Messages

"I'm so glad you posted this! I was going to share your story, but you did MUCH more justice than I could ever do second hand.

BTW - 0022 is living a great life. In fact, I took her out and stretched her legs last night 👍"

Ruben: Good to hear from you and I know that you will give "the old girl" a great home and some needed exercise.  I will always remember the day I got the message from you saying that the car was still in Green Bay (a yr. later) and that you would like to have me go and see it, take some pics and say goodbye.  You are a true class person!!  Thank You.

The Oil Embargo was the reason I was able to get my shelby.  I constantly talked about those cars ever since I had gotten a ride in a '69 GT 350, that a brother of a girl I was dating had purchased.   I'm sure family and friends were sick of hearing my stories of the impression it left on me.   Well, a year later, I graduated college in May '73.  With debt and no job, I moved back home for the summer.  My dad, who was totally disabled in a car accident (not his fault) in my high school sophomore year, had finally received his settlement from that accident in Sept. of '72.  My parents were able to pay off their debts, their mortgage and still had money to put in the bank for their family of 7.  I guess he was always listening to my droning about how these cars were the best thing going, and one day he saw a for sale ad in the local paper for a 67 Shelby GT 350.  The asking price was steep and firm at $1600.  But, he went to take a look.  He was able to get the vehicle for $1050.  Still had all the parts except the steering wheel and under dash gauges.  When I got home that night he showed me the car and said we were going to "flip it" because he could make some money.  So, he put a $100.00 Earl Schieb paint job on it and set it in the front yard for 2K.  Yeah, that was when the oil embargo hit and no one was interested.  I asked him if he would keep it for me and I would pay him that money, plus interest as quickly as I could get on my feet.  It took me about 3 years but he signed it over to me.  I owned car #0022 for 43 years and it became part of our family of 7 people.  I sold it 3 years ago.  (Got sick of the 4 speed due to my age, but also it was only becoming another place to store stuff).  To this day I still can't believe I was so fortunate to have gotten one, then to find out the history of the early cars, and to have met so many friends because of it. Even though the embargo was something that most people have bad memories of, my memories only bring up these happy 43 years.