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