82 / 134
very year since 1983, with a few
exceptions, the Northern Cali-
fornia region of the Shelby American
Automobile Club holds an event they
call “Mini-Nats,” their name for a re-
gional convention. The event is usually
centered around either the SCCA-
owned Thunder Hill road race track,
located in Willows, California (about
90 miles north of Sacramento) or
Sonoma Raceway (previously known
as Sears Point, then Infineon). The
event is a three day celebration of the
life, the automobiles, and the racing
adventures of Carroll Shelby and
Shelby American, the company he
founded, which is still ongoing.
A car show on Friday is followed
by a weekend of road racing, with a lit-
tle drag racing thrown in for variety. A
barbecue at the track Friday night is
followed by a banquet on Saturday
night, this year at the Embassy Suites
in San Rafael, the event headquarters
for the weekend.
There was a wine country tour on
Saturday afternoon for those who
wanted to get away from the track for
a bit. Roughly fifteen cars partici-
pated. An assortment of Mustangs and
Cobras drove through Sonoma and
Napa for a few hours with an ice
cream stop in the resort town of Calis-
toga. Darn good ice cream with op-
tional chocolate hand-dip.
I was lucky enough to find a ride
in Don Wollesen’s cherry-red 1967
Shelby GT350, a drivable show car.
I’ve known Don since the early 1990s
when I joined the club and began bab-
bling about putting Weber carburetors
on my small block Cobra. Somebody
pointed me towards him for an expla-
nation of what a foolish idea that was.
Since then, Don taught me everything
I know about hot rodding small block
Ford engines (just not everything he
knows about it). I’m still asking ques-
tions.
I sold my Weber set-up a few months
ago for a 50-percent profit over what I
paid for it in 1990. The Holley on my
car works just great, so everything
turned out OK.
Min-Nats weekend usually brings
out some auto industry celebrities. De-
signer, racer, driving instructor, race
car team owner, manufacturer, author
and all-around Renaissance man,
Peter Brock flew up from Las Vegas to
attend the banquet. Brock’s bio is a
book subject in itself, so I won’t at-
tempt to do it justice here. I’ll simply
say he was the youngest designer GM
hired; he worked on the Corvette
Stingray, was the first Shelby Ameri-
can employee – hired as a driving in-
structor at Shelby’s race car driving
school at the Riverside road race
track, he designed the World Champi-
onship-winning Daytona Coupe and
he had a hand in most everything else
at Shelby American until 1965. He
won an SCCA national championship
managing his own Datsun team and
dominated the Under-Two-Liter
Trans-Am Championship. Need more?
Google Peter Brock or BRE – Brock
Racing Enterprises.
Alan Grant, a Cobra roadster and
Daytona Coupe team driver and em-
ployee of Shelby American during the
racing Cobras and Mustang days, at-
tended the banquet and shared mem-
The SHELBY AMERICAN
324 Fall 2015
– Harvey Sherman
E