans were takenout of the rooms and moved to the trunksof cars or the back of trucks. This seemedto mollify the manager somewhat.

SAAC-4 represented something of anevolutionary change of direction. It wasthe last convention where we did not havea car show or an open track event. We in-vited feedback from members who hadparticipated in the Downingtown eventand almost to a person, they said theywould like to see some type of car showcompetition. The open track event wouldnot require a professional racing facility(yet). And planning a car show where spec-tators voted was fairly easy to do. Conven-tions would never be the same again.

The SHELBY AMERICAN

Another trend just beginning in 1979 was theS/C-ification of 427 street cars. CSX3327 wasfresh from a total restoration at Downingtownthat included addition of a chrome roll bar, cor-rect S/C flares, side exhaust, wide GT40-styleHalibrand wheels, a hood scoop, oil cooler and acomp fuel filler. Today, because so many replicaCobras are S/C clones (not to mention ShelbyAmerican’s CSX4000 series cars and most of theKirkham and AC MK IVs), owners of original427 Cobra street cars are bringing them back tothe way they were originally built because box-stock looking street Cobras are now moreunique.

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or the non-owners of the latest Cobra/GT40 registry who are out of touchwith the latest in the GT40 MK IV

world, here’s a quick recap. A casual con-versation between GT40 enthusiast MikeTeske and Edsel Ford at the 1989 GT40Reunion at Watkins Glen resulted in Tesketelling Edsel about his still-in-the-planning-phase project to build a GT40MK IV from scratch, to exact original spec-ifications. He was peripherally interestedand told Teske, in affect, “Let me know ifthere’s any way I can help...”

Fast forward to 1992. Ford was clear-ing out some of its archives, among them alarge quantity of GT40-related files. Teskehad been through the archives, research-ing various GT40 matters, so his name wasknown to the head archivist. The connec-tion was somehow made to Edsel Ford,who green-lighted the stuff going to Teske.He was at the point in his project that heneeded something tangible—exactly likethis—to continue.

Teske had built a MK II clone and hadbeen associated with Peter Thorp/Safir(GT40 MK V production) and Brian Wing-field (ex-Ford engineer and well-knownGT40 restorer) as well as John Willment(J.W. Automotive Engineering, Ltd.). Oneof Teske’s projects was to reproduce, fromscratch, the magnesium-case T-44transaxles used in the MK IIs. Tesketeamed up with Kenny Thompson, a for-mer Holman-Moody fabricator during theGT40 salad days. Together they decided toconstruct a small number—seven—ofexact replica GT40 MK IVs. The Ford doc-uments Teske was given would enable thecars to be specification perfect. It would beno small task, they understood, but it wassomething they both wanted to do.

They began researching the detailsand received enthusiastic assistance fromvirtually everyone who had a hand in theoriginal cars: Roy Lunn, Chuck Mountain,Ed Hull, Bob Negstad, Homer Perry, MoseKnowland, Carroll Smith, Phil Remington,Alan Mann, John Horsman and a handfulof others. Teske definitely had assembleda team with “the right stuff.”

Teske and Thompson chose as thelegal name, “Kar Kraft,” using the familiar“forwards K-backwards K” logo. That com-pany had closed its doors in 1976 andceased business activity. Filing legally touse the name was little more than a for-mality, and would provide a well-knownnameplate for the cars as well as eliminat-ing any legal obstructions when theybegan to go public.

Construction of components andpieces began in 1999. Slowly as thingsspooled up, seven of everything necessarywas produced. It was slow-going, becausewith nothing tangible to sell, it was almostall out-go with very little income. This is

the meaning of “labor of love.” By 2005,about three-quarters of the chassis workhad been finished and a mocked-up chassiswas completed (using birch plywood) to thesame specifications as the original cars.When all of the dimensions were double-checked and verified, production of thefirst actual chassis began. By 2008, all ofthe bolt-on chassis components had beencompleted. The original body panels hadsurvived and they were available to Teske.He used them to fabricate brand new bodymolds. All of the body pieces were thenmade (in batches of seven) and they beganto get fitted onto the chassis.


FA Progress Report on GT40 MK IV Continuation Production

The first car, J-13, arrives at Cobra Automotive in Wallingford, CT for paint and final assembly.Mike Teske reserved one car for himself, and Kenny Thompson is keeping one car. Once it was ev-ident that the project was more than one man’s pipedream, the other five cars quickly found own-ers. Fran Kress was one of the first to jump on board. His biggest dilemma was deciding what colorto have it painted. Go with a color which had already been used in 1967 or personalize the car sothere would never be a question whose it was?

That brings us up to 2008, when theregistry was printed. Not much was heardabout the project “on the street” after that,but that didn’t mean it was dormant. Farfrom it. When word spread that a newbatch of exact-specification MK IVs werebeing made, eyebrows went up. When theproject reached the point where Teske wastaking actual deposits, four check-writersstepped forwards and demonstrated theirseriousness. Now Teske’s project had an in-fusion of funds but the downside was thathe also had warm bodies looking over hisshoulder, monitoring his progress.

To date, the tubs for all seven carshave been completed. Teske will keep onefor himself and his partner Kenny Thomp-son will get the other (which will be com-pleted as a duplicate of J-1, the“Breadwagon.”) A consortium of buyerssnapped up the other five cars: Joe Dolan,Fran Kress, Gary Moore and Jim Hender-son. [Note: the fifth car is currently avail-able. Contact: [email protected]] Thecars would come from Teske’s Kar Kraftshop essentially complete (less enginesand transaxles) and a subcontractor wasneeded to do the paint, detailing and finalassembly. Engines would be built byThompson. The four owners began shop-ping around for a subcontractor that wascapable of completing the bodywork andpainting the cars. It had to be more than arestoration shop because the plan was forsome of the cars to be entered in vintagecompetition and the cars would need to beprepared to race—not just be pretty boyshow cars.

The group finally settled on Cobra Au-tomotive in Wallingford, CT. This facilityhad everything they needed: shop ownerCurt Vogt was an experienced racer him-self. They had prepared a number of origi-nal GT40s for vintage competition,including one they took to LeMans, Spaand Nurburgring. The facility has a fullpaint shop and a modern engine shop. Andthey had a number of fabricators and tech-nicians who don’t recoil from any project.They had done work on both Moore’s andDolan’s race cars in the past and both werehappy with the level of quality and atten-tion to detail that is part of the company’swell-deserved reputation.

At Cobra Automotive (three are al-ready there and the first one, J-13, is fin-


The first car, being constructed at Teske’s Kar Kraft shop. Every individual piece was hand-builtand then hand-assembled. Just like the originals.

ished). They will have their body panels fit-ted and finished and then they will bepainted. From there they will go back toKar Kraft for engines, transaxles and finalcompletion. A stickler for details, Teske in-sisted on having new tunnel-port headsand matching intake manifolds cast. Thefoundry work took longer than anticipatedso the completion date had to be pushedback. Brake calipers had to be cast andthey were also more complicated than thefoundry anticipated. A run of seven T-44four-speed transaxles is being manufac-tured especially for these cars.

Once the cars have their engines, theywill come back to Cobra Automotive forfinal detailing and track testing. In Decem-ber there will be a visit by FIA inspectorsbecause in order to race in Europe, the carsneed to receive certification. The plan callsfor at least one of them to be entered in theVintage Grand Prix at LeMans and possi-bly other European tracks. Stay tuned.



One more special historical note: J-Car history begins with J-1, the “Breadwagon” that was tested at LeMans in April of 1966 [below,left]. The last of the seven cars will also be a Breadwagon with the “picklefork” nose. It is being built by Kenny Thompson.

ertainly one of the stranger thingsI’ve received over the past 35 yearswas an email from a friend with an

attachment of an editorial from GeraldRoush’s Ferrari Market Letter (Volume 34Number 26, dated 12/26/09). All the emailsaid was, “What do you think about this?”

I knew a little about Gerald Roushand his Ferrari Market Letter. It wasprinted and mailed to subscribers everyother week and was sort of like aSnakebite Bulletin, only with an editorial.Roush often commented on Ferrari pricesand provided his expert opinion on Ferrari-related subjects. A copy had been passedmy way every once in a while, so I basicallyknow what it was all about.

Without a club behind him, Roush wasfree to print his own opinions, which hedid. On the other hand, I went out of myway not to editorialize prices in print be-cause I realized that as a national director,if I were to make such a pronouncement—for example, “1965 GT350s are now sellingfor $100,000”—that could set a standardwhich could effect the minimum price sell-ers might put on their ‘65 GT350s. Fromthere it’s a very short step to affecting themarket rather than just reporting on it. Iwasn’t sure if any of this could really hap-pen, but I had no desire to find out.

Roush’s editorial was titled “Half Life”and it referred to the fact that at 67 yearsof age, he realized that he had been editingthe Ferrari Market Letter for half his life.As I read the one-page editorial, it dawnedon me many of the aspects of my associa-tion with Cobras and Shelbys shared aspooky parallel with Gerald Roush’s asso-ciation with Ferraris. I contacted him andasked his permission to reprint his edito-rial, I said I wasn’t sure what form it wouldtake but I would be sure to provide attri-bution. He said he was happy to have meuse it.

“This issue of the Ferrari Market Let-ter marks 34 full years of publishing. Forthose of you who are counting, at 26 issues

a year (one year the calendar tricked usand we did 27) that equals 885 issues.

•At the time Roush had written this,SAAC had also been publishing itsnewsletters and magazines for 34 years.

“Having recently celebrated yet an-other birthday (they seem to come alongtoo frequently), I suddenly realized that Ihave spent half my life doing this, give ortake a few months. The first issue was pub-lished on January 3, 1976.

•SAAC’s first magazine was cover-dated January, 1976.

“I won’t claim that issues have ap-peared every two weeks since then. Therehave been times when I have fallen be-hind. Deaths in the family, bypass heartsurgery, equipment failures, etc. have allthrown the schedule for a loop, but I havealways caught back up and produced thatlandmark number of 26 issues a year.

“In 1976 the grand total of Ferraristhat had been manufactured in the com-pany’s almost 30 years was around 15,000.Today that number represents about threeyear’s production. The 365 GTB/4 and theDino 246 series were very recent memo-ries, and in fact a few unsold examples ofeach could still be found.

•Shelby American had stopped build-ing cars in 1970. Between 1961 and 1970,Cobra and Shelby Mustang production to-talled 14,815.

“That means there were not thatmany Ferraris for sale. The range of mod-els offered in the early years was aboutwhat appeared on the first page or two ofcurrent issues.

“There were no 12-cylinder Ferrarisbeing made for the U.S. market and theDino 308 series was all that was availableto American buyers. So, needless to say, inthe last 34 years I have seen quite achange in the Ferrari world.

•There has also been a change in theCobra and Shelby world since 1976. Co-bras were so popular that they were beingrecreated in kit form. Brian Angliss wentfrom being a Cobra restorer to the head of

AC Cars and they began building theirversions of the 427 Cobra, called the ACMK IV. Carroll Shelby, himself, jumpedinto the pool with his “component Cobras.”Shelby was everywhere: fiberglass-bodied“kit” cars, aluminum bodied 427 S/C repli-cas and later 289 FIA comp replicas and289 “slabside” street cars. All told, therewere probably 20,000 various kit cars(Contemporary, ERA, Superformance andfactory Five to name the largest, withdozens of other manufacturers all trying tocarve their niche out of the market. Therewere more than 500 AC MK IVs andShelby was still building CSX4000s, 7000s,8000s and 1,000s: probably more than 800cars to date. A conservative estimatewould be 300+ replicas for every originalCobra that was made in the 1960s. Therewere also replica Shelbys being made:everything from one-off projects under-taken by individuals with a Mustang andthe money to buy reproduction Shelbyparts from parts vendors to the Shelby-li-censed “continuation” cars and Eleanorclones. I won’t attempt to guess at thenumber of these that are out there.

“The whole concept of what is a Fer-rari has certainly changed. In 1976 anyFerraristi would tell you that, except for afew race cars, a Ferrari was a V-12 front-engined automobile. Yes, V-6 Dinos werearound, but they were “almost a Ferrari”according to the sales brochure. Today’sconcept of a Ferrari is that of a mid-en-gined V-8.

•It was also increasingly difficult todefine what a “genuine” Cobra or Shelbywas. SAAC’s registry was the most usefultool but there were still individuals at-tempting to pass off their cars as legiti-mate exceptions to SAAC’s guidelines.

“Actually, I had been involved withFerraris for almost a decade before estab-lishing the Ferrari Market Letter and theoriginal genesis for the FML dates back to1971.

•The genesis of SAAC also dated backto 1971-1972 when the original Cobra Club


CPARALLEL UNIVERSE

PARALLEL UNIVERSECom pelling Evidence of a

Judge for yourself.

– Rick Kopec

and the Shelby Owners Association wereformed.

“When I started the FML I was teach-ing history at the junior college level andplaying with Ferraris in my spare time.Later I spent a few years working at a Fer-rari dealership before striking out on myown.

•When SAAC was started I was alsoteaching school, and also playing withShelbys in my spare time.

“One of the “mysteries” of the publica-tion is the dating of the issues which isevery other Saturday. When publicationstarted, circulation was rather small, justover 100 copies, and after printing eachcopy was hand collated, stapled, stampedand mailed by my family sitting aroundthe kitchen table.

•SAAC’s earliest magazines werehand-addressed, postage stamps werelicked and applied, and the publicationswere taken to the post office. As the clubgrew through the 1980s we continued to doour own magazine mailing. When we wentto the large format issues we turned themailing over to a mailing house. But whenwe printed the Snakebite Bulletin, everyone of the more than 100 issues were la-beled and mailed by hand.

“Eventually it grew in size and circu-lation to where I wound up with a commer-cial offset printing press. automaticcollator, etc. Now I had a First Class Per-mit for mailing, which meant no moremailing on Saturday. But the Saturdaydate stuck.

•We never got to the point where wedid our own printing but we did have apostal permit: #350.

“Way back in 1976 communication be-tween subscribers, advertisers and me waseither by telephone or by snail mail. Grad-ually technology started making it easier.First came fax machines which today onlya few luddites still use to submit their ads,and then came email and the internet.

•Same for SAAC.The internet has been both a blessing

and a curse. In 1977 I thought it was thefuture for the publication. Twelve yearslater the promise doesn’t seem so rosy. Istarted making the content of each issueavailable online by subscription, at a re-duced rate compared to the print edition.

“The online version not only has allthe information contained in the print edi-tion, but also has some added featuressuch as color photos, all back issuesthrough 2002, a handy searchable index topast classified ads and a pdf copy of thecurrent print edition.

“My personal benefit was going to bethat I would no longer have to be tied down

to a printing press and the other equip-ment involved in creating a hard copy.From the beginning I had produced eachissue completely in-house. But an elec-tronic edition, I reasoned, could be createdanyplace with an internet connection.

•In 2009, SAAC’s new forum began todemonstrate the power and benefits of theInternet. We made the decision to movefrom a printed publication to an on-linemagazine in an attempt to rein in our ex-penses. Printing and mailing even onemagazine a year was the single biggest ex-pense we had. The benefits of posting arti-cles online seemed, to us, to far outweighthe disadvantages. Instead of waiting foran arbitrary deadline at the end of theyear, articles could be posted as soon asthey were finished. They were fresh—notold news by the time a magazine wasprinted. We could use color photographs,and as many of them as we wanted. Therewas no limit to how long an article couldbe. And the cost of each issue was virtuallynothing.

“But after a dozen years subscribers tothe on-line edition are still outnumberedby those who prefer to get their copy onpaper. However, I did finally have to giveup printing each issue myself. My aged off-set press had passed its half-life and myrapidly approaching half-life meant I wasno longer able to pull all-nighters runningthe press. It costs more to have it commer-cially printed but it’s worth it.

•It took less than a year for us to getthe message: a fair number of members didnot like having to read the magazine arti-cles on their computer. Our solution was tocombine all four issues each year into aprinted annual that was mailed at the endof each year.

“In other ways the popularity of theinternet has been a curse. Perhaps it is be-cause of all those years I spent studying inmy chosen discipline, but I still preferdoing research the old fashioned way.Today too many Ferraristi who have aquestion just post their inquiry on the Weband sit back waiting for an answer.

•I’ve noticed that, too.“But more often than not they get con-

flicting answers, none of which may be cor-rect. As a result, the amount ofmisinformation out there about Ferrarisseems to have multiplied. Not that weknew it all three decades ago, but we knewhow to evaluate sources of information,and which were reliable and which werenot. Today there are many “legend in theirown mind” experts out there pontificatingon the internet, with their “credentials”verified by how many posts they have inchat rooms.

•Ditto.“Which leads me to another major

change I have witnessed. Many of today’sFerraristi are not really Ferrari enthusi-asts. They have no appreciation, much lessknowledge, of the heritage, of the history,of the mystique of the marque. They maynot even be automotive enthusiasts, withno appreciation of any of the other greatmarques of the past or present.

“If anything, they are enamored onlyby the image portrayed by Ferrari, andwhat owning one of the cars fromMaranello does for their own image. Theimportance of the image can be demon-strated by the fact that Ferrari annuallymakes more profit from licensing theirimage than they do by selling cars.

•The history of original Cobras andShelbys is a major part of what they areand why they are so sought-after today.That history, which is not limited to theraces some of the cars competed in or whodrove them, also includes how and whereeach one was produced, who had a hand inproducing it, what dealer it was soldthrough and how it was optioned and de-livered. Back in the beginning of organizedShelby and Cobra enthusiasm, owners allfelt a strong gravitational pull from thehistory of the cars. They had a sense thatthey were at the end of a chain of individ-uals who had all shared the cars, one at atime, passing them on to the next ownerlike relay runners passing a baton. But ithas been 40 or more years since the carsleft their original dealerships and became,first, used cars and later, highly regardedcollectibles. Eventually as prices climbed,the newest owners tended to see the pres-ent value of their cars very clearly and thecars’ history as a nebulous haze. The tidalwave of interest which resulted in not onlythe high prices of originals but in an as-tounding number of replicas has served toconfuse things rather than clarify them.SAAC national tries to keep the history ofthe cars and those who made that historyin the picture, but sometimes we get thefeeling we are preaching to the choir.

“The other night a handful of us “di-nosaurs” were talking about the “good olddays.” We all agreed that things were cer-tainly different, but left open the questionof whether or not they were better.”

•I agree. Different, yes. Better, whoknows?

A sad endpoint to this is that GeraldRoush died of a heart attack on May 21,2010. He was 68 years old. It is doubtfulthat anyone else in the Ferrari world pos-sesses his knowledge and experience indealing with these cars. RIP Gerald.


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Review from Classic & Sports Car. “It’s almost

impossible to dip into this book without poring for

ages over the wonderful images— well repro-

duced— and talk of debauchery in Cuba or the

financial dealing that led to Shelby making more

as an “amateur” than he could as a pro. Even the

race record is compelling. The text blends Evans’

enthusiasm with Shelby’s own words.”

Before a Cobra was even a gleam in his eye,Carroll Shelby was a great race driver, one ofthe very best Americans driving during the1950s. His career behind the wheel is told forthe first time in this new book. It includesremembrances written by Shelby himselfalong with many never-before published pho-tographs. Among other achievements, Shelbywon LeMans in 1959, was twice the Sports

Car Club of America National Champion and was chosen Sports Car Driver of the Year two times. The bookdetails a large number of his races as well as his relationships with Juan Fangio, Phil Hill, Stirling Moss, JackBrabham, Bob Bondurant and John Fitch among many others. Shelby had World-Championship ability, butunfortunately, his racing career was cut short after the 1960 season due to his heart condition. Some 300 periodphotographs. Quality coated paper, softbound, 192 pages. $29.95 + $5.95 S&H. Evans’ autograph at no charge.Shelby autograph add $150 deductible contribution to the Carroll Shelby Children’s Foundation. VISA, MC,Check. email: [email protected] fax 310-373-5988

Art Evans, 800 S Pacific Coast Highway, Redondo Beach, CA 90277

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We authenticate Shelby cars and guarantee the authentication.

For information Richard Kottle

RAI Corporation 9207 Arbor Branch Drive #111 Dallas TX 75243

800-378-6364 [email protected]

Shelby Cars in Detail A significant new book by Frank Barrett & Boyd Jaynes foreword by Carroll Shelby

Using stunning original studio photographs by Boyd Jaynes and authoritative text by automotive historian Frank Barrett, Shelby Cars in Detail profiles a fascinating array of cars from the Shelby American Collection museum in Boulder, Colorado. This representative selection includes the Cobra’s predecessor, the A.C. Ace-Bristol; race and street variants of 289 and 427 Cobras; the original Dragon Snake; Ken Miles’ personal race Cobra; the Daytona and Willment Coupes; the oldest surviving GT40; an innovative, high-tech Ford Mk IV J-Car that raced at Le Mans; two unusual GT350 prototypes; and even Pete Brock’s Falcon Panel Delivery.

Shelby Cars in Detail presents the histories of each car, with individual specifications,provenance, and race performances. Along with such well-known Shelby racers as KenMiles, Bob Bondurant, Dan Gurney, and Mario Andretti, the book shares the exploits ofindependents Bob Johnson, Tom Payne, Dan Gerber, and Tommy Hitchcock.

Boyd Jaynes’ immaculately composedpictures reveal the most significant facetsof engines, bodywork, and cockpits, as wellas providing full two-page views of eachmodel. Complimentary reviews haveappeared in several automotive magazines,and the book is regarded as the highest-quality title on Shelby cars. Order now, andwe’ll have the author autograph your copy.

Hardback with slipcase, 11x13 inches, 272 pages; 156 large color photographsISBN: 1-893618-94-3; $149.95, including author’s autograph; U.S. shipping $4.95

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card info and we’ll whack your card and ship ‘em right away.

[email protected]

Contact: Donnie Gould of RM Auctions 954-566-2209

Cars will be available at our RM Monterey Auction August 14-15, 2009

R M AUCTIONS

1971 Ford Mustang Mach I 429VIN # 1F05J209140OFFERED WITHOUT RESERVE

1971 was the last year the Mach 1 came with a 429 – a

massive 370-horsepower powerplant. This outstanding

California example is in time-warp condition after accumu-

lating just 9,800 miles from new! It has always been

garaged, the black interior is as-new and the car drives

wonderfully with a C6 transmission.

1970 Ford Mustang Boss 429VIN # 0F02Z120966The pinnacle of Mustang performance, the tire-melting

Boss 429 was virtually handbuilt by Kar Kraft in Michigan

to homologate Ford’s enormous big block for NASCAR

Grand National competition. This superb, limited-produc-

tion example has just 26,000 miles and, thanks to careful

maintenance, remains in excellent condition with a highly

original interior and original motor and four-speed trans-

mission, mated to a heavy-duty 9-inch rear end.1970 Ford Mustang Boss 302 VIN# OF02G160137OFFERED WITHOUT RESERVE

The Boss 302 is a very rare Mustang indeed, with only

7,014 units built for 1970. This outstanding example is fin-

ished in stunning Acapulco Blue (black interior) and fea-

tures a rear deck spoiler, Sport Slats and chrome Mag-

num 500 wheels, just the way it left the factory. Previously

owned by a prominent Ford enthusiast, it was restored

five years ago and has only been driven to local car

shows since. It comes with full restoration documentation,

certification and copy of original window sticker.

1969 Ford Mustang 428 Cobra Jet Coupe“VIN# 9R01Q123554OFFERED WITHOUT RESERVE

This lightweight 428 CJ 1969 Mustang was originally pre-

pared by Holman & Moody-Stroppe in Long Beach, CA for

Super Stock drag racing and was driven by none other

than pro golfer Ken Venturi and famed singer/actor Vic

Damone! With known history, it is highly original, still has

its original racing modifications and even comes with a let-

ter of authenticity from Bill Stroppe.

1966 Shelby GT 350 B-Production Vintage Racing CarVIN# SFM6S1432OFFERED WITHOUT RESERVE

This GT350 started life as a Hertz Rent-A-Racer before

shedding its street trim and going on to a successful rac-

ing career, winning the SCCA Southeastern Regional

Championship in 1971 and back-to-back Southeast Divi-

sion Championships in ’73 and ’74. It boasts a fresh Mar-

covicci & Wenz 509-horsepower, 302 V8, a TEX Racing

T-10 four-speed and various GT350R modifications. A

proven race-winner, it is an ideal candidate for thrilling vin-

tage racing action.

1965 Shelby 427 Cobra CSX6017VIN# CSX6017CSX 6017 is a genuine Shelby continuation car that

awaits its very first owner and is offered directly from a

factory authorized Cobra dealer with over 30 years experi-

ence and acclaim. Finished in Rosso Red, it has all the

desirable features, from its Halibrand knock-offs to the

very rare mid-1960s vintage 427 side-oiler. In fact, it even

comes with a copy of the original MSO, signed by Carroll

Shelby himself, whose signature also graces the glovebox

door.

1968 Shelby GT 500 KR FastbackVIN# 8T02R20534003384With its pavement-pounding Cobra Jet 428, the GT 500

KR was the fastest Shelby Mustang to date and truly

earned its “King of the Road” moniker. This particular

example was sympathetically restored and remains highly

original, finished in Acapulco Blue with black interior. It

runs effortlessly, doesn’t overheat and, most importantly,

has the original date-code correct engine block, transmis-

sion and rear end. It comes with a Marti Report, confirm-

ing it is one of only 1,053 GT500 KR Fastbacks built and

one of only 299 with air conditioning! It also benefits from

power steering, power front disc brakes, Sportdeck fold-

down rear seat, Tilt-Away steering and tinted glass.

SAAC Membership OfficePO Box 13271

Lexington, KY 40583-3271fax: 859.368.0222

email: [email protected]: www.saac.com

Forum: www.saacforum.comMembers only website: www.saac.memberlodge.com

The Shelby American Automobile Club was born in 1975 and was dedicated to the preservation,care, history and enjoyment of the cars Carroll Shelby created. Those goals have not changed. SAAC provides members with no-charge insurance appraisals, assistance in researching individualcar histories, advice on technical matters, information on parts sources, serial number verification andassistance in obtaining stated value insurance. SAAC has active regions in almost every state whichhold events of their own. And every summer the club holds a blow-out of a national convention. Atypical convention wil include a real vintage race, open track high-speed running, parts swap, judgedconcours and popular vote car shows, and guest speakers made up of drivers, mechanics andfabricators who made the Cobra, GT40, GT350, and GT500 household words. If you already ownone of these cars it’s hard for us to picture anyone slogging through life without SAAC. If you’rethinking about buying one, our advice is to join up before you do. There are fakes out there justwaiting to sting the uneducated. One of the reasons we exist is to share what we know withmembers.

Dedicated to the preservation, care, history, and enjoyment of the World Championship cars from Shelby

American since 1975.

The Shelby American Automobile Club isthe only international enthusiast’s organizationdedicated to the World Championship carsfrom Carroll Shelby. Ownership isn’t requiredfor membership - just interest in andenthusiasm for these legendary cars. SAAChas more than 4,000 members across the US,in Canada, and in just about every othercountry where there is interest in highperformance automobiles. SAAC members willhave access to our online Member’s Onlywebsite, Memberlodge, where one will find ouraward winning magazine, The ShelbyAmerican, posted 4 times a year, along withour famous SnakeBite ads where you will findour classified ads updated weekly. Ads arefree to members without word limit. SAAC alsohosts an annual national convention that is thestuff dreams are made of....even for grownups.

Join us. Annual dues are $50.00 As soon as wereceive payment we’ll send you a new member’spacket via USPS containing a copy of the year’sAnnual Shelby American magazine (all 4 issuesposted online - compiled into one magazine),general club information, sponsors literature, andusual club regalia (windshield decal and membership card).________________________________________

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Credit Cards accepted

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Join online either www.saac.com (Blue wording under tabs “Join SAAC today”) or

www.saac.memberlodge.com Membership tab (to left of binder rings) and follow links to PayPal

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