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The SHELBY AMERICAN
SCOTTSDALE 2016.
9 pages
. Bill Fulk seems to make a habit of traveling to
events where Cobras are prominent. Fortunately for us, he is able to put together
a report of his travels accompanied by more pictures than we can use. If you can’t
go to a place like Scottsdale, Arizona during auction week in January, Brother
Fulk is happy to become your tour guide and show you around. And trust us: this
guy does not miss a trick. How can he be in so many places at once? Is it possible
he was cloned?
FORD GTs SWARM DAYTONA. 4
pages
. Ford chose the Daytona 24-Hours to
debut it’s new Ford GT which would be entered in the 2016 LeMans 24-Hour
race, exactly fifty years after Ford won the event. Remember that famous 1-2-3
finish? It’s probably one of the most famous auto racing photographs of all time.
Naturally, Burgy was there to see the debacle. The Fords had teething problems.
But there was a gathering of ‘05-’06 GTs that was interesting to see. And as the
registrar, Burgy was all over it like a vampire in a blood bank.
Spring 2016
BURGY DOES KISSIMMEE.
2 pages
. Ever since he packed up and fled Michi-
gan for the Daytona Beach area, we get the impression that Burgy goes to shows
and auctions every weekend. And that’s fine with us because we can’t make it to
these events in Florida. One of the auctions he never misses is the Mecum ex-
travaganza in Kissimmee where they run 3,000 cars across the block in ten days.
It’s the auction equivalent of a 24-Hour endurance race and it makes you dizzy
just to think about the constant activity.
G7-A CUTAWAY.
3 pages
. This article started out with SAAC member Dick
Soules finding some of the illustrations he used to create a cut-away illustration
for a
Car and Driver
cover. That, in itself, was pretty cool. But when we realized
the dihedral wing Can-Am car built by Ford had been based on an unused J-Car
tub the plot thickened. The Can-Am car had been “sold” to the Agapiou Brothers
by Ford for $1. They never raced it and it sat in Charlie’s garage for almost forty
years before being sold and rebuilt into a J-Car coupe. Here’s the full story.
COMPANY CAR.
2 pages
. We love period pictures – especially when they are in
color and are sharply in focus. This one picture, sent to Howard Pardee out of the
blue, provided the basis for this short article. We can only dream about what it
must have been like to live in a neighborhood outside of Detroit in the late 1960s
when muscle cars were popular and company executives drove examples back
and forth to work every day. Imagine your neighbor’s father pulling into his drive-
way in a bright red 289 Cobra roadster.
OVER THE TRANSOM.
4 pages
. Every once in a while we get something in-
credibly interesting and it comes to us out of the blue. These pictures were a per-
fect example. Ten years ago Wayne Hofer drove his Cobra replica to work and he
was followed into the lot by an older gentleman who was attracted to the car. He
said he always loved Cobras and remembered seeing them when he was a kid at
a race track. He took some pictures and eventually had them scanned and shared
them with Hofer, who shared them with us.
PETER BROCK’S SHELBY DETOMASO P70.
7 pages.
What was Peter
Brock’s favorite car design? It was originally intended to be the body of the Lang
Cooper. But it got to be used for a Can-Am car built in Modena, Italy. That’s a lit-
tle-known story that even the most erudite Shelby American enthusiast isn’t fa-
miliar with. It was supposed to be powered by a 7-liter small block engineered
by DeTomaso, himself. That never happened and only one car instead of 6 got
built. We talked to Peter Brock and followed the car to Amelia to get the story.