The SHELBY AMERICAN - the SAAC Members Only website!

I T ’ S N O T Y O U R FA U LT CA R R O L L
SHELBY by Chris Brooke. 6˝ x 9˝ softcover; 78 pages; 29 black and white photographs. Published by Chris Brooke
www.itsnotyourfaultcarrollshelby.com
$16.50.
This book is a pleasant change of pace.
It’s not another “everything you wanted to
know about Shelbys” book, full of specifications, features, serial numbers, and
Shelby American history. Don’t get us
wrong: we like books like that but in between all of the facts, figures, timelines
and jargon there doesn’t seem to be much
devoted to the individual history of specific
cars or their owners.
We’ve often said that every car has a
story. Some are more interesting or colorful
than others. Most books get too wrapped
up in the nuts-and-bolts details of the cars
to spend any time on the people who
bought them and drove them when they
were new. The SAAC registry comes close
to that but the sheer volume of cars makes
it impossible to tell the full story of each
one. To do the cars justice you might have
to have a separate book on each one. Can
you imagine the bookshelf you would need
just for 562 1965 GT350s? In our self-constructed fantasy world, if each car had its
own book to tell its story, Chris Brooke’s is
an example of what they might look like.
It’s a memoir of the time he spent behind
the wheel of his father’s car, 5S109.
The SHELBY AMERICAN
One of the last chapters, titled “Looking Back,” begins: “In retrospect it seemed
so harmless and innocent back then. We
were just street racing on mostly empty
roads.” There are many aspects of this
book that require something movie and
television world calls “suspension of disbelief.” You know reality—that a car
launched on a 20-foot jump would never be
able to continue driving once it landed.
When you watch it happen in a movie,
what you don’t see is that the camera stops
after the car crashes to the ground and
starts filming again when the actor gets
into a duplicate of the jump car and drives
away. Movies make the impossible look
possible and that’s why we like to watch.
What kind of fun would be to see Bo and
Luke Duke jump the General Lee, which
lands in a pile of smoking parts. They get
out and what—walk home? Hitchhike?
We live in the today, and that’s the
yardstick we use to compare what we read
in a book like this that tells the story of
yesterday. The first suspension we have to
put aside is that a teenager’s father would
use a 1965 GT350 to teach him to drive
and then let him drive it while he was in
high school. The second one is even harder
to imagine: the roads in and around Los
Angeles would, at times, be virtually
empty of traffic. This was 1965 and if all
you have as context is today’s round-theclock, bumper-to-bumper L.A. traffic, the
author might as well be describing driving
on the moon.
And here’s the most difficult pill to
swallow: the police would give chase to motorized miscreants and then break it off
with a shrug and the understanding that
they would catch them another time. When
someone got caught for speeding or street
racing back then, there was a chance—no
matter how slim—of talking your way out
of it. Like that would happen today.
Chris Brooke goes into a lot of detail
about his high school days and some of the
non-automotive pranks and adventures
and they all help to paint the background
for a much different time. Ozzie and Harriet, or Father Knows Best. It’s a look into
one boy’s life which, while hard to believe
today, was nothing that would cause an
eyebrow to lift back then. Every Shelby
(and a lot of Cobras) were initially used as
daily drivers. That, in itself, is hard to believe. And it’s what makes this book so interesting.
COBRAS AT MONTEREY — 50th Anniversary Celebration photography by
Doug Clark, Lynn Park and Jim Yedor. 16˝
x 11 1/2˝ hardcover; 62 pages; 325 color
photographs. $200.
There are coffee table books, and then
there are COFFEE TABLE BOOKS! This
is one of the latter. Lynn Park, Doug Clark
and Jim Yedor must have each taken at
least a thousand photos during the Monterey weekend. They put them all together
and chose the best 325, and assembled
them into this oversized book. It is one you
will pick up and look at, again and again.
And each time you open it you’re going to
see something you didn’t see before. The
photographs are sharp and vibrant, the
paper is heavy and every picture is briefly
captioned with the driver’s name and the
car’s serial number. There are pages and
pages of detail shots (two facing pages with
a dozen photos on each one of only engines,
interiors or nose numbers). The cars are
mostly those that raced but other Cobras
that weren’t are included here and there;
cars at the Pebble Beach show and at the
Quail Lodge are also included.
Unlike other Cobra books, there are
also pages and pages of people shots —drivers, wives, kids, friends and assorted VIPs
who were milling around in the paddock.
These pictures have the feel of a huge family reunion. It all works and it gives you an
honest and personal feel for what it was
like to be a part of this Cobra weekend of
weekends.
A few months after the event a copy of
this book was sent to every driver. If that
wasn’t you, you can still get your own copy
(while they last). They are $200 each. You
can obtain one from Lynn Park at
mrcobra@charter.net
Individual photos from the book are available from Jim Yedor at
jyedor@aol.com
Winter 2013 12
We’ve touted Motor Trend Classic’s very cool quarterly magazine before,
and here’s another example of why we do. The Winter 2012 issue carries
a terrific article on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum’s MK II ,
P/1032, after it was restored by FoMoCo engineers. The 8-page article includes history of the car, the story of the restoration and gorgeous photography. Back issues are $15.99. Annual subs are $59.99. Their website
is www.motortrend.com/classis_cars/
Two things came immediately to mind when Australian SAAC member Robin Bath sent
us these photos of Cobra beer he spotted in his local liquor store in Brisbane, Australia.
The first was, how cool is it to see bottles of Cobra beer in the cold case of the place in
your neighborhood each time you visited it. And you know that after you buy a sixer
and begin putting it away, the first empty bottle will go up on that shelf with the rest
of your Cobra collectibles. The second thing that popped into our mind was the image
of someone standing in front of the cold case’s open door taking a few pictures of the
beer on the shelves. “How did this yobbo get a hold of a camera, mate?”
We have proven, over and over again, that
just seeing the word “cobra” elicits a kneejerk response, no matter what the word is
connected to. And it doesn’t have to be a
Cobra owner or enthusiast. It can be someone who is one step removed. Here’s an example. Long time SAAC member Doug
Cresanta of Haskell, New Jersey has sent
in his share of Cobra and Shelby sightings
over the years. But the latest one he sent,
an ad for the 1955 Chris Craft Cobra
speedboat was actually spotted by his
nephew, Stephen Crawford of Hilton Head,
South Carolina. Now that we think about
it, we’re sort of surprised that we have
never seen a mahogany Chris Craft Cobra
sitting on a trailer at a SAAC convention—
because the odds are that someone out
there in SAACland has one.
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Winter 2013 13
The Eagle Eye Beatdown Continues
Hutchison, Young and Warren show no signs of tiring
but a fourth combatant has yet to step into the ring.
Ted Warren ran into friends Kevin and
Vickie Doss at the Red River Art Festival in Shreveport, Louisiana last fall.
One of the booths had matted and
framed photos; one was a late model
Shelby emblem. It was the only auto-related photo in the display and they
bought it immediately. They belong to
the Red River Mustang Club. The Doss’
grabbed it just minutes before Warren
stepped into the booth. Had he been a
little quicker the picture would be hanging in his house instead of theirs.
Young saw this Cobra on the cover of
Sports Car Market’s price guide (just in
time for Scottsdale). It hardly takes an
eagle-eye. Heck, Stevie Wonder could have
spotted this one.
On vacation in Rome, Italy the last thing
Ted Warren expected to see was a statue
of a ballerina, about three feet tall, with
her foot resting on a sphere which was
decorated by hundreds of white Cobras.
At first he thought he might be seeing
things, but then he realized that, yes indeed, Cobras were everywhere.
EXACTLY WHAT IS AN EAGLE-EYE? PAY ATTENTION, GRASSHOPPER
We are continually asked what an eagle-eye is. We realize that
not everyone reading this magazine has been in the club for
20+ years and has been reading—and paying attention to—
every issue, there may be a few newer SAAC members who
need to be brought up to speed. We’ve been waiting for a good
example and thanks to Ken Young, we have one. We define an
“eagle-eye” as someone who is able to pick out a tiny or extremely obscure reference to a Cobra or a Shelby out of a larger
background. Take the example above. It is a page from the
“Marathon Weekly,” a thin newspaper published in Marathon
in the Florida Keys. It is free and contains mostly ads relating
to businesses, restaurants and points of interest in the Keys
as well as short articles which might be of interest to someone
visiting there. It is slightly oversized, 12˝ wide by 13 1/2˝ high.
One of the small pictures on the cover (see arrow) is 3/8˝ x 3/8˝.
About half the size of a postage stamp. It is a picture of a red
Cobra roadster and the text next to it says, “KCB Cobra wins
Car Show.” An eagle-eye can pick out the picture of a Cobra or
a Shelby the size of your thumbnail from an entire page of
print. It’s almost like that have some kind of internal radar
that immediately homes in on any picture or mention of one
of these cars. And they can do it time after time after time. It’s
not something that can be taught; you either have it or you
don’t. Young has it, and so do Hutchinson and Warren. Do you?
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Winter 2013 14
Leave it to Jim Hutchison to spot this
story on a Boston news Internet website.
On an Egypt Air flight from Cairo to
Kuwait, a passenger who owned a reptile
shop in Kuwait hid an Egyptian cobra in
his carry-on bag. It bit him on the hand
and then got out and was crawling around
the cabin. The plane made an emergency
landing in Egypt where authorities captured the snake and confiscated it. The
plane was then allowed to complete its
trip, without the afore-mentioned cobra
owner who was taken into custody. He refused medical treatment. The news item
made the obligatory mention of the
Samuel L. Jackson movie, “Snakes on a
Plane.” Our first thought was the irony if
Hutchison had been a passenger on that
plane. Then he could have both submitted
When Young was at SAAC-37 at this Eagle-Eye item and been in it!
Watkins Glen he went through the
place like a turbocharged Hoover vacuum cleaner, sucking up every piece of
Shelby memorabilia within 25 miles.
Young‘s beady eyes locked onto the
photo of Curt Vogt’s #530 GT350 vintage racer which was on the cover of a
2012 season schedule.
Sports Car Market magazine’s year has
two major high points: Monterey in August and Scottsdale in January. Both
get the full court press. Young spotted
this internet ad, which carries images of
a GT40, a couple of Cobras and the ‘68
GT500 notchback. Seems like they are Young spotted this ad in the Fall/Winter
hitting all the buttons to get attention. ‘12 copy of Avanti magazine. Don’t ask...
The SHELBY AMERICAN
The last time Ken Young took a picture
it was with a Kodak Instamatic that
used a 126 film cartridge, so maybe it’s
time he stepped into the digital age.
What better camera than this Cobra
model? We hope that he clipped this ad
from the catalog AFTER ordering the
camera.
Hutchinson spotted this Cobra grille
emblem on the Ford Racing Performance Parts website (part # M-16098CJG). It’s a laser-cut metal emblem, 3˝
high by 4.5˝ wide. It has two studs on
the back for mounting. Hutch suggested it might make a nice Christmas
tree ornament but he may have overlooked the price: $66.95.
www.fordracingparts.com/parts>
You’re innocently driving down the Interstate (I-30 East to Little Rock, AR)
and a cobra jumps out at you. Figuratively. If you’re Ted Warren you have
your wife Lesa grab the camera and get
a picture.
Winter 2013 15
We think Jim Hutchison struck pay dirt
with this one, and we’ll bet that after
this issue lands in members’ hands,
these will be selling faster than bags of
speedy-dry at a Camaro convention.
Heck, we might even buy one ourselves!
Hutch saw it in the Signals mail order
catalog (and it’s also on their website:
h t t p : / / w w w. s i g n a l s . c o m / c g i bin/hazel.cgi?action=Detail&item=HN1837
The catalog description of it says: “The
mighty cobra. Mysterious. Seductive.
Deadly. Yet somehow you have hypnotized it into holding a roll of paper towels or two rolls of bathroom tissue.”
Nickel-plated aluminum, 16˝ high on a
sturdy 8˝x 4 1/2˝ base. To add a roll of
paper, remove the head. Item #
HN1837: $45.00 800-669-9696.
We can imagine Warren laying on a
pyschiatrist’s couch and saying, “Doc, I
see Cobras everywhere. I’m not hallucinating—I really see them...” Like on
this trailer in the parking lot at the
World of Wheels in Shreveport? Rx: Haldol? Thorazine?
The SHELBY AMERICAN
The same Signals catalog that had the
Cobra toilet paper holder also carried this
“Mouthman Cobra Hoodie” a few pages
later. It’s a hoodie sweatshirt with some ingenious printing on the sleeves which create the upper and lower jaws of a cobra,
allowing you to chomp-chomp-chomp by
moving your arms. It’s made from lightweight recycled polyester. Made in USA.
Adult sizes M, L, XL, XXL; kits sizes 2T,
4T, 6, 8, 10, 12, Teen. Cost is $39.95. Item
number VK1832H. We expect to see a
bunch of these at the next convention!
The California
Car Cover Company hit the right
target when they put Ken Young on their
catalog mailing list. He could probably
buy a dozen of them and still not keep all
of his various rides under wraps. However, Young has the age old car collector’s
conundrum: the more cars you have, the
less money you have to spend on each
one. Between tires, batteries, oil and filters, antifreeze, polish and wax, WD-40
and speedy-dry, who’s got money left for
flannel-lined car covers?
Hutchison spotted yet another reference
to Maria Montez from the movie, “Cobra
Woman.” How many sightings does it
take to indicate a fetish? Anyone know?
Winter 2013 16
A Hagerty Plus insurance members receive some special perks. One is free towing and
roadside assistance, and SAAC eagle eye Bob Barranger of Toms River, New Jersey recently had the opportunity to avail himself of this service when his son’s car would not
start. A follow-up to the road call was this questionnaire which he was sent. It was impossible not to notice the car they used on the form.
Doug Cresanta of Haskell, New Jersey
sent us this embroidered patch. He identified it as having been used by an electric
power supply company in New Jersey during the 1980s. Maybe. But we recall it as
being used by the company that made
Cobra CB radios around that time. Maybe
we’re both right.
They’re called “Road Mice” and they are
available in a variety of vehicles: a new Camaro, a Mercedes, a Mustang and, yes—a
new Shelby. It’s an ingenious way to employ a mouse, but the first time we saw
someone using one (he will remain anonymous but he was the owner of a large company) we found it difficult to take him
seriously. It was like watching Pardee use
a hula-hoop. That was our first thought.
The second one was when are they going
to come out with a ‘66 GT350 Hertz car, a
‘68 GT500KR, an R-Model or a Daytona
Coupe?
Don Johnston of Honolulu, Hawaii was
thumbing through his Hawaiian word-ofthe-day desk calendar when he noticed
that there was a listing for “car” even
though this was a mode of transportation
unknown to the ancients who transcribed
the language. Making this even more mysterious is the fact that the dictionary pictures a 427 Cobra. This gives new meaning
to the term “paradise,” which is often used
to describe the Hawaiian Islands.
If there is something related to the new
Ford GT, you can bet that Jeff Burgy, the
registrar for those cars, is on top of it, like
a bum on a heated sewer grate. He spotted
this promotional poker chip on eBay (no
word if his was the high bid... It was described as an uncirculated and unused allocation lottery poker chip. The 3˝ diameter
white plastic chips were used at a Ford GT
dealer meeting in Las Vegas. Evidently the
winner of the lottery got some kind of special Ford GT allocation early in the program. The chip is dated 2004 for the
“spring dealer meeting,” which was held
before production even began. There was
no shortage of Ford GT promotional and
sales items surrounding these cars, and
Chalk up another Hagerty find for Bob Barranger. Of course, it’s a ‘67 Shelby. Does the collectors eagerly gobbled them up. Someman see anything else? This is, by the way, his fourth submission in this issue. Do we thing like this, which went only to a dealer,
has got to be at the top of the heap.
detect someone testing the water to make it a four-way Eagle Eye steel cage match?
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Winter 2012 17
Is there anyone out there who hasn’t
seen the full-page, color advertisement for
the 1966 GT350 Hertz model? We sort of
doubt it. Shelby American liked it because
Hertz’ advertising budget dwarfed theirs.
Hertz hit the upscale markets (comprised
mainly of business travelers who were targeted as Hertz Sports Car Club renters),
as opposed to a younger crowd a little
lower on the food chain who would be in
Shelby’s cross-hairs. We got an email
from pal William Jeanes, former Car
and Driver editor, fellow competitor
in the first “One Lap of America,”
SAAC convention guest speaker,
and the author of the first nonroad test/introduction article/race
report written about the 1965
GT350, an article published in
Car and Driver’s September
1974 issue titled, “Shelby
GT350: Everyman’s Real
Racer.” He asked if we were
aware that the Hertz ad
had been published in a
copy of Playbill magazine. We said that we
had not, and he was
both surprised and
impressed with himself that he had
something we had
never seen. He
was good enough
to send it to us
so we could
scan it and put
it in the magazine.
Not
every-one
has seen
Playbill .
It is a
small
monthly
publication (6˝ by
9˝) that’s given to theatergoers at the door (although it is
available by subscription). Originally
published for Broadway and off-Broadway
in New York City, its use spread to other Cincinnati,
large cities with live theaters, including Phoenix, Pittsburgh,
Birmingham, Boston, Chicago, Columbus, St. Louis, Los Angeles,
The SHELBY AMERICAN
East Lansing, Houston, San
Diego, Indianapolis, Miami, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, San Francisco
and
Washington
D.C.
Circulation is just under 4,000,000.
Along with both local and national advertising, each issue includes articles
on theater topics, with about twelve percent of the 48 pages dedicated to whatever is playing at the specific theater those
issues will be given out at. If you’re intent
on adding one of these magazines to your
collection, the issue you’ll want is Volume
3, Number 5, May 1966.
Winter 2013 18
Serious toy collectors will be cruising Toys-R-Us to find one of these Cobra team trucks...
that is, if there are any left after Christmas. Bob Boote of Vestal, New York spotted one
before the holidays and hinted to his girlfriend that it would make a nice present for
him, but the hint must not have been strong enough. Fortunately, his girlfriend works
at Toys-R-Us and after Christmas she checked the inventory and discovered they had
two left. She not only bought both of them, but she was checking to see if they could
order more.
Last issue’s article on SAAC T-shirts surprised a lot of SAAC members, judging by the
emails we received. When you get a shirt at each convention you attend, and you get
to, maybe, one every three or four years (or more), your collection is pretty meager. Rip
one or get a grease stain on it and quietly disappears from rotation, so you have even
fewer. However, most people accumulate so many t-shirts that they are quickly forgotten, papered over by the newest t-shirts. We probably all have closet shelves of Ts we’ll
never wear but can’t bring ourselves to throw away. And it somehow seems sacrilegious
to use them as wipe rags. One solution is to make them into a quilt. That’s exactly what
Don Johnston’s wife, Carol, did. She didn’t limit it only to SAAC t-shirts, and we’re
guessing that she didn’t pack a lot of padding into it because, after all, how cold is it
going to get at night in Hawaii?
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Maybe this is the equivalent of someone
throwing out the first ball of a new baseball season. Bob Barranger of Toms River,
New Jersey threw out the first Eagle Eye
sighting of the new year. He spotted this
picture of the starting grid of the September 18, 1966 Riverside 4-Hour Trans-Am.
The car in the foreground is a Shelby
Group II notchback driven by Jerry Titus.
The next car back is Don Pike’s Group II
car [see his interview elsewhere in this
issue]. But what Barringer had spotted
was the guy between the two cars, wearing
a GT350 Racing Team t-shirt. They were
available from Shelby American’s aftermarket parts catalog for the good-old-days
price of $1.50 each.
There’s no question that Galpin Ford in
North Hills, California is one of the top
performance dealers in the Ford fold.
Something is always going on over there
and SAAC member George Watters of
Sherman Oaks happened to stop by and
picked up their 2013 calendar. Our favorite
month? Looks like October. Pictured is
5S492.
Winter 2013 19
Automotive artist John Peckham did this
illustration of a Ford GT MK II in 1966. It
We’re beginning to get the feeling that if it wasn’t for Hagerty and Hemmings, we would was used on the cover of a Lime Rock pronever hear from Bob Barranger. He spotted an illustration of a ‘68 Shelby ragtop at the gram in June and they also had 12˝ x 18˝
lower left of a Hemmings renewal envelope he recently received. If you’re like us, you’re poster of the illustration (black and sepia)
that they gave away at the track.
wondering what was originally in the cut-out window section.
When Tom Honegger of Lima, Ohio was on vacation he grabbed
a brochure for the Illinois Railway Museum. He never expected
to see anything even remotely related to Shelbys in it, so he was
surprised when he opened it and saw those twin LeMans stripes.
The Shelby thread is a thin one, because the car is a GT500
Eleanor, and that means it’s actually a 1967 Mustang. But you
get the idea. They could have used a GTO or a Chevelle. The car
was used on the brochure to publicize the fact that they had car
meets at the museum during the summer.
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Jim MacLachlan of Syracuse, New York was reading the November 5, 2012 issue of Information Week magazine. When he turned
the page he was looking into the mouth of a Cobra!
Winter 2013 20
Mike “Bigfoot” Russell of Lebanon,
Tennessee passed this issue of the Experimental Aircraft Association’s monthly
magazine (November 2012) on to us because it had a seven-page article on Carroll
Shelby. Written by noted motorsports
writer Pete Lyons, the article touches on
Shelby’s automotive career but it is mostly
about Shelby’s flying experiences (both in
the Army Air Corps in WWII and as a civilian later in his life), the aircraft he has
flown or owned, and anecdotes from his
aviator friends (like test pilots Bob Hoover
and Chuck Yeager and astronaut Wally
Schirra). It’s a good article that shows another side of Carroll Shelby that most car
enthusiasts might not be aware of. Russell
knows something about flying, himself,
having served as an aircraft commander
for C-130s throughout Southeast Asia.
One of Shelby’s good friends was Barron Hilton, heir to the Hilton hotel chain.
Hilton had a ranch at the foot of the Sierras in Nevada, where he often hosted these
flying legends. One interesting story concerned
Hilton’s
personal pilot who had
recently been practicing auto-rotations on
the Hilton ranch in a
Hughes MA500. He
had a hard landing which heavily damaged the helicopter. Shelby was visiting at
the time and was adamant about having
his picture taken next to it [photo at right].
Shelby went on to explain that he had
been a consultant to Hughes Aircraft in
the 1960s and had helped create the egg
shape and frame based on designs he had
used in race cars. The Hughes MA500 was
the civilian version of the military’s OH6
Cayuse (also known as an LOH (light observation helicopter—corrupted into “Loach” by the military [see inset].
SAAC member Colin Comer of River Hills,
Wisconsin was initially distressed when he
saw this Costco ad. “Oh No! They’re already selling his furniture!” Well, at first
look it might have seemed that way, but it’s
really just a bedroom set carrying the
model name “Shelby.” Anyone could see
Chris Sparks of San Diego, California spotted the 427 Cobra in a corner of the photo of that if it was Carroll’s bed it would have
this luxury 4.5-acre resort which just changed hands in town. The Cobra was a fitting had a comforter with a pair of twin blue
car to have in the picture. Would someone in a Smart car be staying here? Not likely.
stripes.
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Winter 2013 21