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The SHELBY AMERICAN

Spring 2016 3

An item on the

Hemmings

Daily Blog

announced that Jerry

Seinfeld was putting some of the

Porsches in his collection in the

March, 2016 Gooding & Company

auction at Amelia Island. David

Gooding, president of the auction

company, was quoted as saying,

We are grateful and honored to be

entrusted with these superb exam-

ples from the collection of Jerry Se-

infeld. These cars epitomize the

highest of quality and pedigree.

Jerry’s keen eye for significant

Porsches, the care and pride he

takes in maintaining his spectacu-

lar collection and his enthusiasm

and passion for the Porsche mar-

que makes this one of our most

thrilling sales in our company’s

history.

Seinfeld’s collection is said to

contain 47 historical Porsches and

is one of the largest accumulations

of them in the world outside of

Stuttgart. The estimated worth is

$15M. The cars are stored in a

$1.4M garage in Manhattan, a

three-story compound (four sepa-

rate garages along with a club

room, kitchenette and elevator) on

tony Central ParkWest. A full time

mechanic oversees and maintains

the cars. How is he able to afford

all this? Seinfeld is one of the top-

grossing comedians of all time,

worth an estimated $800M, so all

the car stuff is chump change.

The purpose of bringing all

this up was a quote from Seinfeld

near the end of the blog. “

I’ve never

bought a car as an investment

,”

stated Jerry Seinfeld. “

I don’t re-

ally even think of myself as a col-

lector. I just love cars. And I still

love these cars. But it’s time to

send some of them back into the

world, for someone else to enjoy, as

I have.

With all of the recent commu-

nications we’ve been having with

aging SAAC members over their

mixed emotions on whether to sell

or not sell, Seinfeld’s philosophy

seems worth repeating.

NO WIMPY ROLL BARs

A.O. SMITH HISTORY  LESSON

It was the roll bar that first caught our

attention. It reminds us of a pro

wrestler pumped up on steroids. And

it makes the stock single-loop roll bars

we’ve become accustomed to on origi-

nal Cobras look like so many limp

pieces of spaghetti. Gary Goeringer

saw this car on eBay. It’s a Kirkham

polished aluminum body powered by a

320 HP BMW engine, gearbox and dif-

ferential, built by British BMW spe-

cialist Motor Technik. Looking into the engine bay really leaves a lot to be de-

sired – you expect more. The car was in Germany and sold for $89,000. As much

as we like the look of the roll bar, we’re not expecting them to catch on.

In the world of academia, a

visiting scholar, researcher,

lecturer or professor is a

scholar from an institution

who visits a host university

where he or she is invited

to teach, lecture or perform

research on a topic the vis-

itor is valued for. If you con-

sider SAAC a university,

then you might consider

Keith Schadoff a visiting

scholar on the subject of A.O. Smith. Professor Schadoff brought to our atten-

tion a new video titled, “The Factory” which provides a half-hour history of

Smith’s factory in Ionia, Michigan. It starts way before 1968 and only includes

a few mentions of Shelby production, but it provides some perspective into the

factory, including it’s razing in 1999. It runs a little less than a half hour and

is very well done. You won’t regret watching it. And best of all, there will not

be a test from Professor Schadoff. https://vimeo.com/124539929