The SHELBY AMERICAN
#82
The magazine of the Shelby American Automobile Club SUMMER 2010
Copyright © 2010 Shelby American Automobile Club. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or translated without prior express written permission from the Shelby American Automobile Club. saac@saac.com
ON THE COVER. Two Dragonsnakes... no waiting. The drag racing portion of SAAC-35 attracted a number of noteworthy cars but none more so than a pair of original Cobra Dragonsnakes. Drew Serb of Orinda, CA (in the north) brought CSX2357, the second factory team car. Lynn Park of La Canada, CA (in the south) had CSX2248. The two cars had faced off on the strip in 1965 and Park and Serb recreated that scenario on the Friday afternoon of the convention, much to the delight of the crowd of spectators who lined the wall. It was another one of those once-in-a-lifetime convention moments that you have to be there to experience.
THE MAIL SAAC. 12 pages. We scour the globe (and the Internet) for items of interest in the world of Cobras and Shelbys. How about some pictures of the retrieval of a 427 Cobra that landed upside down in a creek in Texas. It was all over the forums and blogs for about fifteen minutes after it happened but we dug a little deeper. We’ve also gone behind the scenes to tell the story of the GT350 station wagon.. a false alarm barn find... Goodyear’s use of a Daytona Coupe as a traveling display... another crunched Ford GT... and more. SHELBY AMERICANA. 7 pages. Long time automobile photographer and SAAC member Curt Scott spills his guts with the secrets to good automobile photography. If you have a car and a camera, you’ll want to read this. The ongoing Eagle Eye slugfest between the potentates of indolence, Jim Hutchison and Ken Young continues. Also, how about some info on the only way to get Dan Gurney’s autograph. And a bunch of other neat stuff that just makes you shake your head. SAAC-35. 23 pages. Complete convention coverage: everything from behind-thescenes planning to day-by-day narratives. If you weren’t there, by the time you read this you’ll feel like you were. Photos? We’ve got ‘em, thanks to the wonders of the Internet. Publishing on-line means never having to edit anything good out of 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 invited California Special owners to the party and GT/CS-meister Paul Newitt was the first one onboard. We asked him to put his impressions into a brief article and this is what he came up with. We suspect we made some SAAC converts that weekend. How will we know? If we start seeing GT/CS cars at future conventions.
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SUMMER 2010
THE NIIHAU SHELL NECKLACE. 7 pages. If you’ve been to most conventions since SAAC-20 in Atlanta you’ve probably seen a black Cobra with Hawaiian plates running around. This isn’t someone who slaps those plate on a car they drove 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 very interesting stories. Here’s one of them. 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 June 28-29-30, 1979. The convention started the day before, when the early arrivals were just pulling into the hotel lot and the departing guests were leaving. That’s when 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 by witnesses. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves... MORE FOURS. 4 pages. GT40 J-Car production continues. Say what? Well, unless you have your copy of the Cobra/GT40 registry this will probably news to you. Mike Teske started a project to recreate a batch of MK IVs to original specifications. Seven of them, continuing after the last original car, J-12, and built with the help of ex-Kar Kraft and Ford guys. A lot of people scoffed and doubted that it would ever happen. Well, fooey on them. Check out these pictures!
E ER S V I UN EL L L A A PAR
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PARALLEL UNIVERSE. 2 pages. How do we describe this one? Gerald Roush edited the Ferrari market Letter for half of his life. In an editorial last year, he described his thoughts on that milestone. Someone sent it to us and suggested we read it because there were a lot of parallels. There were more than a lot. We could insert Cobra/Shelby every time he used Ferrari and not much would change. That is spooky.
SUMMER 2010
THE DEFINITION OF A BAD DAY
N
GRY ET AN ED
US ST AM U J M ’ OW I TO G I USED
Notes from the SAAC Mailroom. This has been one of our favorite bumper stickers for a while, and as time passes it has acquired more and more significance. We realize that when it comes to the cars that Shelby built between 1962 and 1970, SAAC is the foremost recognized authority. Over the past thirty-five years we have acquired an excellent reputation for knowledge and accuracy. So, nobody should be surprised (least of all us), when someone beyond the SAAC’s gravitational pull has a question, we are the first one they turn to. Not a week goes by that we don’t get a question about something Shelby-related. Most of them come from hapless souls who are not a SAAC members. They have stumbled on something that they think is valuable because of some real or imagined connection to Shelby. They are not inquiring about its historical significance—all they want to know is, what is it worth? At one time we found this a little annoying, because it seemed like we were being bombarded by a steady stream of people who were coming up with the weirdest assortment of items which they envisioned as being the equivalent of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. For example, Shelby was involved with an aftermarket wheel company in the mid-1970s. They made dished aluminum wheels with kidney bean cutouts which have “SHELBY” cast on the back. When a non-SAAC Neanderthal stumbles across a set of these wheels at a swap meet, the first thing that enters his mind is the Shelby he saw on TV at the Barrett-Jackson auction selling for $300,000. He suspects that the wheels he paid $25 a piece for are worth $250 each—and he gets a bit testy when we tell him they are not.
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Dateline: Arlington, Texas; July 11, 2010. Once a year the University of Texas Formula SAE Team invites student engineers from other schools to a weekend of competition between student-built Formula-style race cars. Each team designs, builds and tests a prototype based on very explicit rules. Cars can amass a total of 1,000 points, awarded in the following areas: design, cost and presentation; moving competition includes points for acceleration, skid pad, autocross, fuel economy and endurance. A large parking lot on campus is used for the event. As best that can be determined, based on these pictures and a report posted by Matt Hardigree on jalopnik.com, the owner of this polished aluminum-bodied Kirkham 427 Cobra was doing a drive-by of the event when his throttle struck. The car spun around a few times, hit a curb and flipped into a creek. The driver was not hurt and the car appears not to have suffered monumental damage. Onlookers were attracted to the scene like moths to a porch light as soon as the fire department called in an industrial grade wrecker. Their pictures quickly made it onto the Internet (of course), and by extension, onto the SAAC Forum. How they chose to extricate the car was a most interesting and instructive exercise... not that it is information you will ever be able to use—unless you have similar bad luck.
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Every Falcon, Fairlane, Thunderbird, Bronco or Ranchero that somebody slapped a Shelby or Cobra badge on becomes a potential long lost prototype. Cars with repro Shelby VIN plates are even worse. People see this as absolute proof that the car is genuine. When we politely explain that it is not, we get an argument, as if we are trying to cheat an orphan out of their inheritance. Then they play the trump card: their car is a secret prototype and they demand that we prove it is not. We have been called on to verify more “Cobra-in-the-barn” finds than we can count. Here’s the latest one. The first email said only, “A friend of mine found a [sic] AC Cobra in a barn. The VIN is CSX3707. Could you tell me what the VIN means please?” Our response was pretty straightforward: “The serial number you provided, CSX3707, is not one of the original Cobras that Carroll Shelby built. So it is something else. Without seeing it, it is impossible for anyone to tell exactly what it is, but my guess is that it is some kind of a Cobra replica.” We received a hurried reply the following day with these two pictures. And so it goes.
Anyone who has had the misfortune to be on the receiving end of a wrecker’s hook knows that, as a general rule, wrecker operators are not long on sympathy. Not doing more damage to an already damaged car isn’t very high on their priority list. But it appears that the Kirkham’s owner was lucky in this respect. The car was hoisted up by the mounting points of its lower A-arms. After the water drained out (and there was apparently a lot of it because the hood and trunk remained closed), it was gently lowered down (whoops—there goes the windshield) so the front two straps could be removed. It was hoisted up again, this time nose down. A roll-back truck was positioned under it so it be lowered gently onto the back.
One of these days we’re going to see someone find a REAL Cobra-inthe-barn. But it wasn’t today.
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The errant Kirkham didn’t escape without a few crinkles, but considering that it did the automotive equivalent of a halfgainer into a shallow creek, it got off pretty easy. The car’s owner/driver was probably torn between the desire to be whisked away in the back of the ambulance into relative anonymity, and sticking around to make sure his car was treated gently to keep additional damage to a minimum. Which one would you choose? Hopefully, that’s a decision you’ll never have to make.
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EAR AT THE FACTORY WINDOW The very first issue of SAAC’s magazine (Volume 1 #1, December 1975) contained an article which was envisioned as the beginning of a series. They would be tongue-in-cheek parodies centering around some never before revealed piece of Shelby American history. The tip-off that they were put-ons was the author’s name, Jacques Hughoff. That turned out to be a little too subtle for some members who, instead of reading it as “Jack You-off” as intended, interpreted it as “Jakes Hug-off,” thereby missing the initial clue that the article that followed was a hoax.
SHELBY’S GT350 WAGON – by Jacques Hughoff (Ed. Note: Mr. Hughoff may quite possibly be one of the earliest fans of Shelby American. In 1962 he lived in an apartment almost directly across from the Venice plant and as a hot rod enthusiast and diehard ‘Ford man,’ viewed the dayto-day happenings with more than a casual interest. When the Shelby juggernaut outgrew its floor space and moved to the West Imperial Highway location, Jacques, by then hopelessly addicted, moved too. He took up residence in a loft diagonally across from the airport factory. He soon became a ‘regular’ at Shelby American and became friendly with everyone, especially Pete Brock, Chuck Cantwell and engine wizard Cecil Bowman. The Shelby American Automobile Club is indeed fortunate to be able to tap the heretofore untapped resources of a man who, indeed, literally had his ‘ear at the factory window.’ No doubt all Shelby enthusiasts know that the last GT350s to be run through the assembly line at Shelby American in September 1966 were GT350 convertibles, one of which was used as personal transportation by Mrs. Carroll Shelby. Fewer, probably, know that six orange notchbacks found their way down that September. But the number of persons who know about those two 1966 GT350 station wagons is remote indeed.
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The story begins back in August 1962. Pete Brock, the young Shelby American employee in charge of designing and advertising at the Cobra works ordered one of the then recently introduced Falcon sedan deliveries with the 260 V8 option. The day he accepted delivery Pete started Cobra-izing the little Ford V8. In fact, Hot Rod magazine ran an article on this very machine in the October 1963 issue, titled “Bolt-On 80 Horsepower.” The Falcon became a rolling test bed for engine components, as did a ‘64 Fairlane that Carroll, himself, tooled around LA. Pete liked the uniqueness of the distinctive body style and it was from this seed that the flower that became the GT350 wagon grew. Pete did some renderings of how a Mustang would look as a station wagon. He approached “the Boss” with them sometime in February, 1966. The Boss liked what he saw and gave the ok to get one prototype made, possibly believing that because of the success of the original Mustang model, Ford intended to come out with a wagon in 1967. A ‘66 wagon, Shelby-ized, of course, would grab the publicity for both Ford and Shelby American. Being a resourceful individual, Pete had two wagons built; one for the company and one for himself. He never forgot that sedan delivery. The two station wagons were completed sometime in May of ‘66. Both were, naturally, Wimbledon White with Guardsman Blue stripes, but Shelby’s had an automatic while Brock’s had a four-speed. An unbelievable series of misfortunes befell both cars, explaining
why no photographs ever reached the public. One of the Shelby American staff photographers shot a color layout of the car for use in Sports Car Graphic to accompany a road test by Jerry Titus. The development process was somehow compromised and the negatives were all ruined. When he returned to reshoot, he was told that the car had been parked in the lot and crunched by a truck backing up to make a delivery. The rear of the truck struck the left rear of the wagon, pushing it into another car. Thus, the wagon was damaged at both ends and on both sides. Brock’s wagon did not have the image Shelby wanted to project (it had side exhausts, competition suspension, 15˝ wheels and a roll bar, plus some 385 horses under the hood, topped off by those nasty Webers) so the decision was made to put the pictures on hold. The wagon was moved into the shop and plans were made to begin repairs. As luck would have it, a break in the flow of parts caused the wagon to be stripped and when the ‘67 models began to arrive, the car was hauled off. Brock’s wagon was stolen within the same week and never recovered. Shelby subsequently found out that Ford did not plan to introduce a station wagon into the Mustang line-up so the project was forgotten. Pete Brock said he enjoyed the feel of the car almost as much as the RModel. After Hertz broke the GT350 mold with the GT350H, Brock wanted to call the wagon the GT350W, but Shelby reminded him, “...we already have one of those.”
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 seeing something about it in a back issue of the club’s magazine. It is obviously time to shine the light of truth on this subject.
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Kopec remembers: When we started the club and began putting together the first issue of the magazine, I had the feeling we were taking things (including ourselves) far too seriously. It was a club and this stuff was supposed to be fun. As someone who passed through adolescence accompanied by the latest copy of Mad magazine and went through college being entertained by the National Lampoon, I thought there was room for little levity here and there in The Shelby American. A short spoof in each issue would make the magazine well rounded. I should note, at this point, that was a minority opinion. I envisioned creating some guy—not an employee—who would pop in at Shelby American and see things that nobody knew about. Then, ten years later, he recalls some of the things he saw and writes about them in a column in the club magazine. For example, when I saw the 1965 publicity photo of a street GT350 and an R-Model side by side, with a ‘65 Rambler in the background, I started thinking about Shelby American being contacted by AMC to create a high performance model of their own based on the Rambler Classic: Chuck Cantwell doing the engineering... Ken Miles testing it at Willow Springs... Mark Donohue and Roger Penske talking about racing a couple of them (ok, maybe that was a stretch). But once that kind of thinking began, the article almost wrote itself. I recalled Car and Driver’s October 1966 cover, which showed a one-off, Ivy Green Mustang station wagon. A white and blue-striped GT350 version came to mind, for some now forgotten reason.
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A prank article has to be believable, so some explanation had to be invented as to why the wagon prototypes were never photographed. And why the actual cars never turned up. To add a little more credibility, I put a piece of tracing paper over the C/D cover and did a tracing of the car. Then I added Shelby/Cragar wheels, side scoops, side exhausts and LeMans stripes.
The GT350 Station Wagon article was only a small portion of the brand new magazine. The Marque was received with a lot of excitement by SAAC members who had never seen an actual magazine dedicated solely to “their” cars. Because of this, the wagon piece was initially overlooked. There was no forum back then to carry a buzz. Word of mouth spread much slower. Add to this that a lot of members failed to catch the subtle play on words of the author’s name. Jakes Hug-off went over their heads and before too many questions could be asked or the cat let out of the bag, there was another issue in the mail. The second issue also contained a second “Ear At The Factory Window” and a few more people either caught the Hughoff play on words or if they didn’t, they were set straight. The article was about some of the pranks the Cobra team pulled (all ficticious, of course). Like one of the team drivers showing up at a driver’s meeting reeking of alcohol and weaving around. He had the pole in a Daytona Coupe. He drove to the false grid in fits and starts, jerking and stalling the car. The other drivers figured he wouldn’t last a lap, so they let him go. He took off ahead of everyone, maintained the lead, and won the race. “No one knows who ordered 100 pizzas in the name of the Ferrari team at Sebring. The pizzas arrived just prior to the start of the race and in the confusion that ensued over the bill, some last minute preparations were neglected. When the car pitted prematurely, the mechanics were so bloated from eating the pizzas they could not fit under the car.” “While dynoing engines prior to the ‘65 LeMans race, Shelby American engine builders found that the moon’s gravitational pull affected the float levels in the carburetors. If the cars were jetted to compensate for this, the engine was found to yield some 15 to 30 more horsepower. As only Daytona and LeMans are run at night, little was ever made of this data, but more than once a gypsy was seen in the engine room prior to LeMans.” Anxieties about causing confusion and the magazine not being taken seriously because of stuff like this were enough to pull the plug on Jacques Hughoff. I had plenty of other ideas, but at that point it didn’t make sense to swim upstream. As they say, the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze. “Ear At The Factory Window” quietly disappeared.
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Things continued to percolate in the new club and after a year or so I have to admit that I had completely forgotten about Jacques Hughoff. Then one day I got a phone call from someone [who will remain anonymous because I feel no need to publicly embarrass him; I will, however, say that his name would be familiar to just about anyone reading this magazine]. Let’s call him “John.” After the usual hi-how-ya-doin’ small talk, he asked me if I had a phone number for Pete Brock. I asked him what he wanted it for. In those early days we were very protective of former Shelby employees we had contact with. We realized that they were nowhere near as interested in these cars as we were and one sure way to tick them off was to start passing their phone numbers around so a few thousand enthusiasts could deluge them with questions or favors. John said he needed to ask Pete Brock a few questions about the ‘65 GT350 station wagon he had read about in The Marque. He was in the process of building one and needed to know what kind of latching mechanism was used on the tailgate. I was stunned. This guy really should have known thew article was just a hoax. “You don’t have to call him.” I said. “I can tell you as much about those cars an anyone because I made it all up. That article was a joke. There never were any GT350 station wagons.” The next thing I heard on the line were crickets. Then, after the bad news had sunk in, there was a weak, “Oh.” I asked John how far he had gotten on the car. He said that just about everything was done except the tailgate and rear window. I never heard from him again but someone told me that he did eventually complete the car. Since then I have received photos of a couple of other attempts. One was on display in a large car show (the Knott’s Berry Farm “Fabulous Fords,” if I recall). The owner even had threefoot-high enlargements of the Marque article on easels next to the car. Evidently this was another guy who didn’t catch the name of the author in the article. Or couldn’t pronounce it correctly. The car pictured on the previous page is probably the nicest example of them all. But when I look at it I can’t help wondering if the guy who built it really knows the entire story behind the GT350 station wagon.
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You can never tell when this stuff will turn up—or where. Forty-two years after these pictures were taken they showed up on Hemmings Motor News’ Internet blog <www.blog.hemmings.com> In 1966 John Murphy of Oakland, Maine was driving through a residential neighborhood in River Edge, New Jersey when they spotted this green Mustang station wagon. He said that as he was taking the pictures a second Mustang wagon pulled up, a white one with wood trim. The driver got out and started yelling at him that he wasn’t allowed to take pictures of the car. Murphy and his pal took off without arguing. This was before the car appeared on the cover of Car and Driver; thus the desire for secrecy. It turns out the cars were built by the coachbuilder Intermeccanica in Turin, Italy. The project was commissioned by J. Walter Thompson, an advertising agency headquartered in Detroit which had the Ford account. The idea was to present the cars to Ford as an idea for a future model. Intermeccanica had also been contracted by Jack Griffith to build a replacement for his TVR-based Griffith, but that company closed after only a handful of cars were built. The idea of a Mustang station wagon, based on the 1965-1966 models, continues to spark the imagination and to spawn clones.
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SHELBY AMERICAN’S TWO-CAR TRANSPORTER
Ever seen this Shelby American transporter? We hadn’t, so when SAAC member Kieth Champine sent us an e-mail with it attached, we sat up and paid attention. We recalled speaking with Bernie Kretzschmar, at some point, about testing each completed R-Model at Willow Springs prior to delivery. When two cars were completed at the same time, they were brought out to Willow to be track-tested on a dual-car transporter. On this trip, however, it was a pair of 427 S/Cs getting the ride. Kretzschmar doesn’t have a computer so we e-mailed a picture to our go-to guy, Chuck Cantwell. He confirmed that this was the transporter used when they needed to bring two cars to the track to test. We then went back to Champine and asked him where he saw the transporter picture and he retraced his steps along the Internet information highway. He had originally been searching “Riverside 1963” and found a picture of Carroll Shelby and Miss California Sports Car, Lori Campbell at the Riverside Grand Prix in October 1963. This picture came from an unusual site (magneticbrain.blogspot.com). Among the weird collection of photos on this site was the transporter picture.
Champine followed “blogspot’s” source, which led him to the “clubcobra” website. They had a bunch of photos which were supplied by Richard Messersmith. We recognized that name. Richard Messersmith was the original owner of CSX3018. He purchased it in March 1966. It is the Guardsman Blue 427 comp car on top of the transporter, and this photo was taken as the car was on its way to Willow Springs to be track-tested by Ken Miles. After that, Messersmith picked it up and went directly to the Carroll Shelby School of High Performance Driving to take that course. He then went back to Chicago and began racing it in SCCA events. In fact, when we were searching for an original 8” x 10” plaque that all graduates of the school received, Messersmith still had his and was good enough to loan it to us so we could have exact duplicates made by SAAC member David Felstein. Once we had an original we announced that copies would be made for as many people who wanted them. About 30 or so members jumped in and we had exactly that many made. They were engraved with each person’s name, just like the originals.
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STOP THE PRESSES - HELL HAS FROZEN OVER! The buzz around Northwest Arkansas was punctuated with exclamation points as word began to spread that 6S1936 was being exhumed from its more than two decades of interment in Alan Christman’s garage. Christman was something of a local hero when he bought the ex-Hertz car more than 36 years ago for a figure reported to be just shy of $1,000 (a not inconsequential sum back in those days). The test drive consisted of a 100 mph blast through a Fayetteville residential area early in the morning with empty beer cans rattling around on the floors and newspapers swirling. It was the stuff of which stories are told and retold to where they become an integeral part of a car’s history.
Twenty years ago Christman parked backed by a T-10 four-speed. The original the car with the intention of eventually aluminum oil pan will be replaced with a giving it a complete once-over. That in- Canton steel pan. Christman found the cluded swapping the 2x4V set-up for a ‘65 original alternator with a large-diameterCobra intake and a 715 Holley and refur- pulley that had been tossed in the bushes bishing of everything else. But like a lot of by his brother decades ago—long before long range projects, the longer it sat the parts like this were deemed rare and acfarther away actual the actual starting quired the value they have today. point got. Things were piled around it and We’ll be reporting on 6S1936 as before anyone noticed, it became entombed progress continues. We have a mole keepand almost forgotten. ing an eye on things. Then something happened. Details on this epiphany are hazy but they it’s likely Christman experienced a moment of clarity during which he realized that he wasn’t getting any younger and neither was his GT350. If we wanted to see the actual results of twenty years worth of day dreams he better get started. Everything was stripped out of the car in preparation for a visit to the body shop for torque boxes and a floorpan transplant. The original engine is being replaced by a 327 CID stroker 302
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Here’s an interesting sidenote: in virtually every long-term project there is always some obscure part or detail that is addressed which seems out of place when compared to everything else. A misplaced priority. Christman’s stroked 302, yielding 327 cubic inches, prompted this unique take-off on the 289 Hi-Po air cleaner decal. Most people would see this as a finishing touch, added at the end. But maybe it is a talisman, used to bring good luck to the project and inspire continuing momentum.
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MIS TRANS-AM TRAGEDY AND THE MYSTERY ‘66 GT350 A good friend of SAAC member Ron Roehm of Elkins Park, PA recently sent him an original race program from the first Trans-Am race of the 1969 season, a four-hour event at Michigan International Speedway on May 15, 1969. Inside was a yellowed newspaper clipping reporting Shelby team driver Horst Kwech’s tragic accident early in the race. Kwech’s ‘69 Boss 302 spun in the rain and went through a wooden fence into a crowd, killing one spectator and injuring a dozen more. The photo in the article showed some of the injured victims still on the ground, around a mud-splattered ‘66 GT350 which appears to have escaped being damaged. Roehm scanned it and emailed it to ‘65-’66 registrar Howard Pardee, who passed it on for inclusion in here.
Parnelli Wins; Fan Killed, 12 Hurt Cambridge Junction, Mich.– (UPI)–Against the backdrop of tragedy on a rain-spattered course, Parnelli Jones chucked aside human error and came up a winner. Jones won the Trans-America race at Michigan International Speedway yesterday after officials upheld a Ford Motor Company protest that his laps were counted incorrectly in the four-hour race. But the Torrance, Californian’s victory, declared nearly four hours after the race was finished, was marred by an accident in which one spectator was killed and a dozen others injured. Horst Kwech, driving a
Shelby Boss Mustang, lost control at the 12th lap while going 120 miles per hour. The Gurnee. Ill. driver threw the car into a skid to reduce his speed but it spun around and rammed broadside thorough a wooden fence into a crowd of standing spectators. Boy, 12, Among Injured Durward Fletcher, 43, an American Motors Corp. dealer from lansing, died shortly afterwards at Foote Hospital in nearby Jackson after suffering head injuries. Reported in critical condition was Dean Yinger, 12, of Livonia, in University Hospital in Ann Arbor.
The other injured, including Fletcher’s wife, Lorna, 48, were in fair to good condition. Three persons were treated and released. Jones’ turnabout victory came when raceway officials, under protest from the Ford team, rechecked timing and scoring charts. “We have reviewed the official scoring and found a discrepancy,” officials of the MIS said as they slipped mark Donohue, Media, Pa., from first 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 the 344-mile, 104-lap race after a total purse of $35,000 in the initial race of the Trans-Am series. Averaging 85.99 MPH as the leader of a four-man team of Mustang drivers, he whipped through in four hours and 10 seconds. Donohue completed 103 laps in the Roger Penske Chevrolet Camaro for $3,500 prize money and six points toward the manufacturer’s championship compared to Jones’ nine. Placing third in a Pontiac Firebird was Jerry Titus , Encino, Calif. with 103 laps. One lap off that pace was Bob Tullius, Falls Church, VA. in a Javelin.
BLACKTOP NATIONALS IN WICHITA, KANSAS The Blacktop Nationals was a threeday extravaganza sponsored by FoMoCo in Wichita, Kansas this past August 26-29. It consisted of a car and bike show, drag racing, a cruise night, a collector car auction, manufacturer’s midway and a few more family-oriented events. One of the highpoints was the unveiling of Ford’s 2012 Boss 302 Mustang with the Laguna Seca package. Over 700 cars and motorcycles of every type were on display: street rods, customs, sports cars and probably every special interest vehicle for 300 miles.
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SAAC member Fred Hilbert was invited by Ford to put his RModel, 5R094, on display for the weekend.
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MEET THE HOT ONES To paraphrase Forrest Gump, our inbox is like a box of chocolates. We never know what we’re going to get. SAAC member Tony Porte of Monee, IL passed along some photos that were taken by a friend’s father in the mid-1960s. The guy worked for Goodyear, in the corporate headquarters in Akron, Ohio, and one of his assignments was to transport some race cars around the country, showing them at various Goodyear dealers to promote the tire company’s involvement in racing. The events were called “Meet The Hot Ones,” and two of the cars were a Cobra Daytona Coupe and one of the All American racers’ Gurney Eagle Indy cars. These photos were taken at a Goodyear dealer’s somewhere in Pennsylvania. Tony asked, “Can these cars be identified somehow?” You came to the right place, vulcanbreath. The Gurney Eagle was an easy one.We only had to google “1967 Indy 500” to come up with a list of entrants. Car #42 was driven by Jerry Grant. He finished 20th. He went out on Lap 162 with a broken piston. He qualified 30th. The winner, by the way, was A.J. Foyt in a Coyote-Ford. Identifying the Daytona Coupe was almost as easy. A quick check with the latest registry revealed that the car was CSX2299. At the season’s end, 2299 was returned to Shelby American and sporadically used for promotional purposes. It was sent to the Goodyear Tire Service Center (Indianapolis, IN) in 6/67 to “remain on semi-permanent loan to Goodyear for display at various shows which they anticipate having in the near future.” Obviously, these photos were taken at one of the stops on the schedule. According to the registry footnote, it was rumored that Goodyear shipped the car to Florida for a show, following which the car sat at a Ford dealership until they called Shelby American to ask exactly when they were going to come and remove it. The response was, essentially, “Thanks—we lost track of it and forgot it was out there.”
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BUILT FORD TOUGH SAAC’s Ford GT registrar, Jeff Burgy, sent along these “before” and “after” photos of an ‘06 Ford GT Heritage model. Apparently the Ford F-150 isn’t the only vehicle that Ford builds “tough.” It’s difficult to imagine, but the driver of this car walked away from the accident. After leaving a Southern California highway backwards at an estimated 65 mph and taking out a few trees along the way (note the driver's door and rear clamshell), the GT plummeted to the bottom of a ravine and landed on its wheels. The driver was a West Coast tuner who specializes in Ford GTs. After the dust cleared it was discovered that the aforementioned tuner did not carry business insurance to cover the accident, leaving the car’s suddenly unhappy owner to armwrestle with his own insurance company— even though he was a thousand miles away from his car when the accident occurred. There are three things you should take away from this incident: 1) Make sure your insurance policy is in force and up-todate (with a current appraisal on file). 2) Be very cautious who you let drive your car. 3) No SAAC member is likely to buy this wreck once it is repaired without knowing what he or she is getting, because the registrar keeps track of things like this—by VIN. Just because a car has a clean CARFAX doesn’t guarantee that it’s a virgin. If there is no police report, and the owner has the resources (which most Ford GT owners do), a car can be “brought back to life” with no record of the damage. While some Forums discourage (or outright outlaw) discussion of accidents in order to “protect” their members, you have to wonder if they wouldn’t be better serving their members by letting them know about accident-damaged vehicles. The Shelby American issue #77, Spring 2009, carried an article titled “The Whoops Factor.” It carried photos of fourteen Ford GTs which had suffered serious damage, mostly due to poor judgement by their drivers. One of the points made in the article was that about 25% of these cars may have been involved in accidents— from minor to horrendous—because they are fast, powerful, and can get away from an inexperienced driver in the blink of an eye. This is something to keep in mind as these cars travel down the food chain, from owner to owner, as “used cars.” And it is one of the reasons why it is so important to maintain an accurate registry—something that only a club like SAAC can do.
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Summer/2010 12
SHELBY AMERICANA
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There is a difference between a photograph and a snapshot. A snapshot is what you get when you put your eye to your camera’s viewfinder or hold the camera up and look at the image on the screen and snap off a shot. A photograph, on the other hand, is what you get when you consider aspects other than the car you see in the viewfinder. You plan the photograph before you press the shutter. It is the result of some forethought, not just a pleasant coincidence of standing behind your camera and pointing it in the direction of your car. Lately we’ve been looking at hundreds and hundreds of images of cars as we put the registry together. Most of them are snapshots. Only a few are photographs. To take a really good photograph you don’t have to have a thousand-dollar camera. And you don’t have to read a thick book on photography, or have years of experience. Our pal and SAAC member Curt Scott, a professional photographer, is sharing all of the things he has learned over the last thirty-five years. He waded through over 30,000 photographs to find the worst of the worst for the “don’t do this” examples and the best of the best to show you what is possible—and why. He’s packed it all into a seventeen-page PDF. To see it just click on the link in the yellow box at the top of this page. Curt Scott’s hefty resume includes being an automotive photo-journalist for the past twenty-plus years. He’s written several books and hundreds of articles and he’s shot thousands of photographs. He also runs a website you’re probably familiar with www.CobraCountry.com If you want to sell or buy a Cobra or a replica, this will either be your first stop or the website you eventually get to when you’ve been disappointed by all of the rest of the places you’ve looked. This is the best condensed photography guide we’ve seen, so we’re happy that we were able to strong-arm Curt into letting us provide it to you as a PDF. He sent along a note stressing that the overriding
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http://www.CobraCountry.com/CobraPhoTipsDipStix.html
factor in automobile photography is light. Color photography is about light—not shadow or darkness. Curt reminds us that Ansel Adams passed away long ago. For automotive photography you need lots of evenly-distributed light. Low-angle and horizontal light is always better than highoverhead midday sun. Always. Set your camera permanently on forced flash, so that the flash goes off every time you press the shutter. No exceptions, and especially when you’re out in bright sunlight.
Your camera’s flash is almost always positioned higher on the camera than the lens, so for almost all auto (and people) shots you should turn the camera upside down. This directs the flash where it’s needed—down low under the bodywork— so you can eliminate the harsh shadows under the car. It also brightens up the grille opening. This is just one of his common sense tips. You should read this guide before you take another picture.
We asked Curt to provide us with a couple of what he considered “good” photos to use to illustrate this 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 make it impossible to see the outline of the tires, or on dark cars, where the car’s bodywork stops and the shadow begins. Also note the neutral background with no distractions: no mailboxes, garbage cans or telephone poles. When someone takes a picture of their car, when they look through the viewfinder all they see is their car. And they love what they see. The problem is that they don’t see anything else.
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THE EAGLE EYE SLUGFEST CONTINUES What has become a good-natured Eagle Eye war between Jim Hutchison and Ken Young continues. They seem to be attempting to out-do themselves with every issue, but we see their pickings as getting a little thin in places. After all, how much of this stuff can they find? One thing seems certain: no one else has stepped into the ring to challenge them.
Ken Young got his hands on a copy of the latest Toscano mail order catalog (www.designtoscano.com). How he got on their mailing list is a story for some other day. This catalog originally carried unique wall hangings and garden sculptures, most based on medieval subjects or Egyptian artifacts. But the last few years there has been a subtle shift towards heavy goth items; lots of skulls, swords, witches and gargoyles. We wondered where these goths got this stuff because Halloween only comes once a year. But not for Young. We’ll have to keep an eye on him. Somebody said One of the things in this month’s bag ‘o they thought they saw him wearing a tricks sent to us by Jim Hutchison is the black hooded cape one night at the convencover of this 1993 clothing and accessories tion. The faux-gilt finish of this 11” x 16” catalog. You shouldn’t have to look too hard cobra sculpture is, should we say, striking. to see the (aftermarket) Cobra steering It sticks out of the wall a full foot. At $89.95 it’s not exactly cheap. wheel in the upper right.
How can you overlook the “Tristar Cobra Force” shotgun? Hutchison couldn’t. He spotted this Turkish-made scatter gun in the August 2010 issue of American Rifleman magazine. It’s a 12-gauge, of course and it looks like it has all the bells and whistles of a tactical shotgun: 20” barrel, pistol grip, flash suppressor and extended magazine. But the magazine only holds five rounds, so it’s not everything it seems. Very uncobra-like.
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Cobra foot fetish? You came to the right place. Hutchison spotted these shoes in a Neiman Marcus catalog. With all the catalogs he looks through, when does he find time to drive CSX3327? These are made by Cole-Haan, low wedge with 1” heels if you must know. At $158 a pair, you won’t see the wearer scuffing them across the concrete floor as she lays on her back and helps you align the transmission you are reinstalling. “A little to the right, honey. That’s perfect. Hold it right there...”
Is it our imagination or is there just a lot of stuff in catalogs these days? Young spotted this model of a 427 Cobra engine in a Genuine Hot Rod Hardware catalog. No surprise as he is heavy into street rods. The description states that the model is 7 1/2” long, 4 1/2” wide and 6 1/2” high. It’s correct down to the finned valve covers, dual quads and headers. It is wired and plumbed and the pulleys turn. It has even been “inspected by the Shelby Engineering Group for authenticity.” This is something that you can put on your desk and fiddle with during those long, sleep-inducing phone calls.
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When Roger Mitchell of Spokane, WA was working on his car, 67411F4A02563, he had a sense that it looked familiar. Sure enough, the cover of The Shelby American #67 used a factory photo of the production line with a car positioned almost exactly like #2563. He had his camera handy and sent us thia picture.
No one can deny the high interest (and corresponding participation) in classic car auctions today. You have only to refer to Barrett-Jackson, Russo and Steele, RM, and especially Mecum, which, through the magic of cable television, seems to be holding an auction every week (we know... we know—these programs are repeated often on cable; we said “seems”). So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Carlisle Productions is jumping into the auction business. We received this brochure in the mail advertising an auction during this year’s fall meet. If it is successful, you’ll see one in the spring. We have to admit that we’re not surprised. Large automotive swap meets have been slowly shrinking over the past few years, due to the increasing use of Internet auctions like eBay, and the dwindling number of NOS and used parts available after 30+ years of swap meets. Evolve or die. And how about that brochure cover? We’ve made this observation numerous times before. Whoever put this promotional piece together had their choice of every collector car you can name—and there are hundreds. So which one did they pick to grab your attention?
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Summer/2010 15
BROCK OF THE MONTH CLUB Ok, all of you Dan Gurney acolytes— listen up. If you ever wanted to have Dan Gurney’s autograph, this may be your only chance. Mr. Gurney recently stopped giving autographs because he didn’t like the idea of signing things for what he thought were his fans, only to see them being peddled on eBay for a hefty premium because they had been autographed. So, if you send him something you’d like him to sign, it will be politely returned. Who can blame him? But all is not lost. Brock Racing Enterprises presently has a few dozen posters which have been signed by both Dan and Peter Brock. In case you don’t recognize the photo, it’s the famous Jesse Alexander shot of Gurney driving into the sun in CSX2286 at LeMans in 1965. The poster is black & white, 24” x 36” and when they are gone, so will your change to get Dan Gurney’s autograph... unless you want to get www.bre2.net gouged on eBay.
And speaking of Dan Gurney, he was honored at this year’s Monterey Historics and they managed to assemble 20 cars that spanned his racing history. Getting such a large number and wide variety of cars together at the same time is no small feat. You can only wonder how much they had to shell out in travel expenses to get these cars there. Viewed from another perspective, however, if you have 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 tribute like 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 on static 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.
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Summer/2010 16
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 up out of nowhere; they weren’t the first muscle car on the scene. This book provides some context and background about the history of the American muscle car. It’s not heavy on Shelbys—in fact the only one profiled is a 1966. But let’s not obsess on that. This is a very nice little book: competently written (although a couple of errors jumped out at us, like a production figure of 561 cars in 1965—but we’ll overlook that). It is organized into six chapters which use examples of various muscle cars to provide the context. The cars are not presented in chronological order and at first we thought this was odd, until we saw how Mueller was approaching the subject. Each car gets four pages, most of which are taken up by photographs. They are extremely clear and crisp, and Mueller, wearing his photographer’s hat, proves he knows his way around a camera. The cars he chose are also perfectly restored examples which appear to be absolutely correct (to our eye). One of our biggest criticisms of books like this is that the cars always seem to have one or two “imperfections.” An owner has chosen to overlook some detail (something is the wrong color or finish, or a part is incorrectly installed). Thankfully the cars in these photographs exhibit none of this. That alone makes this book a stand-out. The first chapter is titled, “Muscular Milestones” and it begins with the 1955 Chrysler C-300, one of the first real muscle cars. Within the chapter the cars are presented in chronological order (‘61 Impala SS409, ‘64 GTO, ‘64 Olds 442, ‘64 1/2 Mus-
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tang Hi-Po, etc. all the way up to a ‘74 Trans-Am 455 Super-Duty. It is an excellent representation of basic muscle cars. The next chapter is “Factory Hot Rods” and it contains cars that were a step beyond the standard production line offerings: ‘62 Dodge max Wedge 413, ‘64 Thunderbolt, ‘65 Mustang SOHC A/FX, ‘67 Camaro Z-28. ‘69 Boss 429, ‘69 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II, ‘70 Plymouth Superbird. The third chapter, “Let’s Get Small,” starts with the ‘64 Barracuda Formula S and runs through the ‘67 Camaro SS396, ‘68 1/2 Mustang Cobra Jet, ‘69 Dodge dart Swinger 340, ‘69 Nova SS396 to the /70 Duster 340. Chapter four is titled “In Cahoots” and contains only six cars: a ‘66 Shelby (representing the Carroll Shelby story), a ‘67 Nickey Camaro, a ‘69 Yenko Camaro, a ‘69 Hurst/Olds and ‘69 Hurst SC/Rambler and a ‘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 muscle car era, all 1970 models: Chevelle SS454, Buick GNX, Olds 4-4-2 W-30, Plymouth Hemi-Cuda, Camaro Z-28, Torino 429 Cobra Jet, Boss 302 and Cougar Eliminator. The final chapter is rounded out with the three surviving muscle cars: an ‘07 Shelby GT500, an ‘08 Dodge Challenger SRT8 and a ‘10 Camaro SS. An appropriate end point. The whole concept of this book works. The mix of cars is well thought out and the order of appearance is logical. The photography is worth the price all by itself. It would have been nice to see this book in a large, coffee table format because that’s what these photos demand, but we really shouldn’t quibble. All in all, a job well done. If you like muscle cars—and who among the readers of this magazine doesn’t?—this book is worth reading. And the pictures will make you drool, so have a hand towel near by.
The MUSTANG DYNASTY by John M. Clor. 11˝ x 9 3/4˝ hardbound; 160 pages; 130 color photos, 48 black & white; one CD and 15 special reproductions of Mustang memorabilia. Published by Becker & Mayer, Bellevue, WA www.beckermayer. com $24.95 Not many people know more about the Mustang-Ford connection than John Clor. He was a Detroit newspaper writer and later moved to Autoweek as an editor. He also worked in public relations and marketing communications for Ford. Today he manages Internet communications for the Ford Performance Group and Ford Racing. John has been involved with Mustangs almost since the very beginning and as such, he has a unique perspective on both the car and the company. It is a different perspective than any you’ve read in any other Mustang book. It melds the car, its engineering and its marketing aspects. It is chronologically ordered and it includes every model change. If you thought you knew everything about Mustangs, think again. There’s one book missing from your reference shelf: this one. The beginning of each chapter has two or three reproductions of Mustang memorabilia: patches, tickets, a warranty card, press announcements and the like. Pictured are the cover of a ‘65 Mustang owner’s manual and a brochure for the original Mustang. This is a neat touch which we’ve never seen in any other book.
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One of the neatest things we’ve seen in a long time was recently shown to us by Doug and Kathy Cresanta. It is a small, hardcover book that is 20 pages long, and it is filled with nothing but color photos of Doug’s car, 6S188. So, how can you get one filled with photos of YOUR car? And what will it cost you? Good news on both fronts. All you need to do is take about 100 good quality detail shots of your car. In Doug’s case he just happened to have a friend who was a professional photographer. Once you have the photos go to www.shutterfly.com for the details. A book like this is the ultimate ego massage. Imagine a coffee table type book with photos exclusively of your car. The finished 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, one for your neighbor who was so understanding during those late nights and, oh yeah— a little salt in the wound for the car’s previous owner.
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Those were the days... As he was making plans to attend this year’s convention at Infineon Raceway, SAAC member Earl Morris of Richmond, VA came across this picture posted on the SAAC forum. It was taken by Don Johnston the last time we had a convention at the Sonoma track. That would have been at SAAC-13, in early July 1989. Earl [in white shorts] is pictured watching the on-track action at Sears Point. He drove 6S2301 cross-country from Virginia to Los Angeles, and then took the Pacific Coast Highway north to the convention. And then back home. By the time he arrived his odometer was heavier by 6,700 miles.
Not much gets past Tony Spina from Glendale, NY. He found these Cobra cable ties on a hardware company’s website and was immediately lost in a wistful reverie about detailing the wiring harness of a CSX4000. He was especially taken by the “sleek Cobra head” on the ratcheting end.
Once in a while we get a question from someone who is not exactly sure what our reference to an “Eagle Eye” is when we use the term in this column. We’ve been throwing that around for 35 years and it hasn’t really changed. Essentially it is someone who has the ability to pick a Shelby or Cobra (or a reference to one of those names) out of something 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 page on the Internet and this news item popped up on his screen. The picture showed rioting LA Lakers fans spilling into the street and holding up traffic. One of the cars? A new white and blue-striped Shelby GT350. THAT’S an Eagle-Eye!
One of the neatest things we saw at SAAC35 were these full color lithos printed on canvas. They look like original art, ready for framing. For more info contact Michael Holmes:
holmes@racingdivision.com
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Summer/2010 19
S
AAC-35 had to be a West Coast convention. There was no doubt about that. The only questions were, “where” and “when”? While it always gave us a warm and fuzzy feeling at a convention to announce where the next one would be held, truth be known, at SAAC-34 we didn’t have a clue. August of 2009 found SAAC in a transitional phase. The legal problems with Carroll Shelby had been put to bed. As much as we chafed at the idea that we could not discuss the details of the settlement—and members continued to ask, almost non-stop—it was part of the agreement that we signed and we had to live with it. Besides, there were plenty of other, more important items on the front burners. The club had been reconstituted as a not-forprofit corporation. There was a new board of directors who were taking a hands-on approach to running the club on a day-to-day basis. We were also struggling through a sea change from printed and mailed material to using the internet and email for communications with club members, and we had not yet found a comfortable balance. We did, however, discover that when we jokingly referred to those without computers in their lives as “mossbacks and Luddites,” any sense of humor they might have had instantly evaporated. One of the agenda items on the Board’s list at the beginning of September was the need to form a convention planning committee. This would be an important first step regardless of where the convention would be held. What happened next was the equivalent of lining everyone up and saying, “Whoever wants to be the convention director, please take one step forward.” Everyone except Howard Pardee quickly took one step to the rear. The next piece of the puzzle turned up in September, when Kopec received a call from Bob Shaw. For those not familiar with that name, Shaw is a Southern California
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SAAC member who is the sparkplug behind the Shelby American employee directory which helps Shelby American’s alumni keep in touch with each other. He also organizes the annual reunions which allow them to gather every year. Shaw put on the 11th employee reunion at the NHRA Museum in Pomona, California at the end of March, and during that event the talk had turned to the possibility of a SAAC national convention in Southern California, which could host another huge
reunion, like the ones that had taken place at California Speedway at SAAC-27 and SAAC-30. “What have you got going in 2011?” Shaw asked. 2011? Heck, we didn’t have anything going for 2010! Shaw had spoken with Lynn Park at the Pomona reunion. Park puts on the twice-a-year Cobra Owners Club of America (COCOA) open track at Willow Springs, and he was willing to give SAAC his spring date for a national convention. Now the ball was in SAAC’s court. Kopec called Lynn Park, and told
him that we had no plans for 2010, and a convention at Willow was possible. The last time we were there had been SAAC-9 in 1984. SAAC’s newly minted convention director made a junket to Southern California in October for an up-close and personal look at the track, the hotels and the COCOA event. The date for SAAC’s convention would be May 8, 9, 10th— Mother’s Day—of 2010. This was a couple of months earlier than usual for us. In the past, a big consideration was that most members would prefer not to have a convention when their kids were still in school. The result was our customary summer date. However, it was pointed out that as the club’s membership has aged, an early date was no longer a problem because most members’ kids were no longer in school. They now had kids of their own, so grandpa’s convention date wouldn’t have much of an affect on them. Pardee roughed out a schedule and had meetings with the hotel sales managers. He was joined by Forrest Straight and Gary Underwood, both of whom had previously had seats on SAAC’s board and had assisted at past conventions. Then they met with Lynn Park. Melding the SAAC convention into Park’s event would neither be easy nor seamless. He usually ran between 100 and 125 cars during his two-day open track, which was primarily a participants’ event. Only a handful of spectators showed up. SAAC would need to accommodate close to 300 open track drivers with, perhaps, 1000 or more spectators. We would need to find a place for two car shows (the COCOA events had no car shows) and we expected a number of large semi-trailers—both car carriers and manufacturers’ displays—which would overwhelm Willow’s paddock. There were a lot of other issues that would require compromises and by the time Pardee returned
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with a fistful of notes, it had become obvious that holding SAAC-35 at Willow Springs would not be a slam-dunk. The May date would require an accelerated work schedule and would cut down on the time people would have to make plans and pre-register. A conference call was held as soon as Pardee returned from his recon. SAAC’s board (Ron Richards, Dirk Gasterland, Curt Vogt and Jay Talbott) along with Kopec (now a director emeritus) listened to Pardee’s travelogue and then tried to armwrestle with the logistics. Meanwhile, Kopec was sending out back-channel feelers to SAAC’s Northern California region. They always scheduled their Mini Nats in August or early September. Would they be interested in sharing their date with SAAC? It turned out they would. We began to sketch out a convention at Infineon Raceway at the end of August, while, at the same time, starting to throttle back on planning for Willow Springs. Comparing the two, it turned out that there were fewer logistical problems at Infineon, and that was good. The track was much more expensive to rent (on the order of about $30,000 a day) and that was bad. But the late August date allowed plenty of time for convention planning and also for participants to make their plans and register at a more leisurely pace (good). We also estimated that having the convention up north would draw more people from the south than an event down south would draw people from the north, and a large attendance would be necessary to help pay the tab. When everything was considered, there were just more pros to having SAAC-35 at Infineon than at Willow Springs. The change from south to north, unfortunately, left Bob Shaw—who had originally lit the fuse—to have to plan his annual Shelby American reunion around the COCOA’s Mother’s Day event at Willow. Most of the Shelby American alumni lived in the south, and as they were all well into their 70s (and older), traveling any distance (such as to Northern California) was problematic. Shaw knew that keeping the reunions in Southern California would ensure high participation. Moving it away would just about guarantee that no more than a handful of former Shelby guys would attend. Once the decision was made, Lynn Park was informed and he was then free to make plans for his event at Willow without
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a long list of additional requirements. Our attention turned to Nor Cal. The regional leadership appointed Chris Davis to act as a liaison between the region and the national, and we began putting together lists of questions, a rough schedule and a checklist of requirements. On paper, SAAC-35 looked like a real winner. It would have something for everyone. By the time the convention rolled around, the three days were filled with as many activities as we could squeeze into the schedule. The normal open track event was complimented by a vintage race. The Historic Trans-Am Group also accepted our invitation to join the festivities. On top of that, Infineon normally hosted major league drag racing events and could be re-
the area before. Twenty cars—a mix of new, old and rental cars—assembled at the hotel at about 5:30 p.m. and took off on a pre-planned route of almost exactly 60 miles. It meandered along the Shoreline Highway to Muir Beach, Stimson Beach and Point Reyes Station. It was a scenic drive and everyone who participated thought it was well worth the time. Infineon Raceway was being rented during on Thursday by some kind of driver’s school and SAAC did not have access to the paddock until around 4 p.m. It was important to get the big rigs into place first, before the single-car trailers created an obstacle course. People who had rented garages were also anxious to settle in. Between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. there was a lot of activity in the paddock and garage area as early arrivals staked their claims. Meanwhile, back at the hotel, Mark Hovander had planned a special program which revolved around 5R002, which its recent new owner, John Atzbach, brought to town for the convention. Hovander had collected every photo he could get his hands on of 5R002 (probably about a hundred) and assembled them into a powerpoint presentation. He also assembled Peter Brock, Chuck Cantwell, Jerry Schwarz (the head fabricator of the GT350 race cars) and Bernie Kretzschmar (who also worked as a fabricator on the cars). ‘65-’66 registrar Howard Pardee was also there and Rick Kopec was at his elbow, to keep him honest. The presentation began with a showing of the 1965 movie “Shelby Goes Racing With Ford.” It was followed by the photos. As one was shown on the screen, everyone took configured into a quarter mile strip in less turns making observations and comments than a half hour. This allowed an almost about as many details as they could point full schedule on Friday morning and early out. Hovander took the role of moderator. afternoon, and by 3 p.m. cars could be The presentation started about 7 p.m. and paired off and smoking their tires down broke up about 10 p.m. In three hours, just the quarter mile. Throw in a swap meet, a about everything that could have been said manufacturer’s midway, two car shows and about 5R002 had been said. About a dozen special guests like Peter Brock, Lew other enthusiasts had been invited to atSpencer, Bob Bondurant and Chuck tend (it was after, all a “privately sponCantwell and we were on our way. All that sored” event). But when the lights came up was left was a massive amount of planning at the end of the evening, about thirty adand a monumental amount of hard work. ditional convention attendees had quietly SAAC conventions sometimes have a slipped into the back of the darkened way of taking on a life of their own. At first room, drifting in singly or in pairs. Some we envisioned Thursday as an arrival day, enthusiasts seem to have a well-developed with a cruise through some of the more sixth sense about “special events” like this, scenic highways surrounding the track. We and like sharks able to detect one drop of realized it wasn’t something that everyone blood in a hundred million gallons of would want to participate in, but it was ap- water, they find it despite the hotel’s petizing to those who had never been to labyrinth-like layout.
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The Thursday Afternoon Road Tour
Gentlemen, start your engines. The road tour was organized by Nor Cal member Earl Castillo who was familiar with the area’s more scenic roads. It was about sixty miles and everyone who participated had a great time. No speeding tickets were issued.
The headquarters hotel, the Embassy Suites in San Rafael, was a first class facility. Nor Cal uses it whenever they have an event at Infineon; it’s only about 20 minutes from the track. Everyone especially liked the happy hour every night from 5:30 to 6:30 (free drinks in the atrium) and the complimentary breakfast buffet every morning (including eggs cooked to order).
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 the road. Just knowing he was in the group made it a Big Deal.
Peter Brock drove his Superformance Daytona Coupe from Washington State. Rumor has it that the car is now powered by an alien method of propulsion. He refused to open the hood all weekend.
We’ll send a modest prize to everyone who correctly identifies what the letters on Brock’s license plate stand for. Email your guess to
saac@saac.com
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SUMMER/2010 22
Shelby American History: Pay Attention – Class is in Session.
There is history everywhere at a national convention, but you have to look 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 was one of three pieces of rolling history brought to SAAC-35 by the good folks at the Larry Miller Museum in Tooele, UT.
CSX2431 was a USRRC competition roadster. Ken Miles modified the suspension using adjustable Heim-joints and he campaigned it in the latter part of the 1964 season and throughout 1965. It was used as a development car and represented the final evolution of the small block Cobra race car. SAAC member Tom Benjamin brought it to the convention to display it during the three days.
After winning Lemans in 1966, Henry Ford II decided to defend the championship by coming back the following year—with a totally new car. The MK II GT40s had reached the outer limits of development so the MK IV was created. The first one, #J4, was entered at Sebring in 1967, driven by Mario Andretti and Bruce McLaren. It won running away. J4 was another of the Miller Museum cars.
CSX2385 is another USRRC cutback door Cobra. It was originally raced by Mack Yates, a Ford dealer from Kirkwood, MO. It was purchased from him a few years ago by former Ford dealer and Cobra racer Dan Gerber. Gerber had raced CSX2488, another USRRC car, in 1965 and bought it back in 2000 with the intention of vintage racing it. However, before the restoration was completed, Larry Miller made him an offer he couldn’t refuse and he sold it. Gerber then bought CSX2385 and put it in the same livery he raced CSX2488 in. His son Frank had it at SAAC-35 and entered it in the vintage race.
Gordon Gimbel has been racing his USRRC roadster, CSX2514, just about forever. He bought the car in 1976, displayed it at SAAC-1 in Oakland and raced at the Monterey Historics the following week. He has raced it in Monterey just about every year since then... and in every SAAC convention vintage race on the west coast.
The first of six Shelby American Cooper-Monaco King Cobras was at Infineon. Bill Hartman’s car, serial number CM-1-63, was restored exactly as it was in the fall of 1963 when Dave MacDonald drove it to win two out of the three West Coast Fall Series events, Riverside and Laguna Seca. Continuing those winning ways, the car won 1st Place in the Special Interest Competition class.
In 1967 Shelby American formed a Can-Am team. Three tubs were built by race car designer Len Terry. Two were completed and Jerry Titus drove one at Riverside. The car was full of innovations but suffered from a 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 being restored to vintage race. Greg Mitchell brought it to SAAC-35 and won the 3rd Place award in the Special Interest Competition class.
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SUMMER/2010 23
CSX3022 is an original 427 Cobra competition car that was raced by Bob Grossman in 1966, 1967 and 1968. After wrecking his original 427 comp car, CSX3016, at Watkins Glen, Grossman bought a replacement to race. It was painted gold with a black stripe. After Grossman stopped racing 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 signature thin red/white/blue center stripes, the same livery that CSX3016 had raced 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 recently purchased by SAAC member John Atzbach of Redmond, WA. The car has been untouched since it was discovered in a lean-to in Mexico in 1989. The next time you see this car it will very likely be restored back to the way it appeared in 1965.
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’t willing to wait his turn for an R-Model, so he bought a very early street car and prepared it himself. His first race was in early May of 1965, before most of the early production R-Models had even been delivered. Ron Tredway has been vintage racing it on the West Coast, on and off, since he bought it in 1983.
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 March 1963 by Dan Gurney, Lew Spencer and Dave MacDonald. It continued to be raced as a team car until late 1964. It was one of four historical cars brought to the convention by the Larry Miller Collection.
CSX2021 was raced by its original owner. By the time Frank Zizzo got his 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 racing and at one point he stripped off the paint to repair the body and decided to race it “naked.” The raw aluminum body looked nastier than a junkyard dog and the name stuck. It has Weber side-drafts and a magneto.
5R106 was originally purchased by Richard Jordan and raced in midwest SCCA events until 1970. At that point he put the car in storage until 1986. It was purchased by SAAC’s concours chairman Paul Zimmons who restored it. It won a Gold award at SAAC-18. It went through a series of owners who showed it. Finally Colin Comer bought it in 2007 and rescued it from the show circuit, vintage racing it at Roads America—a track where it had initially been raced by Jordan.
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SUMMER/2010 24
Friday Afternoon Quarter-Mile Action
Randy Gillis of Anaheim, CA became SAAC-35’s “Dragmeister” and nobody else could have done a better job. In 1974 he bought 6S477, a white Hertz car, for $1,000. It had been drag raced for the previous seven years. Gillis continued using it for that purpose and bracket-raced it every day that Orange County International Raceway was open for 21 straight years. The car’s body and chassis are still totally stock and he can crank out 10second quarter-mile runs all day long. When word went out that the location of SAAC-35 had changed to Infineon, Gillis was all over us like $2 perfume on a hooker. He realized that our experience with drag racing was about the same as our experience with astrophysics, and he volunteered to oversee a drag racing program. We thought about that for about ten seconds—the time it takes him to run a quarter-mile—and we agreed. He already knew the people at the track 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 from worrying not about filling the staging lanes up to worrying about having 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 halfhour the concrete barriers had been moved and the track was ready for the first pair of cars. The stars of the show were, of course, the two perfectly-restored Cobra Dragonsnakes which looked like they had just emerged from a time capsule. There were also a number of allout drag cars and a surprising number of original Shelbys and a Cobra or two whose owners had gotten quarter-mile fever. The strongest showing was by the now generation of Shelbys, although it was sort of surprising that not all of their owners had drag race experience. The cars were very responsive but the drivers quickly learned that there were tricks to successfully launching these cars and making a full run. It was a lot different from tromping down on it and blasting off to the next stoplight. But they 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 supercharger. It was dipping into the very low 12-second range. Hooking up wasn’t easy: they smoked all the way through first and had to be pedaled through second and third and those were the only gears they used. But did they fly!
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CSX2248 was another factory Dragonsnake, one of only five. Its racing days ended in 1968 and it was put in storage. The warehouse caught fire a year later and the car was pulled out before it was totally destroyed. It was parked outside. A dozen years later Carroll Shelby bought it with the intention of using the chassis (and legitimate serial number) as the basis for a McCluskey Daytona Coupe. Before that could happen it was rescued by Lynn Park who had Mike McCluskey totally restore the car to it’s 1965 “El Cid” drag racing livery.
CSX2357 was the second factory Dragonsnake. It was a rack-and-pinion car, replacing the worm-and-sector model. For 1965 it was given a coat of deep blue with plenty of metalflake. Drew Serb restored it exactly the way it was in 1965.
In 1965, at the AHRA Winternationals in Phoenix, the two Dragonsnakes faced off and the factory car trounced El Cid. SAAC-35 was the perfect opportunity to recreate the historic match-up.
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J Bittle has owned ‘67 GT500 #1917 since 1975. He found the engineless Shelby in a field in New Jersey. He installed a 427 low-riser and went street racing. That was then, this is now. At SAAC-35 it was powered by a very strong 427 tunnel-port. Bittle is no stranger to the quarter-mile. His car was the Shelby equivalent of shock and awe. Midway through the 1968 year Ford unleashed the Mustang 428 Cobra Jet. The purpose was to provide a car that would dominate the NHRA’s super stock ranks, and it did for a while. The Cobra Jet engine was Bob Tasca’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 400 h.p. and the ruse didn’t fool the NHRA for long. Ford put the engine in the Mustang creating a special, mid-year model. A total of 1,299 were made (1,128 in Dearborn and 171 in San Jose) in three body styles: 1,044 fastbacks, 221 coupes and 34 convertibles. The factory drag cars were white with a wide black stripe in the center of the hood. Curt Vogt loaded his early Cobra Jet on his transporter in Connecticut specifically to stretch his right leg at Infineon. He was rewarded with a trophy for the second fastest reaction time of the day. There’s nothing like the sound of a big block Cobra to make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Every time Colin Comer turned up the wick 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.
You would be hard-pressed to find someone more enthusiastic than Kei Iinuma. When someone complains that the convention is too far away we put that excuse to rest by pointing to Kei, who lives in Honolulu, Hawaii, has driven to almost every convention since SAAC-20 at Atlanta. And the car get exercised on the track—or strip.
Owners of the newest generation of Shelbys and Ford GTs were quarter-mile addicts. They came to the tree time after time. Was their enthusiasm bolstered by factory warranties? The cars were quick. A Ford GT turned 11.543 @ 127.78 going through the traps in third gear.
Even though 5019 has spent it’s life as a road race car, Ron Tredway could not resist the lure of the drag strip.
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SUMMER/2010 26
Concours Competition
SAAC-35 Class Cobra ‘66 Shelby ‘67 Shelby ‘68 Shelby ‘69 Shelby Boss Comp GT/CS Average
Authenticity 551.5 562.2 559.3 571.3 582.3 566.5 600.0 586.5 571.5
SAAC-35 Overall Point Averages Averages by Class
Workmanship 295.5 287.3 278.3 282.0 287.6 263.3 273.0 288.0 278.8
Total 847.0 846.5 819.5 853.3 869.9 829.8 873.0 874.5 849.0
High 876.0 885.5 885.5 872.0 886.0 835.0 873.0 874.5
Silver Award – Dan Nissim, CSX2553.
Low 818.0 807.5 753.5 833.5 845.8 824.5 873.0 874.5
Year 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 1991 1990 1989 1988 1987 1986 1985 1984 1983 1982
Max. Pts 900 900 900 900 900 900 450 450 450 450 450 450 450 450 450 450 450 450 450 450 450 450 450 450 300 300 300 300 300
Authenticity Avg. 570.0 574.5 547.1 547.8 568.2 536.4 280.1 273.3 263.9 282.5 264.4 282.4 283.7 274.3 273.6 269.1 266.3 280.4 253.3 269.3 266.1 271.9 258.9 276.2 180.0 174.0 167.6 162.8
Workmanship Avg. 278.0 284.3 276.8 268.1 271.9 269.0 135.2 137.5 137.3 133.7 140.5 132.1 139.3 141.0 141.6 139.3 136.7 140.2 125.5 128.0 130.1 127.8 127.1 135.5 80.0 80.5 77.3 74.0
Total 848.0 858.8 823.9 816.3 840.1 805.4 415.3 411.2 401.2 416.2 404.9 414.5 422.9 416.2 415.2 408.4 403.0 420.6 378.8 397.5 396.3 400.4 385.6 411.5 260.4 254.3 244.7 236.6 248.5
SAAC-35 SAAC-34 SAAC-33 SAAC-32 SAAC-31 SAAC-30 SAAC-29 SAAC-28 SAAC-27 SAAC-26 SAAC-25 SAAC-24 SAAC-23 SAAC-22 SAAC-21 SAAC-20 SAAC-19 SAAC-18 SAAC-17 SAAC-16 SAAC-15 SAAC-14 SAAC-13 SAAC-12 SAAC-11 SAAC-10 SAAC-9 SAAC-8 SAAC-7
CA PA NJ UT VA CA MI TN CA NC CT MI NC WI CT GA IN NY OR NC MI PA CA NC MI NJ CA MI NJ
Premiere Award – Michael Smith, 9F02M482594.
Silver Award – Hank Perry, 9F02R481847. Silver Award – Ed Kwiatkowski, 6S1761
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Premiere Award – Michael Poston, 67400F7A02793.
SUMMER/2010 27
SAAC-35 DIVISION I - STOCK ORIGINAL/NOS CARS Premiere - 1967 GT500, 67400F7A02793 Michael Poston, Lee’s Summit, MO Premiere - ‘69 GT350, 9F02M482598 Michael Smith, Fayetteville, AR Gold - ‘66 GT350, 6S2377 Linda & Len Perham, Campbell, CA Gold - ‘69 GT500, 9F02R481166 Daryl Royer, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Silver - 289 Cobra, CSX2553 Daniel Nissim, Danville, CA Silver - ‘70 Boss 429, 0F02Z142806 Todd Sprague, Bend, OR DIVISION II - STOCK NON-NOS CARS Gold - 289 Cobra, CSX2472 Linda & Len Perham, Campbell, CA Gold - ‘66 Shelby - 6S2265 John Atzbach, Redmond, WA Gold - ‘66 GT350, 6S242 Michael Querio, Alamo, CA
Concours Winners
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, CA Silver - ‘69 Boss 429, 9F02Z150430 Robert Leenstra, Kent, WA
Silver - ‘66 GT350, 6S1761 Edward Kwiatkowski, Pacific Grove, CA Bronze - ‘67 Gt500, 67400F5A01717 Russ Mayer, Novato, CA DIVISION 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
Silver Award – Ben & Stacey Wagoner, 8T02R210277-03661.
Gold Award – Daryl Royer, 9S02R481166.
Silver Award – Michael Fazio, 6S1211
Gold Award – Len & Linda Perham, 6S2377
Silver Award – Robert Leenstra, 9F02Z150430
Gold Award – Len & Linda Perham, CSX2472
Gold Award – Michael Herman, 8T02R216194-04425
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Gold Award – Steve Fowler, 8T02R201807-02466
Gold Award – Mike Jewell, 8T01S156529
Gold Award – Dan & Josafina Collins, 9F02M481897
Gold Award – Colin Comer, 5R106.
Silver Award – Todd Sprague, 9F02Z142806
Gold Award – John Atzback, 6S2265
Gold Award – Luis Chanes, 9F03R481539.
Bronze Award – Russ Mayer, 67400F5A01707.
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Gold Award – Michael Querio, 6S242
SUMMER/2010 29
Original Unrestored/Survivors
Survivor – Hank Williams, CSX2227
Survivor – Bill Blair, 6S2268
Survivor – Jerry Banicki, 8T03S177966-02444
Survivor – Bill Campbell, 67412F5A00589
Survivor – George Mariotti, 5S116
Survivor – Tom & Susan Armstrong, CSX2289
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Survivor – Dan Schneeweiss, 6S2268
SUMMER/2010 30
Saturday Afternoon Trans-Am Race The Historic Trans-Am Group is unique in the vintage racing world. A bunch of owners of 1966-1972 Trans-Am cars formed a loose-knit organization which allows only cars with proveable Trans-Am history (a car has to have been entered in at least one Trans-Am race and the owner must be able to prove it). Next, the car must be restored to the way it originally raced—both cosmetically and mechanically. And third, the group self-polices itself and there is a zero tolerance policy for updates, rulesstretching and state-of-the-art go-fast tricks. When these guys go racing it is as close to going back in time as you can get. It’s as good a show as you’ll see in vintage racing. That’s why we were thrilled when they decided to put SAAC-35 on their dance card this year.
Another notable aspect is that when they go racing, the TransAm guys go as a group. Vintage race organizers provide them a spot in the schedule and they guarantee a minimum number of cars on the grid. They run their own driver’s meeting and handle their own tech inspection. Every season they agree, in advance, on how many events they will do. This year they had a hole in their schedule between the Monterey Historics and Coronado. A lot of these guys are SAAC members, and most live on the West Coast, so we invited the group to join us at SAAC-35. Infineon is a very popular track with the Trans-Am guys and the convention was an excellent excuse to get on it one more time. Seeing those Trans-Am cars mix it up on Saturday afternoon was pure joy—especially for Boss 302 owners and enthusiasts, because almost every other car was a Boss car.
SAAC-35 Historic Trans-Am Race Results QUALIFYING POSITION
FINISHING POSITION
LAPS COMPLETED
1 GARY GOERINGER.................................... 22
FORREST STRAIGHT................ 1
8
57
GARY GOERINGER................... 2
8
2
JIM HAGUE................................ 3
8
45
MIKE EISENBERG..................... 4
8
5
KEN ADAMS............................... 5
8
25
CRAIG CONLEY......................... 6
8
15
DAVE MATHERS........................ 7
8
29
JOHN WATKINS......................... 8
8
91
DREW ALCAZAR....................... 9
8
85
STEVE EFTINOU....................... 10
7
70
NICK DE VITIS........................... 11
7
22
GORDON GIMBEL..................... 12
7
23
BRIAN FERRIN.......................... 13
6
21
JAY BITTLE................................ 14
4
28
CARL STEIN.............................. DNF
1
JOHN BARNES.......................... DNS
31
WALT BOENINGER.................... DNS
67
BOB MAREK.............................. DNS
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 DNS DNS DNS
‘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
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.
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Mike Eisenberg’s early Falcon is deceptively fast. His MAECO Motorsports 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. Originally a Mark Donohue/Roger Penske car, this Javelin was purchased by Roy Woods Racing and driven by George Follmer and Vic Elford. It is owned by SAAC member Ken Epsman but was driven by his pal Jim Hague. Seeing the car was like old home week for ex-Shelby fabricator Jerry Schwarz who was on the Roy Woods team as crew chief and worked on this car.
Ken Adam’s Boss race car was one of a handful of “body-in-white” race cars Ford built expressly for the 1969 Trans-Am series. They were all sold to race teams.
Gary Goeringer’s ‘68 notchback is the ex-Bill Maier car. Long time enthusiasts remember Maier as one of the early purveyors of Mustang and Shelby 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.
Gordon Gimbel’s Boss race car gets a lot of exercise now that he’s retired from captaining an oil tanker to Alaska and back on a weekly basis. Early on he ran a business called Cobra Performance which was one of the only sources for Cobra parts in the early 1970s.
When he’s not racing, Drew Alcazar is the guy who runs the Russo and Steele auction company. They specialize in Shelby and Ford performance cars and now you know why. This is the ex-Warren Tope car.
Nick DeVitis drove the ex-Dean Gregson ‘68 Trans-Am Mustang. Prior to that Gregson piloted GT350 R-Model 5R101 in the Northeast. He was the performance sales manager at Tasca Ford and later at Harr Ford— both Shelby dealers.
JBA – Jay Bittle American is another well known name in the Shelby world. Jay has been a SAAC member since the very beginning. His wellknown speed emporium in San Diego produces exhaust headers as well as doing performance car work. His car is a rolling example of his work.
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Everyone in SAAC knows Craig Conley for his Paradise Wheels company. They restore and reproduce Shelby wheels and are also the onestop shop for Paxton superchargers and parts. His Trans-Am Boss is a frequent competitor on the Historic Trans-Am circuit.
SUMMER/2010 32
Saturday Evening Program at the Embassy Suites Saturday’s 7 p.m. dinner was preceeded by a cocktail hour and no sooner were the almost 450 or so people seated than attentive waiters began to set plates down on the tables. It quickly became obvious that this year’s evening program would be a little different than previous ones. The large screen at the end of the ballroom was a sure sign of this. A video camera was trained on the podium so that, like a JumboTron in a sports stadium or rock concert, people in the audience who weren’t able to get a good 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: a convention competition comprised of five “events” (one drag run; one timed lap at speed around Infineon’s road circuit; a 35-mile road rally where questions were asked about things seen along the way; a scavenger hunt in the flea market; and a blueberry pie-eating contest). Points were to be assessed for each activity and the winner would receive a new 2011 Shelby GT350. Was it real or not? More than a dozen eager contestants quickly signed up and they were told that information, details and rules would be forthcoming. That left them salivating. A few days later everyone in the club received an e-mail blast—on April first, as it turned out. Some members figured it out immediately but some held out hope that it was for real. A side-note that the event would be covered by “Top Gear” and shown as a half-hour program added to the credibility and increased the excitement. Then came the Hitler video parody. The whole thing doubledback 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 Saturday evening program. Then it was announced that it had not been a trick and that ten entrants had been selected and had actually competed, albeit surreptitiously, over the past two days. The points had been tallied and a leaderboard was shown on the big screen, looking very official. The winner was announced and Forrest Straight came forward to a round of applause, tentative at first because there was still some doubt as to whether the whole thing was on the up-and-up. He was wearing a t-shirt smeared with blueberries, and appeared to have come directly from the pie-eating contest. He was awarded a new 2011 Shelby GT350—a Hot Wheels version which was somewhat smaller than 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 “interviewed” by Rick Kopec or Ron Richards. Lew Spencer, Chuck Cantwell, Bob Bondurant and Peter Brock all needed no introduction as their roles in the Shelby American organization were already well documented. They proved to be very entertaining and very knowledgeable as they fielded specific questions about their experiences at Shelby American, racing, and other exploits. The video camera at the other end of the ballroom zoomed in on the speaker and projected the image into the large screen on one wall. It was a little different from past conventions and it definitely worked. Thanks go, here, to Ron Richards for the idea of incorporating this into the program. It was actually a fall-back position because what Richards had originally outlined for the program was beyond the physical limitation of the ballroom. The dinner was sold-out ahead of time and tables had been squeezed together to allow more people to join in, so there was no room for the production Richards had envisioned. He put it aside, hinting that it would likely be used at a future convention. We can hardly wait.
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Kopec’s opening comments were intended to make everyone think about the future, rather than dwelling on the historical past. What would a SAAC convention be like forty years from now? He used many Star Trek analogies, describing things we now take for granted (GPS, cell phones, stealth aircraft technology, MRIs, Bluetooth and Tasers are a few examples) which had not been invented in 1967 when the television series debuted but which are common today. What would there be in 2050 that has not yet been invented? Beam me up, Scotty.
Peter Brock has led an incredibly interesting life—both before and after his Shelby American days— and Ron Richards [right] tossed a few questions 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 makes attending a SAAC convention so memorable. There’s nothing like hearing these stories directly from the people who lived them.
All of our guest speakers were interesting and we regret that we don’t have photos of each one.
SUMMER/2010 33
Sunday’s Vintage Smackdown
SAAC’s A/Production-B/ProductionA/Sedan vintage race is one of the high points of every convention—for spectators and drivers alike. At SCCA national events back in the 1960s, these classes were usually combined because there were not enough entries in each class to justify a separate race. Our problem is just the opposite: we have plenty of entries but not enough time in the schedule for separate races, So we have to combine them. The rule-of-thumb used by the SCCA is 22 cars per mile, so Infineon’s 2.5-mile road course can safely accommodate a grid of 55 cars. That was our outside limit. The car on the pole was a CSX4000 Race winner: Tom Barnard Challenge car. These cars have become something of orphans because the basic concept of a bunch of spec-race Cobras, slugging it out on televised races never caught fire and attracted a major sponsor. The idea was to sell the cars to owners who would then contract with a driver from the series’ pool (retired big name drivers— names like Mario Andretti, Bob Bondurant, Emerson Fittipaldi, Bobby and Al Unser, Parnelli Jones, Tom Sneva, Kevin Cogen, George Follmer, John Morton, Johnny Rutherford and Danny Sullivan. They would compete in support races at a major series like CART or NASCAR. They needed a major sponsor to bankroll the Second Place: Curt Vogt project, which they never got.
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SAAC-35 Vintage Race Results FINISHING POSITIONS
QUALIFYING POSITIONS
1 TOM BARNARD................................. 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 DNS DNS DNS DNS DNS DNS
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
81 530
1st
TOM BARNARD
2nd CURT VOGT
1
3rd
VINCE DEAN
98
4th
GARY MOORE
83
5th
SCOTTY HACKENSON
22
6th
KEVIN SITTNER
51
7th
DAN LUCKOW
165
8th
COLIN COMER
31
9th
JERRY STRECKERT
153
10th TOM FRY
99
11th DALE MATHERS
18
12th JOHN WATKINS
289
13th JEFF ABRAMSON
61
14th BILL GODWIN
29
15th LORNE LIEBEL
23
16th JAY BITTLE
100
17th RAY BANKS
119
18th CHARLES McKAY
99
19th DREW ALCAZAR
42
20th RICHARD RAVEL
382 31
21st JERRY YOST 22nd CHARLIE LILLARD
200
23rd MANNY SAMANIEGO
138
24th BERNIE KRETZSCHMAR
5
25th JON CAREY
15
26th DON PLYMAN
02
27th BOB STOCKWELL
67
28th BOB MAREK
69
29th JEFF NICHOLS
60
30th TONY NAVARRA
About a half dozen of the cars were sold and suddenly they had no place to race. We’ve always welcomed them at SAAC conventions, even though they are a little wide of the mark. They were initially powered by 351 engines but now that they have no rules to restrain them, the engines in some of them have grown. We were able to make use of the track’s transponder system (virtually every track has one today). A wire runs across the start/finish line, just under the surface. Most cars has transponders (a small electrical box about the size of a deck of cards) which transmits an electrical pulse downward that is picked up by the wire at the start finish line. Each car’s transponder is on a different frequency, and it sends a signal to a computer every time it crosses the wire. That signal is computed as the time between signals, which is that car’s lap time (to the nearest thousandth of a second). The transponder system eliminates dozens of humans in the Timing & Scoring building with stop watches. Cobra Automotive brought a few 50-foot transporters from Connecticut packed full of race cars and that certainly have the an event a national flavor. It wasn’t just a bunch of West Coast racers mixing it up among themselves. These guys are the cream of the East Coast crop. The gauntlet had been thrown down: it would be an East-West dust-up. It wasn’t much of a surprise when the pole position went to a Tom Barnard’s CSX4000 Cobra Challenge car. It was lightweight and packed with plenty of horsepower. Second on the grid was Curt Vogt’s maxed-out GT350 vintage racer. It is consistently a top finisher in east coast events. They ran one-two for every lap and pulled away from the rest of the field, but Vogt just didn’t have the steam to get by the orange Cobra. Eight laps literally flew by.
27 512 94 71 21 61
Race Distance: 8 laps Pace Car: 5R095 driven by Bob Bondurant
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Jon Carey
Gary Moore
Drew Alcazar
Jerry Streckert
Bill Godwin
Manny Sanmaniego
Dan Luckow
Tony Navarra
Bob Marek
Vincent Dean
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Sunday Popular Vote Car Show 289 COBRA 1st - Gordon Gimbel, USRRC roadster, CSX2514 Roseville, CA 2nd - Jay Hawkins, CSX2124 South Lake Tahoe, CA 3rd - Jim & Jan Schield, CSX2544 LaHabra, CA 427 COBRA 1st - Colin Comer, CSX3134 Milwaukee, WI CSX4000/7000/8000 1st - Larry O’Brien, CSX4163 Modesto, CA 2nd - Randy Winter, CSX4200 Clovis, CA 3rd - Morgan LeBlanc, CSX4766 Fresno, CA 1965 SHELBY 1st - Mark Hovander, 5S003 Seattle, WA 2nd - Howard Pardee, 5R095 Waterford, CT 1966 SHELBY 1st - Richard Wilson, GT350H Fremont, CA 2nd - Lee & Sara Nevill. GT350H Boise, ID 3rd - Doug Abbott Rochester, MN 1967 SHELBY GT350 1st - Richard Falk Walnut Creek, CA 2nd - Anthony Giannetto Napa, CA 1967 SHELBY GT500 1st - Russ Mayer Novato, CA 2nd - Jim & Kathy Orsburn Gold River, CA 3rd - Dan Jones Portland, OR 1968 Mustang GT/CS 1st - Bob Teets, High Country Special Arvada, CA 2nd - Richard Whiteman Napa, CA 3rd - Ryan McGuire Visalia, CA 1968 GT350 1st - John Rocha Clovis, CA 2nd - Rick McGuire Visalia, CA 3rd - Ray & Ann Clark Oregon City, OR 1968 GT500KR 1st - Brian Evans Fairfield, CA 1969-1970 GT350 1st - Chuck Sellman, 1969 GT350 Dublin, CA
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2006 - PRESENT SHELBY GT500/GT500KR 1st - Aaron Aldridge, Phoenix, AZ 2006 - PRESENT SHELBY GT/GT-H/GT350 1st - Dave & Sherri Calkins, ‘07 GT/CS Mountlake Terrace, WA 2nd - Michelle Yates, ‘08 GT/CS Bakersfield, CA 3rd - Rick Yates, Bakersfield, CA 1969 - 1971 BOSS 302/351/429 1st - Bob Leenstra, ‘69 Boss 429 Kent, WA 1964 - 1973 MUSTANG/STOCK 1st - Linda Gillette, ‘66 Mustang coupe Hayward, CA 2nd - Nelson & Sheri Cardodro, ‘69 Mustang Grande Tracy, CA 3rd - Mark Herman, ‘69 Mustang Mach I Orangevale, CA 1964 - 1973 MUSTANG/MODIFIED 1st - Jeanette Fleming, ‘70 Mustang “Boss Tribute” Visalia, CA 2nd - Steve Allen, ‘69 Mustang Mach I Rohnert Park, FL 1974 - 2004 MUSTANG/STOCK 1st - Curt Partain, ‘68 Mustang coupe Madera, CA 2005 - PRESENT MUSTANG/MODIFIED 1st - Doug Williams, ‘07 Mustang GT Rocklin, CA 2nd - Thomas H. Raber, ‘05 Mustang convertible Tustin, CA 3rd - Vic Bustabade, ‘06 Mustang convertible Rocklin, CA SPECIAL EDITION MUSTANG, 1993 - PRESENT 1st - Cori Partain, ‘07 Mustang GT/CS Madera, CA SHELBY MUSTANG REPLICA 1st - Brian K. Green, ‘65 Mustang fastback Visalia, CA SPECIAL INTEREST 1st - John Swanson, ‘68 Cougar American Canyon, CA COBRA/FORD REPLICA 1st - John Bauguess, NAF Cobra Oroville, CA 2nd - Dave Donovan, ‘07 Cobra S/C San Carlos, CA 3rd - Dave & Yvonne Little, ‘66 Cobra 427 S/C Martinez, CA SPECIAL INTEREST COMPETITION 1st - Bill Hartman, ‘63 Cooper Monaco King Cobra Yuba City, CA 2nd - Terry & Rosemary Krystofiak, ‘66 GT350 Meridian, NV 3rd - Greg Mitchell, ‘67 Shelby Can-Am King Cobra Watsonville, CA
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Part of the Friday evening welcoming mixer was an autograph session. The table held down by [front to rear] Peter Brock, Lew Spencer, Chuck Cantwell and Bob Bondurant had a crown three-deep all evening. Convention participants was given an 8”x10” color sheet, featuring photos of these guys back when, to get signed as a memento of the event. We had 500 printed and by evening’s end they were all gone.
Peter Brock is known for more than the Daytona Coupe. His BRE (Brock Racing Enterprises) Datsun 510 Trans-Am team won the Under 2-Liter championship in 1971 and 1972. Many current 510 owners have turned their cars into “tribute BRE team cars” and one ot two show up where ever he does.
Bob Bondurant was no stranger to Infineon Raceway. Back before the name change he had located his school at the track, so saying that he knew his way around the circuit was an massive understatement; like saying “Hold onto your drink—we might a little wet” as a 50´ tsunami bears down on your beach chair at 100 mph. Car owners asking Bob to take them for a few laps during the passenger sessions quickly filled up his dance card.
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Bernie Kretzschmar [above, left] and Jerry Schwarz [right] were responsible for most of the work on the R-Models and Trans-Am notchbacks. Back then, as mechanics and fabricators, they never dreamed that they would be treated like rock stars by owners of these cars some forty years later.
Howard Pardee [right] never misses a beat at conventions, and he is especially astute when it comes to adding history to his R-Model, 5R095. He asked Bob Bondurant to do the honors, driving it as the pace car for the Sunday vintage race. Track hound that he is, Bondurant quickly accepted. However, Pardee was also aware that the combination of Bondurant’s heavy right foot, a track he could drive blindfolded, and someone else’s car was a potentially toxic blend, so he insisted that Bob sign a statement attesting to his car’s flawless mechanical condition before he was handed the keys. Pardee also required Bob’s new wife, Pat [center] to witness the signing of the document.
Until the recent change to Corvettes, the official Bondurant school car was a Mustang and the orange cars have developed a cult-like following as open track fans discovered they were the perfect track car. They had bulletproof drivelines, roll cages, they never overheated and were economical with both tires and gas. What more could you want? And they had Bondurant’s name on them.
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Shelby Americanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;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 of products with, quite literally, something for everyone.
It was a memorable convention for Chuck Cantwell [above] because it was the first one he had his GT350, 6S796 [below] at. He acquired the car last year and pulled it out of a garage where it had been hibernating for some 25 years. After a cosmetic and full mechanical restoration, Chuck has been driving it every opportunity.
Could there have been a better convention to have a Bullitt Mustang at? Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s doubtful. The city of San Francisco was about an hour south of the track and it would have been too easy for someone to slip away and find some of the streets where the original movie was filmed. And if you did, you would have surely encountered one of those green Volkswagen Beetles which were, apparently, all over the place.
Superformance rolled out their product line which included big block Cobras, small blocks and their version of an updated Daytona Coupe. Back in 1965 it would have been impossible to imagine anything like this being available forty-five years later.
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SAAC-35 photographers: Jeff Burgy, J. Stephen Gray, John Guyer, Mark Janson, Sarah Johns, J.D. Kaltenbach, Rick Kopec, Don Odiorne, Dave Redman.
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One of the reasons so many SAAC members from the East Coast and the Midwest look forward to attending conventions on the West Coast is because there seems to be more owners who are less restrained by the compulsion to keep their cars bone-stock. Let’s face it—what works for a concours entry is sort of boring when you’re looking at row after row of cars. We like to see cars that surprise us with details like non-stock paint or exotic mechanicals.
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You have to keep your eyes peeled at a convention because stuff shows up that you can’t possibly expect. Sure, some people bring wierd or obscure items to show off; “Hey—look what I have!” But mostly it’s a matter of sharing. And you’re guaranteed to see things you never knew existed.
Does the name “Hollywood Sport Cars” ring any bells? This was the business that Ken Miles ran before he went to work for Shelby American. It’s one thing to find a license plate frame like this in such good condition. But it’s something else, again, to recognize the dealership it represented back in the late 1950s/early 1960s. Back then, sports cars were not exactly common, and not all dealerships sold brand new cars. Miles’ shop specialized in used cars which he often bought in need of repair and then gave them the once-over.
We don’t know how many of these Cobra radios were made but it certainly couldn’t have been very many. Our guess is about 150 on small block cars and probably less than a half-dozen on big block cars. That shouldn’t be very surprising: who could hear them in an open roadster with a solid-lifter small block or a booming big block?
The Shelby Cycle Co., in Shelby, Ohio, started producing bicycles in 1895. They continued building them through the “balloon tire era” and into the 1950s. They were the first manufacturer to use chrome plating. They have developed a strong following in the bicycle collecting world—and not just for the name.
SAAC-35 T-SHIRTS & HATS Couldn’t be there but you want everyone to think you were? Didn’t get one when you had the chance? Need extras? No matter. We’ve got them. T-shirts are printed on both sides. Original art by Larry Gardinier. Hats? Black with SAAC and Nor Cal logos. They’re nice! T-shirts available in S, M, L, XL and XXL. The price for t-shirts and hats is $20 each and we pop for postage. Shipping outside of the U.S. is additional. Send a check (“payable to “SAAC”) to: SAAC PO BOX 13271 Lexington, KY 40583 Want to use a credit card? E-mail us for instructions: membership@saac.com We can also handle PayPal. Email us for details.
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California Specials help make this California Convention Special !
W
hen the logistics of SAAC-35 were being put together, the idea of a “GT/CS Mini-Convention” was conjured up, and the seed was planted on the SAAC forum. I included a mention of the upcoming event in a mailing to my GT/CS Registry Members. What really kicked up the enthusiasm, however, was the lobbying efforts by the newly-crowned GT/CS "Social Director” Mike Jewell. Mike also happened to win the GT/CS Concours award at SAAC-35, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Mike beat the drums, making phone calls and sending emails to folks who had attended his two previous GT/CS picnics up at his Sierra Foothills pad. As the event approached, Mike had about eight responses of owners who were seriously interested in attending. To everyone’s surprise and appreciation, his daughter, Amber, was willing to bring her fifth-wheel RV trailer, as well as a BBQ grille and other GT/CS-convoy equipment to set up a base camp that we designated as “GT/CS World Headquarters.” On Friday afternoon, Mike and entourage arrived for the first time at Infi-
– Paul M. Newitt neon Raceway. They were directed to a specific area in the Paddock, to be greeted by SAAC’s convention director Ron Richards, who told them to pick wherever they wanted to set up, and if they needed anything, just ask! This was above and beyond Hilton-quality concierge service! We'd arrived at Shelby Nirvana, and our cousin-connected Mustangs were embraced like it was old-home week. So far so good. So, the anchor was dropped from the fifth wheel, and tables, cones and police crime scene tape was erected for arriving GT/CS Mustangs—both original and late models—and arrive they did. The rest of the paddock area was beginning to fill up around GT/CS HQ, with Mike holding his ground for our regiment of Mustangs. Once it became known where we were, everyone that stopped by welcomed us, and had a good time chewing the fat about... what else? California Specials! Friday evening's “Meet and Greet” was an exciting idea that turned everyone into kids in a candy store. I had a chance to visit with many people who I’d only
known through email, letters or on the phone. The collective experience and knowledge of the vintage Shelby years in the room was as humbling as it was appreciated. Long lines formed for autographs from some of the specially invited guests: Peter Brock, Lew Spencer, Bob Bondurant and Chuck Cantwell were happy to meet whoever stopped by their table, answer questions and reminisce about photos they were shown. I personally found it an honor to visit briefly with Lew Spencer and Chuch Cantwell and talk about the Trans Am days, and that 10 minutes of '68 GT/CS racing history. I also had a short visit with Jeff Burgy and to see some of his work with the late model Ford GTs. Of course, a big hello to Vincent Liska, SAAC’s 196869-70 registrar, to thank him for all his help with my book, and my appreciation of his hard work finding all the details that help to complete the story of these cars. Early Saturday brought that cold “right through you” morning wind as a San Francisco 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 sitting on our designated tarmac from both year groups, with owners in their chairs, or standing around munching on our morning donut and cookie selections. We noticed immediately that the excitement was intoxicating, not just within our group, but with the sound of vintage racers from across the field! This set the tone and tempo for the entire convention--a type of excitement that you'd never get from a regular car show. By mid-morning, a few more GT/CS Mustangs arrived. People we either didn’t know or remember, but who knew about the event from the SAAC site, my mailers or just word of mouth. This was good. We proudly lined up the cars like fighter aircraft on a carrier deck. Mike's Highland Green 390GT concours designate was This was GT/CS ground-zero for SAAC-35. As with their Shelby cousins, there was a good mix be- there, as well a JBart’s 2008 “Super tween “original” cars and the newest variants.
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GT/CS" that made the trip all the way from Idaho. Once GT/CS HQ was established there was a whole sea of Shelby heritage and excitement there to explore. So, after the necessary greetings, hellos and welcomes (and a little book promoting), I ventured out beyond the impersonal world of Internet contacts, snail mail and phone calls and, like jumping into a page from The SHELBY AMERICAN, I went for it! It was like something out of a race day in the 1960s, with race cars being prepared for the next event on the track. Engines were growling and snarling in every direction. You literally couldn not walk in a straight line without coming into direct contact with Shelbys, Cobras, Trans Am Racers, GT40s and every manner of race Mustangs. If you squinted, you were back in the late 1960s watching a Trans Am race. There were three ‘69-’70 Boss 302s there that were insanely tearing up the track and eliciting runaway excitement If you knew your engines you could literally hear the difference between an FE, a Boss motor 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 of the confusion, I spotted a Highland Green ‘68 GT/CS jacked up like a three-legged dog in one of the garages. Underneath it was Joe Praxil, yanking out a bad starter. It wasn’t some track rat, either: glossy paint, ten spoke wheels and “685” meatballs on the doors. It was just too cool. Another Lime Gold GT/CS (#68) was on a trailer getting ready for open track. What this meant to all of us “invited GT/CS guests” was that the real Shelby heritage was in our faces and in our ears at over 120 decibels! I didn’t have to say “get it?” It was self-evident to everyone in our
universe that the GT/CS was born from this real world of hands-on Ford and Shelby engineering, styling and racing history. And although our GT/CS Mustangs were a trickle-down version, they have a closer tie to this heritage that most might think. This, I think, has left such a marque [pun intended] on those GT/CS owners that have never seen, driven or ridden in these cars on the track that they are now are infected with this newly found SAAC spirit. One couple that brought a red GT/CS to sell, decided to keep it after attending the convention. A few others were giving tilted-head looks to their GT/CSs, pondering ways to modify them for track, or for at least for some improved street performance! The aspect of not only seeing Concours-quality GT/CS Mustangs, but fantastically restored ‘65-’70 Shelbys piqued a lot of interest for us as well. Mike Jewell's Highland Green 390GT 4-speed GT/CS, I think threw a learning-curve ball at the judges, since it was a San Jose-produced ‘68 Mustang, as opposed to the Metuchen and A.O. Smith-produced ‘68‘70 Shelbys to judge. Some four hours later, Mike discovered that his car had won a coveted Gold Award. This thrilled everyone in the group. The convention experience for the attendees was overwhelming. To a person, we would be happy to lobby for a return visit from SAAC here in California in the near future. By late Sunday afternoon the last of open track runs were starting to wrap up, and our GT/CS contingent all went to the grandstand to cheer on JBart and his Super GT/CS on the track. As the day drew to a close we all were the last to leave, packing away our great memories and looking forward to more of the same very soon! There wasn't a single complaint
that I heard from anyone during the whole convention. Not a whine or whimper. Just the voices of “We had such a great time...”
Paul Newitt is the GT/CS go-to guy. He has dedicated most of his life to the study of these unique cars. In April 2008 he was recognized by being awarded the Lee Iacocca Award “for dedication to excellence in perpetuating an American automotive tradition.” He had it with him and rumor has it that he even sleeps with it!
GT/CS: The Book
It’s taken Paul Newitt three years to gather up everything that could possibly be known about these cars and put it into a hardcover book. “Complete and comprehensive” doesn’t begin to describe it. It is both a history and a registry; 224 pages with color photos; describing the history, specifications, people involved and the individual production details of every car, including the 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2011 editions. There will be only one printing and books will only be available through Newitt, Tony Branda and Galpin Auto Sports. Forget about eBay, Amazon or book 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 same again. Their enthusiasm shows in this group shot with Mike Jewell's 390GT GT/CS in the foreground. It won a Gold award in the concours.
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Paul M. Newitt GT/CS Registry PO Box 427 Danville, CA 94526
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A quick trip around the country in CSX8007 turns into anything but that. – Kei Iinuma
I
t’s almost time for our 2010 summer vacation on the mainland. Miki and I had a little time on our hands before preparations for SAAC-35’s open track and drag racing events at Infineon Raceway in August (we’re not entirely uncomfortable with the name change; it’s still Sears Point to us). Our grandsons had no soccer, basketball or football practice/games on our calendar. So, in June, we were overcome with the urge to do a cross-country drive in our Cobra from Sunnyvale, California, to Jamestown, Rhode Island. We were going to surprise our friends Paul and Suzie Andrews. The origins for this visit actually began back in Hawaii, on the island of Kauai in 2003. Paul had purchased a very rare Niihau shell necklace that was never sent to him in Rhode Island as promised. Paul and I weren’t very successful in getting it sent to him but after seven years, the situation was finally rectified. In June of 2010 the necklace was finally sent to us at our daughter’s home in Sunnyvale, California. Paul was expecting us to forward the necklace to him in Jamestown.
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Since Paul likes surprises (especially when he is the one doing the surprising) this was an opportunity to “turn the tables” on him with a surprise visit. Thus was born the plan to drive cross-country to deliver the necklace in person. The plan looked really good until Miki asked, “What about the leaking transmission?” Paul was expecting the necklace in a few days and I had no time to diagnose the problem, so I told Miki, “No worry, we can chance ‘em.” I hoped the synthetic transmission oil would cling to the syncros and gears long enough for us to make it back and forth, We could work on the transmission when we got back to California. We estimated that a leisurely 3,400mile road trip to Rhode Island would take approximately six days. Leaving on Sunday, June 27, we planned to arrive at the Andrews’ doorstep by Friday. And we did. Suzie was at home. She was tipped off to our arrival by their daughter Nikki, who saw our Cobra pull up in front of their home. They greeted us warmly, expressing their surprise at our appearance. The last time we saw Suzie was during SAAC-31 at Virginia International Raceway during the open track event. Miki and I had been invited to spend a few days with them at their home in Ocean City, New Jersey. We’ve been seeing Paul, off and on, at other SAAC events as well as at Carroll Shelby’s birthday party at the Peterson Museum. But Paul wasn’t at home. He was in Massachusetts when we arrived but Nikki contacted him and got him to return home within the hour. When he arrived it was a rare moment: he was at a loss for words. He greeted Miki and I with great big bear hugs. Mainlanders often ask how the weather is in Hawaii. I respond, “It’s paradise.” I tell them it’s because of the warm, constant weather, tempered by our tradewinds. I don’t make comparisons with other tropical locations because I haven’t been there, but those who have and have vacationed in Hawaii have never contradicted me. Ironically, Miki and I have not
been home in Hawaii during the summer months for the past fifteen years. Jamestown was, well, just gorgeous. Picture postcard gorgeous; large, lavish and full of beauty. Flowers were in bloom everywhere and the manicured lawns, fronting almost every home from modest bungalows to huge mansions, were bordered with picture perfect blossoms of reds, whites, purples, and pinks—and every color in between. Mansions overlook and some border, Narraganset Bay, where an America’s Cup Challenge yacht plied the waters showing off it’s sails to scores of smaller sailing vessels. The blue waters, and the contrasting multitude of light-colored sails, the beautiful homes, the tourists strolling on the beach, on the sidewalks, sitting in little cafes sipping this and that, and taking in the sights was a scene straight out of the movies. Did I say movies? Two were made there recently: “Dan In Real Life” and “Meet Joe Black.” (We’re going to get those DVDs.) The Andrews’ residence, centrally situated atop a wide, slopping, grassy frontage was flanked by a stately home on the left, and three others on the right, overlooking Narraganset Bay. Their front lawn is privately owned but is easily mistaken for a local park, slopping down until it reaches the main boulevard that runs along the Bay. The locals call their home “the big red house on the hill” and it has been the subject for postcards from the Jamestown area. We had planned to stay just a couple of days and planned to drive to Kentucky before heading back to California and we had made arrangements to stay at a nearby motel. We forgot that it was the 4th of July weekend and Paul insisted that we spend the weekend at his home and enjoy the fireworks display from his veranda. How could we say “no”? Who wouldn’t want to spend the weekend in a place like that? Formerly owned by one of “The Whartons,” the home had originally been owned by Mary Mapes Dodge, the author of “Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates.” With large
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living and dining areas, the home has five suites. It was a challenge for Suzie to decorate with the Andrews’ collection of antique furniture and collectibles. We toured the neighborhoods of beautiful mansions; some in wooded areas and some totally secluded. All were perfectly kept. Paul entertained us with stories from his Greek heritage. As a footnote, Suzie kept us well fed. She loves to cook and this translated into wonderful meals enjoyed on the airy veranda overlooking the Bay. She also mixed perfect Mojitos that she and Miki would sip during their reflections and ruminations. After spending those few days with good friends in such a setting, Tuesday morning arrived too soon. It was “wagon train time” again, preparing the Cobra and packing up all the stuff in every possible inch of space available. I made sure the air shocks were at 80 lbs. so we wouldn’t bottom out on the highway snags, and we had enough gas to get to the next stop. We thanked Suzie and Paul for the wonderful and unforgettable experience. We headed to Kentucky and hopefully, would miss some of the anticipated thunderstorms forecast to pummel the East Coast. On a long trip you always forget one thing. I forgot to bring some extra engine oil. After about 4,000 miles, the 427 Windsor “stroker” was about a half quart low. Running at highway speeds—between 65 to 75 mph and occasionally 80 to keep up with traffic—the stroker had been consuming engine oil. Although it has a roller cam, I only use Amsoil’s high zinc/phosphorus oil. Where do you get it? Not in any retail store, that’s for sure. At a gas stop in Maryland the clerk told us to check out the local auto parts store in Cumberland. It was a good thing, too, because, although we couldn’t find a store stocking our oil, at least we were in a touristy part of Maryland. Why “good thing, too”? With a clunk and a crunch, and a grinding sound of something as I attempted to accelerate, the transmission gave out on the entry ramp onto 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 first clunk I had pulled over to the side of the road, out of the way of traffic. I was unable to get it out of gear, I knew what happened. Looking at Miki, I exclaimed, “There went the trans.” The gears and syncros overheated and then galled, probably due to lack of oil. The transmission had been warning me through the last thousand miles as I down-shifted through syncros that felt “dry” or “gritty.” It was over 105 degrees that day.
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Luckily we rolled to a stop under an overpass. Five minutes later, while I was on a call to AAA, a Harley rider pulled up alongside and parked. Tim, an off-duty state trooper, offered assistance. I asked him if he knew of an auto repair shop that might be willing to loan me a stall to work on the Cobra. I had all the tools in my trunk that needed to do the job, except for an engine/transmission lift. “Sure do,” said Tim. “L&T Transmission Service can do any work you need on a transmission. The owner, Larry Judd and I are family. Tell Larry that Tim told you to call him.” He didn’t know whether I would be allowed to do my own work. A few minutes later, a local guy stopped by in a pickup. He offered his garage to do the work. I thanked him and he left me his name and phone number. An hour and a half into our “ordeal,” Officer Mullaney stopped by in his cruiser. He asked if I had a tow and I told him that AAA said a tow would be available in twenty minutes. He got on his police radio to dispatch, and within ten minutes a tow truck arrived. While waiting for the tow, I asked officer Mullaney if he knew of a garage willing to do work on the Cobra. “Sure,” said Mullaney, “L&T Transmission can do the work and tell them I sent you ‘cause I live right on the corner before you get to their shop. Larry Judd has a good reputation for doing good work.” It was after 5 pm. The tow operator also knew Larry Judd at L&T and told me that, “Larry can fix any transmission.” Then he and Officer Mullaney attempted to call L&T Transmission. They were closed for the day. We decided to have the Cobra towed there anyway, and left there overnight. We could contact L&T in the morning. Officer Mullaney offered us a ride to a Holiday Inn, one block away. Miki and I rode in the back of his police cruiser. Miki was thrilled because she never rode in the back of a police car, which was normally reserved for “perps.” She loved it. The flatbed, with the Cobra secured atop, preceded us to the Holiday Inn. We arrived behind the flatbed and emerged from the
police cruiser “escort car” and, while removing our luggage from the trunk of the Cobra, provided the hotel residents and passersby with a little entertainment. The flatbed left with the Cobra and I had a feeling it was in safe hands. Officer Mullaney wished us Godspeed and continued his patrol duties. We check in and called the local car rental agency to reserve a car for the next week...or two. So far, it’s been a good day: the Cobra is safe and so are we. Next morning we took delivery of our rental car, a nice little blue Kia. Using Mapquest, we got directions to L&T Transmission Service. It was approximately two miles away, off of I-68 East, and we found Morningside Drive. It was a one-lane paved road snaking through a forested valley. An utterance escaped from my head, “Are we in the right place?” Miki said she hoped so. There were horses in a pasture, goats nibbling at grasses, and birds singing in the trees. It was a scenic drive, but in less than five minutes we saw the L&T Transmission sign fronting a driveway that opened onto the premises situated on the upper part of this valley. To the left, a large white, two-story home with the American flag prominently displayed in front. On the right are structures housing nine work bays, and there are two other detached, large storage buildings. There were what appeared to be nine or ten vehicles parked across the shop area awaiting repairs. The bays we could see had vehicles perched atop the lifts. The shop areas were clean and neat. I wondered how to convince the owner to let me work on the Cobra by myself. The Cobra was parked in front of the second bay. Two men were standing near it, talking. I parked the Kia and Miki and I got out. I walked up to the men and introduced myself and Miki. One of them is Larry Judd, the owner. I explained to Larry what I believed to be the problem and asked if he would allow me to do my own work. I told him that I had all the tools necessary for removing the engine and trans, but need an engine hoist. I offered to sign a waiver of liability, knowing his insurance provider would not allow
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“civilians” to do their own work on his property. He old me that all of his work bays had vehicles in various stages of repair, and that his workers had their hands full because they were still trying to catch up with the repair work that was waiting. Before I had a chance to open my mouth to convince him that I had the skills to do my own work, Larry had made up his mind. “Tell you what,” he said, “You can use the bay normally reserved for my race car.” I found out later that no one other than Larry was allowed to use this space. It had a synthetic, checkered patterned floor; you know, the kind you see on TV with the host of the show working in an environment normally associated with big time NASCAR work areas. I told him I didn’t know whether I could keep his floor clean. He said not to worry. “It’ll clean off easy. Just dont tell anybody around here that I let you use this space cause nobody is allowed in there except for my race car.” I thank him but words really couldn’t express how thankful I was. He told his lead worker, John, to assist with my needs. “Help him with whatever he needs, and when it’s time to pull the motor, give him a hand with the engine hoist.” For Miki and I, having spent summers
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“on the road,” and mostly in a Cobra for the past twenty years, we’ve often found ourselves in a hot rodder’s “Twilight Zone.” I suspect that this has occurred as a result of our always stopping when we see another car by the roadside apparently in trouble. I explained to Miki that this reciprocal universe recognizes what goes around comes around. It also helps to be driving a 289 “slabside.” After we push the Cobra into this space, I notice the trophies, plaques and photos on the walls. Larry races NHRA Pro-Stick. His ‘65 Nova runs 9.63-second ETs. He has won numerous Pro-Stick competition events against formidable odds, as well as a ton of other competition events. He has not only won major North East drag races, but is notorious for his wheel-standing abilities and winning reaction times (.500). We had already been introduced to John, later Jay, and then “Hoss.” They were friendly and often asked if I needed anything. L&T was an 8-to-5 operation: when it’s 8, you started and when it’s 5 the doors were locked. Saturday and Sundays off. It was already Thursday, so I started removing nuts, bolts and parts in preparation for pulling the engine/trans. Later in
the afternoon, Larry’s wife returned home after work, at the local Department of Education. She made us feel at home. After “work,” Miki and I stopped by the local Auto Zone and bought rolls of shop towels, cans of brake cleaner, caulking/gasket making material, Loctite and anti-seize. No need for coolant because the Evans NPG can be used over and over again. Friday arrived and it was already warm. When I got there Jay pointed to his wrist, the universal sign of “you’re late for work.” I started making excuses and he stopped me. “Oh, I forgot—it’s 2 a.m. in Hawaii.” I should have thought of that. I tried a smart response and requested overtime because I was early. He told me, “you don’t get any.” I started working and removed all the hardware necessary to prepare the engine/trans for removal. After lunch we began the removal process. Jay and I maneuvered the engine hoist from atop. John went under the Cobra and muscled the tail end of the transmission into a better position. It was a ten-minute operation with these guys. I was little more than a spectator. The whole shebang came out in one piece, without a single ding to any part of the engine bay. Well, of course, I was working with a couple of pros.
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I removed the top cover of the Tremec 3550, I saw......NO oil. I noticed there was a bit of oil around the drain plug. It was HAND TIGHT! I surmised that during the head gasket replacement, after it blew in September, 2009 at Laguna Seca’s Turn 8, I had replaced the transmission oil but failed to tighten the plug as it should have been. That must have been it. Anyway, there was no time for recriminations. I made a call to Don Walsh at D&D Performance in Michigan. We talked a little bit about the good ole days. He was 73 and did some really heavy duty drag racing until he was about 60. He turned over the racing to his son who was driving quicker. I decided to get a Tremec TKO600 transmission. It had road race, close-ratio gearing, but with a more street friendly .64 overdrive. The TKO has a 26-spline input shaft (up from the 10-spline 3550) and Don suggested an upgrade to a Kevlar disc. He felt that my Centerforce Dual Friction pressure plate at 10.5-inches would be compatible. Don also threw in a new yoke since the TKO had a 31-spline output, where the old 3550 had 26. He promised to get the trans to me in two working days. Next I called Jimmy G in Gilroy to send me some Amsoil for the engine. He promised to get it to me in a couple of days. The engine bay was a mess. Crossing the U.S.A. we were forced to drive over new, freshly tarred, road surfaces. Small pebbles, covered with soft, sticky and oozy tar, had been thrown everywhere and into every nook and cranny. By the time we got to Rhode Island, it had all solidified. It melted on hot surfaces like the intake manifold. Cleaning tar off of a cast aluminum surface after it had solidified was a real chore. Brake clean worked somewhat, but paint thinner worked better. With a small brush and lots and lots of shop towels, I attacked the black tar balls. Some melted into splotches. It was everywhere. Some of the tar balls were hidden behind some components that I had to remove to clean. Miki helped me clean up
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and by the end of the work day on Friday, at 4:45 p.m., all we were thinking about was, “Where are we going to eat dinner tonight?” On trips like this, this question is the one that is asked the most. We had dinner at the Holiday Inn restaurant three nights in a row and lunches were bought at the local Foodland. I love fried chicken, but after three days of a steady diet of fried chicken, cole slaw, potato salad and Pepsi, I was ready for something else. We went to the local Roy Rogers. I had their fried chicken. Since L&T was closed on Saturday and Sunday, we decided to do some tourist things in town. We did some shopping, and cruising through the community. Sunday we heard about a car show/charity event in a nearby town. There were about 25 cars; some hot rods and some late models. We spent about an hour there. The weekend came and went without incident. On Monday, I spent the whole day— again—cleaning the engine bay. By Tuesday the engine bay was clean enough and coincidentally, the transmission, Amsoil, and related parts had arrived. Don and Jimmy G. had kept their word: I got the trans and oil in two working days. By the end of day most of the new components were bolted on and we were ready to reinstall the Cobra’s engine. On Wednesday, John and Jay again provided the muscle and expertise in getting the engine/trans back in. I spent the rest of the day re-attaching parts. Miki and Teresa poured over family pictures on Teresa’s laptop. They traded family histories and discussed common political issues. By Thursday, the Cobra was started up and test-driven. A small modification to the shifter had to be made. On Friday, while Miki cleaned up the tools, I gave the Cobra a good washing in preparation for us to leave. After taking some group photos and saying our final farewells, we drove out of Cumberland. It had been a wonderful ten days spent. We headed out for Kentucky and
hoped to bypass the impending thunderstorms and heavy weather. When we finally reached Kentucky, in late afternoon, it was around 8 p.m. Storm clouds were gathering and the wind started to pick up. Our dinner of Subway sandwiches, chips and soda was interrupted. Miki asked, “What’s that sound?” Pap, pap, pap, pappapapap, papapapapap. We slid open the motel curtain and looked outside to the Cobra. Half-inch-sized hail was falling with the rain, peppering the Cobra. Miki and I ran outside and she grabbed some. It was melting fast. We had never seen hail before so we took some pictures of it. We had always wondered what it would be like to be hailed on. Thankfully, the Cobra was undamaged. It was a good thing the weather bureau’s predicted golf ball-sized hail did not materialize. The rest of our trip back to California was relatively ho-hum. And it was hot. And humid. From the East Coast through the Midwest. At times temperatures ran well over 105 degrees. That never used to bother us on prior trips. Maybe we’re getting older? We make it back “home” safely. I am convinced that this experience came as a result of connected relationships. It began as a result of my obsession with Carroll Shelby’s Cobra. It included Donna Yamane, an Aloha Mustang and Shelby Club of Hawaii member, insisting that we join the Aloha Mustang Club when she saw me driving a Cobra. That led to our meeting Don Johnston, Hawaii’s SAAC Rep. He introduced Miki and I to Paul Andrews who made it possible for us to purchase CSX8007, and ultimately to meeting the Judds in Cumberland, Maryland. I’ve often wondered what we’d do if a catastrophic event occurred on one of our cross-country jaunts. Now I know. During the relatively short time we spent with the Judds, with John, Jay and Hoss, we learned about their families and the similarities of the pain and suffering we all share through our lives. I have been reminded, once again, that you cannot know
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a book by its cover. And again, we have made good friends who reaffirmed our belief in the goodness of men, and women. And that car guys are all the same under the skin. It is an interesting phenomenon, that a mechanical device opens the doors to relationships. Like I said, this was the best trip ever. P.S.: When you have a partner like I do in Miki, the miles go by faster, and fun-er. There’s a reason for her being named “wife of the year” by some of the other Cobra owners.
JOINING SAAC “They won’t make it.” “Who’s betting they won’t make it?” That illustrates some of the thoughts of those who never drove their beloved Cobras more than a few blocks or even maybe a few miles to the local cruise-in. This is what we heard when Miki and I reported to our Cobra friends that we were going to participate in SAAC-20, in July 1995, at the Atlanta Motor Speedway. We would be driving our Midstates Cobra kit car cross country, from Sunnyvale, California, to Atlanta, Georgia. We were going to ship our Cobra from the Port of Honolulu to the Port of Oakland, using our daughter's home in Sunnyvale as a jumping-off point. Then we would drive cross country to Atlanta for the SAAC convention. This turned out to be the first of many more SAAC national conventions. Bob Kallio, owner of Midstates Classic Cars and Parts, had reported in the Midstates Owners newsletter that a number of Midstates owners were planning to participate and Robert Allen would be a local host. He was going to have a barbeque at his home in Atlanta and we could use his garage and facilities if work was needed on any of our cars. We also needed to be SAAC members to preregister and/or participate in open track event, which was one of the reasons we were going. We have renewed our membership with SAAC every year since 1995. I’ve always wanted a Cobra but I really never planned to get one. When Miki and I got married in 1966, with our 1956 Austin Healey 100-4, the 427 Cobra cost
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about $8000 at Honolulu Ford. That was waaaay over our transportation budget. The little Healey had been crashed a couple of times due to excessive speed and/or a lack of brakes, or possibly a lack of skill. Because of the Cobra influence, I stuck a 327 Chevy in it. With the two-speed powerglide, it went pretty quick in a straight line, and handling was not bad considering that before we got married I owned a ‘63 1/2 fastback Galaxy with the 425 hp 427. That went quick in a straight line but other than a NASCAR oval track, it was good only for cruising. As in, boat-like cruising. Miki's pregnancy obliged me to sell the Healey for $350 to a student attending the University of Hawaii so we could get a real car. That turned out to be a ‘63 Chevy station wagon. Twenty years later the idea to own a Cobra by way of a kit came to mind. It was the summer of 1985. While thumbing through a Kit Car magazine, I was drawn to a photo of a kit Cobra utilizing the Midstates Cars and Parts fiberglass Cobra body and a hand-fabricated frame. This kit was constructed in Canada and I studied that article countless times. In the months to come I poured through countless kit car and replica magazines. Gradually my interest escalated into an obsession, and culminated with the “Plan To Own One” (PTOO). With Miki’s help. She started scheduling our vacations to begin in California where we could use a rental car to visit kit manufacturers. In 1990 we visited Ron Butler’s Cobra manufacturing shop in Goleta, CA. Miki had yet to see a Cobra close up. We were given a shop tour and we came to Butler’s
display Cobra. It was a deep, dark red street car, and the overhead lights accentuated every compound curve. Miki asked, “Is this a Cobra?” Yep. “Can we get one in black?” We looked for two more years, and in 1992 we contracted with Midstates’ owners Lauri and Bob Kallio for a kit 427 Cobra “roller” with a 351 Cleveland engine, top-loader transmission and 3.50 nine-inch Ford/Lincoln Versailles rear differential and other incidentals. I envisioned painting it in our carport. Lauri, who has since passed away, used to promise that his Cobra bodies would last 100,000 miles. We currently have 127,500 miles on the Midstates and there has been no stress-related deterioration nor anything noticeable. We’ve already driven the Cobra to every State in the U.S.A. several times over, including a short trip to Alaska via Canada. Canada was kind of spooky. It was a lot of wilderness and gas stations were few and far between. But we did accidentally run into a local car show in Dawson Creek, Canada. It was July 2002, and we were low on gas, in the middle of a great forest in the wilderness of Canada, heading for, we hoped, Dawson Creek. With a sigh of relief I spotted a sign coming up a few hundred feet ahead. “Rotten Robbie’s” gasoline station. The station attendant asks us if we were heading for the car show in town. I explained that we were just driving through, but could he direct us there? It turned out that Dawson Creek was a good place to spend the night. We found the car show. It was in the middle of the small town of Dawson Creek. Population, maybe, about 10,000. The car
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show was like a large cruise-in back home: about a hundred cars. We entered the parking area to park but a parking official motioned us to stop. He asked where we were going and when I explained I needed to park so we could look around, he said no way—that we should park inside with the other show cars. Our Midstates Cobra was covered with mud and dirt and squished bugs all over the front end from the hundreds of miles of wilderness driving. I tried to explain this but the parking official was not deterred. He told us to tell the show officials that, “Bill said to park inside.” We found a nice place to park, and with our Hawaii license plates we got a lot of attention. We had a great time at the show, and met a lot of people. It was fun talking with the Canadians, eh? Anyway, back to Atlanta, 1995. The convention we almost didn’t make. While driving through the Mojave desert, the Midstates needed gas. During the routine engine oil inspection, I noticed the smell of gasoline. The brand new, brand name, “hiperformance” all-chrome fuel pump was leaking gasoline from several places around it’s perimeter. Since I carried the original fuel pump as a spare, I did a fifteen minute swap and the original fuel pump went on working for another 20,000+ miles. It always pays to keep spare stuff. I not only carry every tool I used to build my car, but I also carry a spare fuel pump, fuel regulator, master and slave cylinders, nuts, bolts, wire and lots of other auto-related safety things. Getting the Midstates was easy. The Kallio’s promises and attention to detail, were chronicled with videos sent to us on a regular basis and after driving it for the past 17 years, we know we got a good deal. It is easy to maintain because all of the parts are extremely accessible and replacements as well as used parts are readily available. During our PTOO, we were also lucky in being able to take our vacations together. As the Registrar for the St. Andrew’s Priory School for Girls, Miki had the summer months off. I had the night shift at the State Child Protective Services Hotline, investigating reports of child abuse and neglect. At the same time, I had volunteered my time to the Honolulu Police Department and completed the HPD recruit training program, so I was sworn in as a commissioned police officer (reserve status). In Honolulu, unlike other jurisdictions, a reserve officer is indistinguishable from a regular officer, and is required to pass a recruit training program to perform the same duties. In all honesty, this was a really cool way to do a community service.
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I have been assigned to Narco-Vice, Juvenile Crime Prevention, Auto Theft and finally, supervising the District 1 Subpoena/Warrants Detail. I retired after 25 years of service. During our PTOO we were able to make many cross country trips between 1989 through 1992, visiting different Cobra kit manufacturers. A couple of shops reminded me of an overstuffed car guy’s garage, and others were obviously well kept, hi-tech manufacturing facilities. One thing though: the final result, the fit and finish of most of the Cobra kits were similar, despite their origins. HURRICANE INIKI In 1992 one of the most costliest storms hit the island of Kauai. Hurricane Iniki totally devastating the islands transportation and communications infrastructure. I was sent by the State Dept. of Human Resources, with teams of state workers, to assist at the Disaster Assistance Centers in providing emergency financial assistance to individuals who were affected by the hurricane. During my many months there, I made a lot of friends, locally as well as from other parts of the world who came to Kauai to assist in the clean up and rebuilding. I discovered that the locals were really accommodating when it came to government services. Unlike many local bureaucracies, a Kauai official would rather say yes, than no. What does this have to do with Cobras? You cannot register a kit in Honolulu, but as it turned out, you can on Kauai. Why? Because one provision in the law was that the law did not apply to any county with less than 100,000 persons. So, when the Midstates “roller” arrived in Honolulu, I immediately completed the wiring and safety construction then barged it to Kauai. I flew to Kauai the next day and picked up the Cobra at the harbor, drove it to the Kauai registration office and got it registered. Then I drove it back to the harbor, caught a taxi to the airport and returned to Honolulu. Within the next couple of days the Midstates arrived in Honolulu, fully registered. YOUR CAR IS ILLEGAL When we got the Midstates in 1993, there was no practical way to title/register any kit/replica/special interest vehicle in Honolulu in light of the reconstructed vehicle law that had been in effect for thirty years, since 1979. So I had circumvented the law. The State Reconstructed Vehicle Inspection Station has been, for the past 30 years, the
most hated and reviled location in the islands for any car guy, and sometimes for the ordinary car owner. The inspectors have been variously described as officious, arrogant, imbecilic, contentious, and every other foul and obscene expletive in between. A couple of them were described as being fair and decent, but these were the guys who decided whether your vehicle met all the requirements to make it street legal. They had determined, years ago, that any replica of a Cobra just could not be registered. So, one day in 2002, a kit Cobra owner who wanted his recently purchased kit car legally registered, objected to the law by pointing out the fact that our Midstates, license plate, RCOBRA, has been seen driving around for years. So why can’t he? Well, you know what happened next. We didn’t get our registration reminder but were told, instead, that we would have to get clearance from the “recon” guys (who may have let our Cobra slide knowing that I was a cop and had affixed a sticker giving the Cobra authorization to park on the first level of the Police Station parking area to the inside the windshield). Knowing that the DMV on Oahu would not register the Cobra, I then shipped the car to Maui (exempt from the law) for a safety check, and then brought it back to Oahu for registration and told them the car was on Maui. Now it would be safe for another year. I had just retired from the Child Protective Services. I told Miki that I had enough of this law and if it took suing the State of Hawaii to do so, I was going to get this law changed. CHANGING A LAW While attending a local cruise-in for the Toys for Tots campaign, I ran into Bryan Miller, another kit Cobra guy who was passing around a copy of a bill he had requested his local representative present to the Hawaii legislature making registration of replica Cobras possible. He had purchased a Factory Five kit Cobra and found out he could not legally operate the vehicle on Oahu. I saw this as an opportunity to end our fear of the recon establishment. I resolved, at that moment, to spend my retirement days at the State legislature doing whatever was necessary to change the existing law. Miki and I lobbied the State legislators, met with transportation and law enforcement officials, and also with a group of kit Cobra, dune buggy, and hot rod owners. We presented them as a group to rehabilitate the existing law relating to specialty vehicles.
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THEY SAID IT COULDN’T BE DONE Some in the legislature said it couldn't be done. Others told us that laws usually take between five to seven years to be enacted. “Be patient” was not our motto. We challenged the State to provide documents supporting their opposition to our efforts to liberalize the current law. We met privately with department heads. We gained their trust in our ability to apply only provable data or information to each aspect of the law, and made them aware that current owners of these vehicles reflect a conservative demographic and a change in the law would benefit all parties. We overcame proposed policy changes, inappropriate changes to the bill, and last minute administration wavering. On June 16, 2004 Governor Linda Lingle signed our bill into law. Currently, any replica of a vehicle, pre1968, may be titled or registered in the State of Hawaii. It took us less than a year. 127,500 MILES Our Midstates Cobra had participated in 1995, at SAAC-20 in Atlanta. In 1997 SAAC-22 was at Road America. That year we circumnavigated the U.S.A.—10,700 miles in 25 days. We stopped by Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin for the SAAC convention and open track. In 2000 we did SAAC-25 at Lime Rock, Connecticut and in 2002 we did SAAC-27 at California Speedway. In between we participated in the Woodward Dream Cruise. It is a biiiiiig cruise: 50,000 cars and 1 million visitors. It’s held every year in Detroit in August and it’s a tenmile cruise.
JOINING A LOCAL CLUB It’s 2000. Driving into the parking structure at work, we are stopped by Donna Yamane. She identified herself as a member of the Aloha Mustang and Shelby Club of Hawaii and she insisted that we join the club because they would love to have Cobra owners. I explained that Miki and I already belonged to a national club and we went to conventions on the mainland and that kept us satisfied with car events. She sold us on the idea that we can meet other people, locally, with similar interests and they are all Ford guys. She extolled all of the virtues of belonging to a club. We are impressed by her enthusiasm and submitted our membership application. We have been members ever since.
GETTING A SHELBY CAR. . . FINALLY In 2003 Don Johnston showed me a printout from the internet announcing that Carroll Shelby would be releasing a replica of his 289 Street and 289 FIA Roadsters. I immediately informed Miki, who agreed that we needed to look into this. In anticipation of future financial needs, I secured funds via a home equity loan. Then, coincidentally, Don suggested that we go out to lunch with him and Paul Andrews, a Cobra owner and one of Shelby’s authorized dealers. Of course we were there. Paul was an affable guy; easy to like and to the point. Want a 289 street car? He asks for note paper. On a scrap he lists three amounts we would be willing to pay for the components to a complete car. I circle one, telling him that was what we would be able to pay right now. He explained that he would make a list of everything our agreeTHE SAAC REP’S CONNECTIONS Donna introduced us to Don Johnston, ment called for then we can write him a the Hawaii Representative for the SAAC, check. We agree on a handshake and we who was very impressed by our driving to have never been sorry. national SAAC events with our Midstates Cobra. Don is the region’s GT350 resident CSX8007 expert. He owns an original GT350. At one It turned out that we would be getting car event he introduced Miki and I to car #7 (of about 31 which were going to be David Dempster, a Ford engineer accompa- built) 289 street roadster manufactured nying John Coletti, then-SVT chief, who by Shelby American, Inc. It would be a brought the “SuperStang” prototype for an replica of their 1962-to-1965 289 street exhibit at the 2001 Mustang Madness all- roadster. Paul ordered the components and Ford Show at Mike McKenna’s Ford deal- by September, 2003 the components were ership in Kailua, on Oahu. It was Dave delivered to our daughter’s home in Sunwho introduced us to the Woodward nyvale, CA. Unlike our Midstates Cobra, Dream Cruise. When we got there, Dave where we received regular updates with gave us a ride in the BOSS Mustang, a photos, the Shelby American response was one-off experiment by SVT. finally received, but not until after Dave Dempster inquired as to 8007’s status. Relationships are helpful. In May, 2005 CSX 8007 is finally constructed in our daughter’s garage. It was then shipped to Hawaii for titling and registration, and then sent back to California where it was prepared for SAAC-30. We’ve since been to SAAC-31 in Virginia; SAAC32 in Utah; SAAC-33 in New Jersey; SAAC-35 in California; two Mid-America Ford Nationals (open track and drag racing) at Tulsa, Oklahoma; one Virginia Hill Climb; one COCOA open track event; three Nor Cal Shelby open track events; and one WSCB open track event. After 67,000 miles, CSX8007 has given us transportation, entertainment, and most importantly, opened doors to relationships. We’ll be headed for Alaska soon. This will be the fiftieth state we’ve driven in. CSX8007 was at SAAC-35 at Infineon. Kei drove it on both the drag strip and the open track. When we see those Hawaiian plates we have to shake our head when someone who lives 400 miles away tells us it’s too far to drive.
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cles i n o r h eard C b y a r G The
Dow ningtow n,Pennsylvania June 28-29-30,1979
F
or SAAC’s fourth convention we headed back to the East Coast, towards the club’s largest population center. We were initially planning to go back to Hershey again for 1979—that would have made convention planning a lot easier— but we encountered some fairly significant problems, one of which was finding an acceptable date within our late Junethrough-late August window. With most members having school-aged children, holding a convention when schools were in session was a recipe for attendance disaster. We were not able to resolve these issues with the Hershey Motor Lodge, so it became necessary to look elsewhere. Based on our membership demographics, the general area that could be expected to provide the largest attendance was Pennsylvania with the nearby states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Delaware, Maryland, Vir-
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ginia and Ohio making up the bulk of the club’s membership. We needed a facility with at least 400 rooms, and Mickey Rooney’s Downingtown Inn in Downingtown, Pennsylvania fit the bill. It was a little west of Philadelphia— close enough without being in what would be considered that city’s urban area. It had a layout that was conducive to a group like ours. Their brochure depicted a nice enough place, and since at that time in our history we were not concerned with race tracks, it was as good an anywhere to spend a weekend. We even entertained thoughts of a guest appearance by “The Little Mick” at the evening program and maybe having someone give him the ride of his life in a Cobra roadster. We signed a preliminary contract in the fall and scheduled a reconnaissance trip in February to eyeball the place. We needed to solidify things with the hotel’s sales director and banquet manager, and also to have a look around to visualize how things would shake out in late June. However, between October 1978 and February 1969 things had changed radically. The “second oil crisis” was on us (the first having taken place in 1973). It grew out of a strike in November of 1978 by some 37,000 workers at Iran’s nationalized oil refineries. That country’s leader, the Shah of Iran, fled the country and a new regime took over. Production volume decreased (from about 6,000,000 barrels to 1,500,000 barrels a day), causing prices everywhere to increase. Domestic production was increased in an attempt to compensate but there was still a shortfall. This put a huge crimp in this country’s oil supply; prices increasing from $16 a barrel to almost $40 and prices at the pump increased proportionately. Almost overnight, there were long lines at gas stations and many sold out their allocations before the end of each month. Crudely lettered “No Gas” or “Gas Pumps Closed” signs were common. Many people believed that the shortage was artificially created by the oil companies in an effort to boost prices—and profits. Politicians began talking about rationing and, in fact, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Texas actually instituted an “oddand-even” system whereby cars with license plates ending in even numbers could only purchase gas on even-numbered days of the month. We put a couple of ten-gallon cans of gas in the back of our SUV and headed to the Downingtown Inn in February. Things did not look good. To begin with, the convention was scheduled for the very end of the month, exactly when most gas stations
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ran out of their allocations and closed up. We pictured convention attendees in gasswilling high performance cars, coasting into the Downingtown Inn on fumes and having a very difficult time filling up to begin the trip home. Or worse yet—wholesale cancellations by SAAC members figuring that attending the convention just wasn’t worth the trouble and the uncertainty of possibly being stranded on the side of the road in their Cobra or Shelby. After receiving a lot of positive feedback following SAAC-3 and its open track event at Ontario Motor Speedway, members looking forward to SAAC-4 expressed the hope that there would be some type of driving event at this convention. It became obvious that we could no longer rely on
only a swap meet, seminars and a large parking lot full of cars to keep convention participants entertained. There were no road circuits in the area but there were several drag strips within an hour or so of Downingtown and we chose the closest one, Atco Raceway. The plan was to have drag racing on Saturday and the distance from the hotel to the track was far enough to provide a pleasant ride for those who would only be coming to watch. Of course, the fly in the ointment 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 the hotel with a full tank of gas, drove to the
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strip and drag raced their car most of the day, they might not have enough gas to get back to the hotel. And with the convention scheduled for June 28-29-30—the tail end of the month—there was no guarantee that the gas stations between the strip and the hotel would have gas available. That gave us something to think about on the way home After kicking around all of the pros and cons, we decided to scrub the drag racing portion of the convention. This wasn’t an easy decision because we had already given the track a $500 non-refundable deposit to hold the date. But there was a strong possibility that the event would only attract a handful of cars, which would mean losing four times our deposit. Gas crisis or not, we were concerned that there would be a lot of angry and frustrated conventioneers if we put on a convention without some type of organized opportunity for participants to drive their cars. The question was, what could we do— that was still legal? The answer turned out to be a scavenger hunt. The basic goal was to provide an event which would allow participants to drive their cars, albeit not over a great distance. We came up with a list of specific items which teams of participants had to collect. And we provided a serious prize so the competition would be taken seriously: round-trip airfare, hotel accommodations, a rented car and all convention fees waived for next year’s convention. The package was nothing to sneeze at. The list included some things which were intended to be difficult, if not impossible to find: a Christmas ornament; a receipt with a total of $2.89, $3.50, 4.27 or $4.28; a speeding ticket dated that day; a receipt from the Delaware Memorial Bridge dated that day (it was about 25 miles away). There were also things on the list intended to make someone feel stupid for asking: a business card from a Corvette salesman, an unused pizza box, a paper Burger King crown. And there were things that we thought might be useful to us at future conventions: an orange plastic highway cone; a Holiday Inn towel; (“All items on the list become the property of SAAC...”). There were also a few things which could be used to break ties, such as 3-feet of string (the length of which would be interpreted differently based on how much the string was stretched). We didn’t know how many people would want to participate, or how many of the 100 items each team would be able to collect within the four-hour time limit (11 a.m to 4 p.m.). Actually, there were only 90 items because the back page of the last sheet contained
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ten questions, the correct answer to each was worth one point. They were introduced with this challenge: “...any Shelby enthusiast should have no trouble answering any of them...” Here are a few: Name the male lead in the movie “When The Boys Meet The Girls.” What is Peter Brock’s middle name? What year was Shelby’s turbine car entered in the Indy 500? Shelby American had a live cobra snake in a cage in the office. What was his name? Identify Ormly Gumfudgin. What brand name tachometer was used in the Lone Star. One of the organizers of a regional SAAC meet held in the Northeast the year before knew a representative of Allen Testproducts. He was invited to bring a refrigerator-sized engine analyzer to the event
and provided free diagnostic tests for event participants. It proved very popular. Owners discovered they had a weak spark plug wire, or that their points were set a little too wide. The spring on their mechanical advance was weak or the coil was borderline. Things which were not obvious to the weekend shade-tree mechanic (which most of us were back then). Someone suggested that this guy be invited to bring his equipment to Downingtown and it sounded like a great idea. It would turn out to be a good example of the law of unintended consequences. We send him a note inviting him to bring his toy to the convention. He was located near the center of Connecticut so it would be about a four-hour trip for him. He
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had seemed enthusiastic at the regional event and was constantly remarking how the cars he was seeing were a lot more interesting than the Buicks, Impalas, Datsuns and Galaxies he was used to testing. We offered to pay his hotel room for the weekend. He asked if he could bring his assistant; okay, make that two hotel rooms. When they showed up (the assistant brought his girlfriend) we gave them three Saturday evening dinner tickets and told them to charge their meals to their room. Little did we know that both of these guys were boozehounds and every night they held court in the hotel’s bar, buying rounds of drinks for anyone within earshot. And charging it to their room. The food and bar bill ended up costing us more than their rooms! It was part of our learning curve, and it was something that never happened again. The convention was a Friday-Saturday-Sunday affair and we got there Thursday morning to organize and get things going. As we were checking into the hotel, the previous pack of guests were checking out. We noticed a little commotion out in the parking lot and someone rushed up to the registration desk and tugged at Howard Pardee’s sleeve. Gesticulating wildly, he said, “Somebody just backed into your GT350!” Pardee was unruffled. “Yeah, sure,” he responded, not missing a beat as he filled out his hotel registration card. “If you expect me to drop everything and run outside maybe you’d like to buy an uranium mine I have for sale in New Jersey.” Two others followed the first guy in. One told Pardee it wasn’t a serious fender-bender; just a small dimple. The guy behind him said that others were outside holding the perpetrator who had tried to drive off. Pardee looked out the plate glass window and saw the scene, and suddenly realized it was not a prank. He rushed out to discover that an older hotel guest had been backing his large Buick out, and the edge of his rear bumper came By SAAC-4 we were beginning to see some of the more historical Shelby American cars being brought to conventions—and now we knew a lot of what it was that made them historical. For example, the ‘67 GT500 called the “Super Snake” actually was a one-of-one prototype for a 427-powered GT500. By the time the lightweight GT40 MK II engine and everything else was poured into the equation, the Super Snake’s price tag was about $7,500. About the price of a 427 Cobra. For the same money, which one would you choose? And that, sports fans, is precisely why the GT500 Super Snake never became Mel Burns Ford’s dealer-generated special model, like the super cars from Nickey Chevrolet in Chicago, Yenko in Pittsburg, Motion Performance in Baldwin, Long Island or Mr. Norm’s Grand 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 there could possibly be any damage to Pardee’s car, which he described as, “just an old Mustang.” The tennis ball-sized dimple was pointed out to him and he received a quick tutorial on the difference between a Mustang and a Shelby from one of the “witnesses.” Drivers license and insurance information were exchanged and Pardee’s convention was off to an inauspicious start. When we had first visited the hotel, the name out in front was “Mickey Rooney’s Downingtown Inn” and they played commercials for the place on New York City radio stations. To get to the main ballroom you went down a formal staircase. There was a wall halfway down, where the steps split, turning to the right and left, and then continuing down one more half-level. Hanging in the center of that wall was a large oil portrait of Mickey Rooney. However, The Mick sold the place between the time we looked at it and when we arrived for the convention. It was now, simply, the “Downingtown Inn.” And the The Mick’s portrait was gone. All that remained was a large rectangle of unfaded wall paper where the picture had been. Another curious side note to SAAC-4 was the appearance of Pennsylvania member Lahr Shawgo. He was so overcome with SAAC that he had hand-painted a 100-foot long banner, 5-feet high, for SAAC-3 that said, “Welcome to SAAC Country.” He described laying it out and painting it on the roof of a barn—the only work space large enough). He shipped it out to SAAC-3 at his own expense. We were impressed by his enthusiasm, and told him so. The banner came with a couple of unintended consequences. One was that once the banner arrived at the SAAC-3 hotel in Pasadena, it had to be moved to the roof and hung over the edge. The top floor was about twelve stories up and from the ground, the banner was just about impossible to read. Besides, nobody spent a lot of time in front of the hotel. One of the surprises at the convention was the appearance of CSX3009, the former 1965 Essex Wire/Skip Scott, then Ed Lowther/Eger Ford 1966 A/P national champion. The 1973 national champion was owned by Sam Feinstein who lived in the next town over and had a Subaru dealership across the street from the Downington Inn. Nobody knew where Feinstein lived so he had not been formally invited to the convention but when he saw the steady stream of Cobras coming and going from the hotel, he knew something was happening. He walked across the street, looked around, and the next day came back with his car. It looked very much like it had in its last race. Very cool.
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Another consequence was that after the convention the banner had to be boxed up (Shawgo had constructed a sturdy box out of two-by-fours and 3/4˝ plywood) and shipped back (now at our expense). We had it sent to Shawgo with the suggestion that he fill in the “SAAC” letters that he had only outlined. He said he would have it done for the next convention, and true to his word, he did. He brought it with him and we had it hung in the Downingtown Inn’s lobby, a visual assault to everyone who entered. Shawgo’s desire was that the huge banner would become a tradition, displayed at every national convention. It was a seemingly harmless gesture but once the actual banner was in SAAC’s hands it then became SAAC’s responsibility. It weighed more than one hundred pounds (not including its custom crate) and just moving it around was a logistical challenge. We had to lug it back to SAAC HQ and store it until the next convention, and then have it shipped to a new location for the weekend. It had certainly lost its sparkle by that point. Shawgo was, however, already on to his next project: a pair of 10-foot diameter SAAC logos. He envisioned one of them hanging behind the podium at the convention’s evening program. The first one was only partly finished, but he brought it with him to SAAC-4 anyway, and then spent most of the two days finishing the paint work with the large square of plasticcoated fabric layed out on the hotel’s tennis court. Such is the power of high praise. The round logo had not been completed by show time, so it would have to wait until SAAC-5. SAAC-4 was another convention which saw an inside parts swap but instead of limiting it to a specific time, at the request of (and heavy lobbying from) the professional parts vendors, we scheduled it to run all day (8 a.m. to 6 p.m.) on Friday and Saturday and until 1 p.m. on Sunday. A small number of full-time Shelby parts dealers had materialized. They were continually expanding their inventory, specializing in the kind of things that your local Ford parts department couldn’t seem to get (and in 1979, you could still get most of what you needed to keep a 289 Hi-Po or 428 P.I. running). They were also busy finding sources to reproduce those items for which there was a large demand for but The pros loved the idea of the swap meet expanding to three full days. The enthusiasts who were there for the whole convention smorgasbord—the car show, the seminars and the socializing—were torn between standing behind their table and packing up for a few hours every day to catch the action that was going on outside of the swap meet room.
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a small supply: Shelby Pitman and idler arms, Koni shocks, wood steering wheels and unique Shelby emblems and badges. In between the full time pros like Tony Branda, Gordon Gimbel’s Cobra Performance, Chuck Gutke’s Cobra Restorers and Valley Ford Parts and the amateurs who worked out of the trunk of their car or the back of their pick-up truck, trying to sell off extra parts they had accumulated, both new and used, were the part-time vendors. These people worked out of their garage or basement, so they had very little overhead. If they could wangle a dealer discount at their local Ford parts department, they could buy easy-to-sell items like Mustang bumpers, interior trim pieces, battery trays and Cobra valve covers, marking them up only minimally and thereby undercutting the pros who did have high overhead costs. There were also the “one note wonders” —those enthusiasts who had one item to sell; a poster, t-shirt or book. Success for them was selling enough of their inventory to pay their way to the convention: registration fee, dinner ticket, hotel room and maybe even gas to and from the event. But mostly they enjoyed just being a part of the action rather than walking around with their head on a swivel like the rest of the convention attendees. Another side note: most of the photos in the convention coverage article in the Shelby American were taken by Donald Farr. Long before he became editor of Mustang Monthly he was a SAAC member from South Carolina. Just a young guy with a healthy interested in Shelbys, Cobras and Boss Mustangs—and photography. He was shooting black and white—which very few others did unless they were professionals. And even back then it was obvious that Donald had a sixth sense for what was interesting and unique, as well as for composition. He was able to capture the feel of the convention, which can be elusive for most people with cameras. In short, he spoiled us. He started writing brief reports of the events he attended (and photographed) in the Southeast—mostly Georgia, Florida, North and South Carolina. They were good and they got better, so we weren’t surprised when he Not every Cobra was a concours example or a daily driver. In fact, there was no SAAC concours at SAAC-4. That would not come until 1982, at SAAC-7. This “car” pictured was being sold as a body only. The chassis was presumably being “restored” with a new body. Back in those days—before replicas and the availability of body parts or of entire bodies—cars like this were viewed as the beginning of a restoration project of their own. Such was the stuff dreams were made out of in 1979.
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told us that he was going to work, fulltime, for Mustang Monthly. The rest is, as they say, history. Donald climbed the ladder to the point where today he is one of the top editors in the specialty car field. We’re proud to say that he got his start with SAAC. A large portion of the convention schedule was consumed by seminars. There were individual meetings for Cobras, early and late Shelbys, Tigers, Bosses, Panteras, restoration, competition, drivelines, literature and collectibles, concours and car shows and even a ladies’ seminar. Some went concurrently and they were about an hour to an hour and a half each, allowing people to move between them after asking a question or two. Keep in mind that, at this point, SAAC was only four years old, and there had only been three Shelby Owners Association (SOA) conventions prior to our first one. Most of the information we now take for granted—and which fills thousand-plus page registries—was either unknown, incomplete or just flat wrong back then. Members we cited as “experts” and asked to sit up front at these seminars, were still working their way up the learning curve like everyone else. Someone might make a statement that, “All early cars had thusand-such” and a couple of hands in the room would shoot up. Those guys would say, “Mine doesn’t.” A discussion would ensue and that’s the way we learned a lot of what we didn’t know. Some of it proved to be correct and some of it didn’t. It was a slow and sometimes painful process but back then it’s all we had. The convention seminars were as much for collecting information as they were for disseminating it. We can’t say, for certain, what took place at the Ladies’ Seminar because we weren’t there. But there didn’t seem to be much of a demand for it at subsequent conventions. SAAC obviously wasn’t the kind of club where the wives and girlfriends exchanged recipes and tips on cleaning interiors. As the club evolved, more and more wives, girlfriends and now daughters joined the guys in the open track, graduating from the ladies’ driving school to the regular open track sessions. SAAC’s early conventions drew a lot more cars than they do today. Why? It’s simple: the cars were still “new” enough for owners to drive them without worrying about wearing things out or lowering the value by increasing the mileage. Most cars hadn’t been restored yet. There is a direct correlation between a Shelby or Cobra’s restoration and the resulting decrease in its being driven. This is one of the things they are referring to when someone mentions “the good old days.” In 1979 the value of early Shelbys was around $10,000; later cars were bringing $5,000.
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The gas shortage did not have much an affect on convention attendance as far as we could tell. Pennsylvania’s odd-andeven rule also didn’t have much of an affect because there was a lot of license plate switching in the parking lot so everyone’s car could be topped-off prior to the trip home. At one gas station down the street from the hotel, one of the young guys working the weekend shift turned out to be a Ford enthusiast. They had a five-gallonper-car limit but when Shelbys and Cobras started to come in, he has happy to fill them up without any limit. Word spread quickly back at the hotel and this gas station suddenly had lines of Shelbys, Cobras, Bosses and Mustangs stretching out into the street. The attendant was in gas station heaven because the car show was coming to him! By the convention’s conclusion SAAC conventioneers had sucked his tanks dry. Another incident that became fodder for future convention legends was when alarmed hotel housekeepers reported finding full containers of gasoline being stored in hotel rooms. The weekend manager went ballistic, fearing a conflagration or worse—a visit from the local fire marshall. A great deal of effort was made to find the hotel guests who were storing gasoline in their rooms and to get them to remove it. Fortunately, everyone was at the hotel— mostly out on the back lawn where all of the cars were parked. The cans were taken out of the rooms and moved to the trunks of cars or the back of trucks. This seemed to mollify the manager somewhat. SAAC-4 represented something of an evolutionary change of direction. It was the last convention where we did not have a car show or an open track event. We invited feedback from members who had participated in the Downingtown event and almost to a person, they said they would like to see some type of car show competition. The open track event would not require a professional racing facility (yet). And planning a car show where spectators voted was fairly easy to do. Conventions would never be the same again. Another trend just beginning in 1979 was the S/C-ification of 427 street cars. CSX3327 was fresh from a total restoration at Downingtown that included addition of a chrome roll bar, correct S/C flares, side exhaust, wide GT40-style Halibrand wheels, a hood scoop, oil cooler and a comp fuel filler. Today, because so many replica Cobras are S/C clones (not to mention Shelby American’s CSX4000 series cars and most of the Kirkham and AC MK IVs), owners of original 427 Cobra street cars are bringing them back to the way they were originally built because boxstock looking street Cobras are now more unique.
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A Progress Report on GT40 MK IV Continuation Production
F
or the non-owners of the latest Cobra/ GT40 registry who are out of touch with the latest in the GT40 MK IV world, here’s a quick recap. A casual conversation between GT40 enthusiast Mike Teske and Edsel Ford at the 1989 GT40 Reunion at Watkins Glen resulted in Teske telling Edsel about his still-in-theplanning-phase project to build a GT40 MK IV from scratch, to exact original specifications. He was peripherally interested and told Teske, in affect, “Let me know if there’s any way I can help...” Fast forward to 1992. Ford was clearing out some of its archives, among them a large quantity of GT40-related files. Teske had been through the archives, researching various GT40 matters, so his name was known to the head archivist. The connection was somehow made to Edsel Ford, who green-lighted the stuff going to Teske. He was at the point in his project that he needed something tangible—exactly like this—to continue. Teske had built a MK II clone and had been associated with Peter Thorp/Safir (GT40 MK V production) and Brian Wingfield (ex-Ford engineer and well-known GT40 restorer) as well as John Willment (J.W. Automotive Engineering, Ltd.). One of Teske’s projects was to reproduce, from scratch, the magnesium-case T-44 transaxles used in the MK IIs. Teske teamed up with Kenny Thompson, a former Holman-Moody fabricator during the GT40 salad days. Together they decided to construct a small number—seven—of exact replica GT40 MK IVs. The Ford documents Teske was given would enable the cars to be specification perfect. It would be no small task, they understood, but it was something they both wanted to do. They began researching the details and received enthusiastic assistance from virtually everyone who had a hand in the original cars: Roy Lunn, Chuck Mountain, Ed Hull, Bob Negstad, Homer Perry, Mose Knowland, Carroll Smith, Phil Remington, Alan Mann, John Horsman and a handful of others. Teske definitely had assembled a team with “the right stuff.”
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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 evident that the project was more than one man’s pipedream, the other five cars quickly found owners. Fran Kress was one of the first to jump on board. His biggest dilemma was deciding what color to have it painted. Go with a color which had already been used in 1967 or personalize the car so there would never be a question whose it was?
Teske and Thompson chose as the legal name, “Kar Kraft,” using the familiar “forwards K-backwards K” logo. That company had closed its doors in 1976 and ceased business activity. Filing legally to use the name was little more than a formality, and would provide a well-known nameplate for the cars as well as eliminating any legal obstructions when they began to go public. Construction of components and pieces began in 1999. Slowly as things spooled up, seven of everything necessary was produced. It was slow-going, because with nothing tangible to sell, it was almost all out-go with very little income. This is
the meaning of “labor of love.” By 2005, about three-quarters of the chassis work had been finished and a mocked-up chassis was completed (using birch plywood) to the same specifications as the original cars. When all of the dimensions were doublechecked and verified, production of the first actual chassis began. By 2008, all of the bolt-on chassis components had been completed. The original body panels had survived and they were available to Teske. He used them to fabricate brand new body molds. All of the body pieces were then made (in batches of seven) and they began to get fitted onto the chassis.
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That brings us up to 2008, when the registry was printed. Not much was heard about the project “on the street” after that, but that didn’t mean it was dormant. Far from it. When word spread that a new batch of exact-specification MK IVs were being made, eyebrows went up. When the project reached the point where Teske was taking actual deposits, four check-writers stepped forwards and demonstrated their seriousness. Now Teske’s project had an infusion of funds but the downside was that he also had warm bodies looking over his shoulder, monitoring his progress. To date, the tubs for all seven cars have been completed. Teske will keep one for himself and his partner Kenny Thompson will get the other (which will be comThe first car, being constructed at Teske’s Kar Kraft shop. Every individual piece was hand-built pleted as a duplicate of J-1, the and then hand-assembled. Just like the originals. “Breadwagon.”) A consortium of buyers snapped up the other five cars: Joe Dolan, Fran Kress, Gary Moore and Jim Henderson. [Note: the fifth car is currently available. Contact: jdolan@voyagergro.com] The cars would come from Teske’s Kar Kraft shop essentially complete (less engines and transaxles) and a subcontractor was needed to do the paint, detailing and final assembly. Engines would be built by Thompson. The four owners began shopping around for a subcontractor that was capable of completing the bodywork and painting the cars. It had to be more than a restoration shop because the plan was for some of the cars to be entered in vintage competition and the cars would need to be prepared to race—not just be pretty boy show cars. The group finally settled on Cobra Automotive in Wallingford, CT. This facility had everything they needed: shop owner Curt Vogt was an experienced racer himself. They had prepared a number of original GT40s for vintage competition, including one they took to LeMans, Spa and Nurburgring. The facility has a full paint shop and a modern engine shop. And they had a number of fabricators and technicians who don’t recoil from any project. They had done work on both Moore’s and Dolan’s race cars in the past and both were happy with the level of quality and attention to detail that is part of the company’s well-deserved reputation. At Cobra Automotive (three are already there and the first one, J-13, is fin-
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ished). They will have their body panels fitted and finished and then they will be painted. From there they will go back to Kar Kraft for engines, transaxles and final completion. A stickler for details, Teske insisted on having new tunnel-port heads and matching intake manifolds cast. The foundry work took longer than anticipated so the completion date had to be pushed back. Brake calipers had to be cast and they were also more complicated than the foundry anticipated. A run of seven T-44 four-speed transaxles is being manufactured especially for these cars. Once the cars have their engines, they will come back to Cobra Automotive for final detailing and track testing. In December there will be a visit by FIA inspectors because in order to race in Europe, the cars need to receive certification. The plan calls for at least one of them to be entered in the Vintage Grand Prix at LeMans and possibly other European tracks. Stay tuned.
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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.
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ertainly one of the stranger things I’ve received over the past 35 years was an email from a friend with an attachment of an editorial from Gerald Roush’s Ferrari Market Letter (Volume 34 Number 26, dated 12/26/09). All the email said was, “What do you think about this?” I knew a little about Gerald Roush and his Ferrari Market Letter. It was printed and mailed to subscribers every other week and was sort of like a Snakebite Bulletin, only with an editorial. Roush often commented on Ferrari prices and provided his expert opinion on Ferrarirelated subjects. A copy had been passed my way every once in a while, so I basically know what it was all about. Without a club behind him, Roush was free to print his own opinions, which he did. On the other hand, I went out of my way not to editorialize prices in print because I realized that as a national director, if I were to make such a pronouncement— for example, “1965 GT350s are now selling for $100,000”—that could set a standard which could effect the minimum price sellers might put on their ‘65 GT350s. From there it’s a very short step to affecting the market rather than just reporting on it. I wasn’t sure if any of this could really happen, but I had no desire to find out. Roush’s editorial was titled “Half Life” and it referred to the fact that at 67 years of age, he realized that he had been editing the Ferrari Market Letter for half his life. As I read the one-page editorial, it dawned on me many of the aspects of my association with Cobras and Shelbys shared a spooky parallel with Gerald Roush’s association with Ferraris. I contacted him and asked his permission to reprint his editorial, I said I wasn’t sure what form it would take but I would be sure to provide attribution. He said he was happy to have me use it.
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a year (one year the calendar tricked us and we did 27) that equals 885 issues. •At the time Roush had written this, SAAC had also been publishing its newsletters and magazines for 34 years. “Having recently celebrated yet another birthday (they seem to come along too frequently), I suddenly realized that I have spent half my life doing this, give or take a few months. The first issue was published on January 3, 1976. •SAAC’s first magazine was coverdated January, 1976. “I won’t claim that issues have appeared every two weeks since then. There have been times when I have fallen behind. Deaths in the family, bypass heart surgery, equipment failures, etc. have all thrown the schedule for a loop, but I have always caught back up and produced that landmark number of 26 issues a year. “In 1976 the grand total of Ferraris that had been manufactured in the company’s almost 30 years was around 15,000. Today that number represents about three year’s production. The 365 GTB/4 and the Dino 246 series were very recent memories, and in fact a few unsold examples of each could still be found. •Shelby American had stopped building cars in 1970. Between 1961 and 1970, Cobra and Shelby Mustang production totalled 14,815. “That means there were not that many Ferraris for sale. The range of models offered in the early years was about what appeared on the first page or two of current issues. “There were no 12-cylinder Ferraris being made for the U.S. market and the Dino 308 series was all that was available to American buyers. So, needless to say, in the last 34 years I have seen quite a change in the Ferrari world. •There has also been a change in the Cobra and Shelby world since 1976. Co“This issue of the Ferrari Market Let- bras were so popular that they were being ter marks 34 full years of publishing. For recreated in kit form. Brian Angliss went those of you who are counting, at 26 issues from being a Cobra restorer to the head of
The SHELBY AMERICAN
– Rick Kopec AC Cars and they began building their versions of the 427 Cobra, called the AC MK IV. Carroll Shelby, himself, jumped into the pool with his “component Cobras.” Shelby was everywhere: fiberglass-bodied “kit” cars, aluminum bodied 427 S/C replicas and later 289 FIA comp replicas and 289 “slabside” street cars. All told, there were probably 20,000 various kit cars (Contemporary, ERA, Superformance and factory Five to name the largest, with dozens of other manufacturers all trying to carve their niche out of the market. There were more than 500 AC MK IVs and Shelby was still building CSX4000s, 7000s, 8000s and 1,000s: probably more than 800 cars to date. A conservative estimate would be 300+ replicas for every original Cobra that was made in the 1960s. There were also replica Shelbys being made: everything from one-off projects undertaken by individuals with a Mustang and the money to buy reproduction Shelby parts from parts vendors to the Shelby-licensed “continuation” cars and Eleanor clones. I won’t attempt to guess at the number of these that are out there. “The whole concept of what is a Ferrari has certainly changed. In 1976 any Ferraristi would tell you that, except for a few race cars, a Ferrari was a V-12 frontengined automobile. Yes, V-6 Dinos were around, but they were “almost a Ferrari” according to the sales brochure. Today’s concept of a Ferrari is that of a mid-engined V-8. •It was also increasingly difficult to define what a “genuine” Cobra or Shelby was. SAAC’s registry was the most useful tool but there were still individuals attempting to pass off their cars as legitimate exceptions to SAAC’s guidelines. “Actually, I had been involved with Ferraris for almost a decade before establishing the Ferrari Market Letter and the original genesis for the FML dates back to 1971. •The genesis of SAAC also dated back to 1971-1972 when the original Cobra Club
SUMMER/2010 65
and the Shelby Owners Association were formed. “When I started the FML I was teaching history at the junior college level and playing with Ferraris in my spare time. Later I spent a few years working at a Ferrari dealership before striking out on my own. •When SAAC was started I was also teaching school, and also playing with Shelbys in my spare time. “One of the “mysteries” of the publication is the dating of the issues which is every other Saturday. When publication started, circulation was rather small, just over 100 copies, and after printing each copy was hand collated, stapled, stamped and mailed by my family sitting around the kitchen table. •SAAC’s earliest magazines were hand-addressed, postage stamps were licked and applied, and the publications were taken to the post office. As the club grew through the 1980s we continued to do our own magazine mailing. When we went to the large format issues we turned the mailing over to a mailing house. But when we printed the Snakebite Bulletin, every one of the more than 100 issues were labeled and mailed by hand. “Eventually it grew in size and circulation to where I wound up with a commercial offset printing press. automatic collator, etc. Now I had a First Class Permit for mailing, which meant no more mailing on Saturday. But the Saturday date stuck. •We never got to the point where we did our own printing but we did have a postal permit: #350. “Way back in 1976 communication between subscribers, advertisers and me was either by telephone or by snail mail. Gradually technology started making it easier. First came fax machines which today only a 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 the future for the publication. Twelve years later the promise doesn’t seem so rosy. I started making the content of each issue available online by subscription, at a reduced rate compared to the print edition. “The online version not only has all the information contained in the print edition, but also has some added features such as color photos, all back issues through 2002, a handy searchable index to past classified ads and a pdf copy of the current print edition. “My personal benefit was going to be that I would no longer have to be tied down
The SHELBY AMERICAN
to a printing press and the other equipment involved in creating a hard copy. From the beginning I had produced each issue completely in-house. But an electronic edition, I reasoned, could be created anyplace with an internet connection. •In 2009, SAAC’s new forum began to demonstrate the power and benefits of the Internet. We made the decision to move from a printed publication to an on-line magazine in an attempt to rein in our expenses. Printing and mailing even one magazine a year was the single biggest expense we had. The benefits of posting articles online seemed, to us, to far outweigh the disadvantages. Instead of waiting for an arbitrary deadline at the end of the year, articles could be posted as soon as they were finished. They were fresh—not old news by the time a magazine was printed. We could use color photographs, and as many of them as we wanted. There was no limit to how long an article could be. And the cost of each issue was virtually nothing. “But after a dozen years subscribers to the on-line edition are still outnumbered by those who prefer to get their copy on paper. However, I did finally have to give up printing each issue myself. My aged offset press had passed its half-life and my rapidly approaching half-life meant I was no longer able to pull all-nighters running the press. It costs more to have it commercially printed but it’s worth it. •It took less than a year for us to get the message: a fair number of members did not like having to read the magazine articles on their computer. Our solution was to combine all four issues each year into a printed annual that was mailed at the end of each year. “In other ways the popularity of the internet has been a curse. Perhaps it is because of all those years I spent studying in my chosen discipline, but I still prefer doing research the old fashioned way. Today too many Ferraristi who have a question just post their inquiry on the Web and sit back waiting for an answer. •I’ve noticed that, too. “But more often than not they get conflicting answers, none of which may be correct. As a result, the amount of misinformation out there about Ferraris seems to have multiplied. Not that we knew it all three decades ago, but we knew how to evaluate sources of information, and which were reliable and which were not. Today there are many “legend in their own mind” experts out there pontificating on the internet, with their “credentials” verified by how many posts they have in chat rooms.
•Ditto. “Which leads me to another major change I have witnessed. Many of today’s Ferraristi are not really Ferrari enthusiasts. They have no appreciation, much less knowledge, of the heritage, of the history, of the mystique of the marque. They may not even be automotive enthusiasts, with no appreciation of any of the other great marques of the past or present. “If anything, they are enamored only by the image portrayed by Ferrari, and what owning one of the cars from Maranello does for their own image. The importance of the image can be demonstrated by the fact that Ferrari annually makes more profit from licensing their image than they do by selling cars. •The history of original Cobras and Shelbys is a major part of what they are and why they are so sought-after today. That history, which is not limited to the races some of the cars competed in or who drove them, also includes how and where each one was produced, who had a hand in producing it, what dealer it was sold through and how it was optioned and delivered. Back in the beginning of organized Shelby and Cobra enthusiasm, owners all felt a strong gravitational pull from the history of the cars. They had a sense that they were at the end of a chain of individuals who had all shared the cars, one at a time, passing them on to the next owner like relay runners passing a baton. But it has been 40 or more years since the cars left their original dealerships and became, first, used cars and later, highly regarded collectibles. Eventually as prices climbed, the newest owners tended to see the present value of their cars very clearly and the cars’ history as a nebulous haze. The tidal wave of interest which resulted in not only the high prices of originals but in an astounding number of replicas has served to confuse things rather than clarify them. SAAC national tries to keep the history of the cars and those who made that history in the picture, but sometimes we get the feeling we are preaching to the choir. “The other night a handful of us “dinosaurs” were talking about the “good old days.” We all agreed that things were certainly different, but left open the question of whether or not they were better.” •I agree. Different, yes. Better, who knows? A sad endpoint to this is that Gerald Roush died of a heart attack on May 21, 2010. He was 68 years old. It is doubtful that anyone else in the Ferrari world possesses his knowledge and experience in dealing with these cars. RIP Gerald.
SUMMER/2010 66
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Review from Classic & Sports Car. “It’s almost impossible to dip into this book without poring for ages ov er the w onderf ul im ages— w ell reproduced— 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 of the very best Americans driving during the 1950s. His career behind the wheel is told for the first time in this new book. It includes remembrances written by Shelby himself along with many never-before published photographs. Among other achievements, Shelby won 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 book details a large number of his races as well as his relationships with Juan Fangio, Phil Hill, Stirling Moss, Jack Brabham, Bob Bondurant and John Fitch among many others. Shelby had World-Championship ability, but unfortunately, his racing career was cut short after the 1960 season due to his heart condition. Some 300 period photographs. 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: agevans@yahoo.com fax 310-373-5988 Art Evans, 800 S Pacific Coast Highway, Redondo Beach, CA 90277
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 Ken Miles, Bob Bondurant, Dan Gurney, and Mario Andretti, the book shares the exploits of independents Bob Johnson, Tom Payne, Dan Gerber, and Tommy Hitchcock. Boyd Jaynes’ immaculately composed pictures reveal the most significant facets of engines, bodywork, and cockpits, as well as providing full two-page views of each model. Complimentary reviews have appeared in several automotive magazines, and the book is regarded as the highestquality title on Shelby cars. Order now, and we’ll have the author autograph your copy. Hardback with slipcase, 11x13 inches, 272 pages; 156 large color photographs ISBN: 1-893618-94-3; $149.95, including author’s autograph; U.S. shipping $4.95 Toad Hall Motorbooks 1235 Pierce St., Lakewood, CO 80214
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R M AUCTIONS Contact: Donnie Gould of RM Auctions 954-566-2209 Cars will be available at our RM Monterey Auction August 14-15, 2009 1971 Ford Mustang Mach I 429 VIN # 1F05J209140 OFFERED 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 accumulating 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 429 VIN # 0F02Z120966 The 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-production 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 transmission, mated to a heavy-duty 9-inch rear end.
1970 Ford Mustang Boss 302 VIN# OF02G160137 OFFERED WITHOUT RESERVE The Boss 302 is a very rare Mustang indeed, with only 7,014 units built for 1970. This outstanding example is finished in stunning Acapulco Blue (black interior) and features a rear deck spoiler, Sport Slats and chrome Magnum 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# 9R01Q123554 OFFERED WITHOUT RESERVE This lightweight 428 CJ 1969 Mustang was originally prepared 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 letter of authenticity from Bill Stroppe.
1965 Shelby 427 Cobra CSX6017 VIN# CSX6017 CSX 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 experience 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.
1966 Shelby GT 350 B-Production Vintage Racing Car VIN# SFM6S1432 OFFERED WITHOUT RESERVE This GT350 started life as a Hertz Rent-A-Racer before shedding its street trim and going on to a successful racing career, winning the SCCA Southeastern Regional Championship in 1971 and back-to-back Southeast Division Championships in ’73 and ’74. It boasts a fresh Marcovicci & 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 vintage racing action.
1968 Shelby GT 500 KR Fastback VIN# 8T02R20534003384 With 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, transmission and rear end. It comes with a Marti Report, confirming 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 folddown rear seat, Tilt-Away steering and tinted glass.
SAAC Membership Office PO Box 13271 Lexington, KY 40583-3271 fax: 859.368.0222 email: membership@saac.com website: www.saac.com Forum: www.saacforum.com Members 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 individual car histories, advice on technical matters, information on parts sources, serial number verification and assistance in obtaining stated value insurance. SAAC has active regions in almost every state which hold events of their own. And every summer the club holds a blow-out of a national convention. A typical convention wil include a real vintage race, open track high-speed running, parts swap, judged concours and popular vote car shows, and guest speakers made up of drivers, mechanics and fabricators who made the Cobra, GT40, GT350, and GT500 household words. If you already own one of these cars it’s hard for us to picture anyone slogging through life without SAAC. If you’re thinking about buying one, our advice is to join up before you do. There are fakes out there just waiting to sting the uneducated. One of the reasons we exist is to share what we know with members. Dedicated to the preservation, care, history, and enjoyment of the World Championship cars from Shelby American since 1975. The Shelby American Automobile Club is the only international enthusiast’s organization dedicated to the World Championship cars from Carroll Shelby. Ownership isn’t required for membership - just interest in and enthusiasm for these legendary cars. SAAC has more than 4,000 members across the US, in Canada, and in just about every other country where there is interest in high performance automobiles. SAAC members will have access to our online Member’s Only website, Memberlodge, where one will find our award winning magazine, The Shelby American, posted 4 times a year, along with our famous SnakeBite ads where you will find our classified ads updated weekly. Ads are free to members without word limit. SAAC also hosts an annual national convention that is the stuff dreams are made of....even for grownups.
Join us. Annual dues are $50.00 As soon as we receive payment we’ll send you a new member’s packet via USPS containing a copy of the year’s Annual Shelby American magazine (all 4 issues posted online - compiled into one magazine), general club information, sponsors literature, and usual club regalia (windshield decal and membership card). ________________________________________ Name ________________________________________ Address ________________________________________ City State Zip _______________________________________ Email address Credit Cards accepted _______________________________________ Card Number ______________________________________ Name on Card Expiration Date (month/year)___/_____
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