Identifying Preproduction cars/Looking for color version of this picture

[Coralsnake]

No, thats the correct tire for the small suspension cars.

http://www.thecoralsnake.com/69tires.html

The other tire used was the raised white letter in the bigger size for the bigger suspension cars

[FL SAAC]

Thanks for posting,  much appreciated

[Coralsnake]

I will do a little today and more later....

I started by looking at the Peterson Publishing Archives online

https://archive.petersen.org/pages/home.php?login=true

There are a number of 1969 Shelby pictures there, so I started by sorting them into groups. I did this by looking at the file numbers and the physical characteristics of each car.

I found five different groups of pictures, each for a different car. I figured out two of those groups were actually the same car. So there are four different cars presented on the site.

[Coralsnake]

These pictures were all taken in 1968. I found an old Shelby memorandum requesting cars be in California before October 24, 1968.

This is an interesting date because its before almost all regular 1969 Shelby production had started. Although I didnt start out looking for where these pictures were taken, Mr. Liska noted this sign in the background. It indicates the access road is adjacent to I-5 in California.

[Coralsnake]

This picture gave us the location of the Orange County International Raceway near Irvine, California (now gone). It was identified by the race tower.

[Coralsnake]

The cars on the Peterson website are a GT350 convertible, A GT500 Convertible and two GT500 Fastbacks.

All the photographs are in black and white. So, it was difficult to determine what colors the cars were. That just made the puzzle more fun.

[Side-Oilers]

These pictures were all taken in 1968. I found an old Shelby memorandum requesting cars be in California before October 24, 1968.

This is an interesting date because its before almost all regular 1969 Shelby production had started. Although I didnt start out looking for where these pictures were taken, Mr. Liska noted this sign in the background. It indicates the access road is adjacent to I-5 in California.

Sand Canyon was one of the off-ramps for OCIR, off of I-5.  The Shelby in this pix is at the far end of the 1/4 mile. Past the drag strip return-road, and back toward the handling course. 

BTW: Notice the conventional front license plate...NOT a mfg plate.

[Side-Oilers]

This picture gave us the location of the Orange County International Raceway near Irvine, California (now gone). It was identified by the race tower.

Press events used to be so much smaller and less fancy.  There also used to be only about 100 bonafide car writers/editors in the entire country. That includes freelancers. Everybody knew everybody. The hacks, idiots and goofballs were well known...and mostly never invited.

Today, who knows how many so-called "automotive influencers" there are. Since there's absolutely no requirement to be able to call yourself one, the number of faux-experts probably stretch well into the thousands.  Take all those people back in time to when this pix was shot, and 99% of them would have been instantly labeled a hack, idiot or goofball.


Trivia: That's Motor Trend staffer Bill Sanders standing in front of the tower, facing the camera. He's wearing a dark windbreaker and what looks like a neckerchief/scarf.   Swinging late '60s, baby!  I knew him in later years. He was a good dude.

[Rodster-500]

If anyone is interested I will share more?

Good stuff! 

[Coralsnake]

Thank you for the additional information

More tomorrow and how the license plates become key to solving the mystery of the serial numbers

[Coralsnake]

Okay to summarize so far, we were able to get the dates from Petersen Publishing along with the item numbers of the shots. The photographer was Eric Dahlquist.

Along with a memo in the SAAC archives we figured out this was the west coast introduction of the 1969 Shelby. The pictures revealed the location as Orange County International Raceway.

After sorting all the pictures it was found three of the four cars had California license plates ;

One of the GT500 fastbacks is "VSA-346"

The GT500 convertible is "XTK-387"

The GT350 convertible is "XRJ-441"

The other GT500 did not have a California plate, but rather a generic "1969" plate. In another photo shoot, it is shown with a California manufacturer's plate "6J-014". 

This was important because that car had been previously suspected of being a pre-production (no Shelby number) car.

[Coralsnake]

This is part of a picture on the Peterson website. It is the Gt500 with the "6J-014" license plate.

I direct your attention to the grain of the dash in the green circle



Here is the dash from 9F02Q102338, one of the pre-production cars. Courtesy of the Coralsnake archives.



The first car has been identified. All of the characteristics of the car also matched. The options, trans, etc. and we know this car was painted red.

[Coralsnake]

"VSA-346" was identified as another red pre-production car by comparing all the unique features and options. The antenna is on the other side from the earlier GT500.

This car has Stewart Warner gauges in the console. This picture is 9S02S100026 from the Ford archives.

[Coralsnake]

This GT500 convertible is "XTX-387" in the Peterson pictures. It was identified as 9F03Q102337. That pre-production car was one of the only GT500 convertibles.
It was originally painted Gulfstream Aqua. 

So finding the colorized Carroll Shelby picture became important, because in some versions of this photo also show the license plate "XTX-387".  The colored version confirmed this GT500 convertible was Gulfstream Aqua and the other two red cars shown in the picture. This picture was likely taken at OCIR the same day as the west coast introduction.

One car to go, what number is the GT350 convertible? ....more tomorrow

[Richstang]

Pete, maybe it's just a typo, but the licence plate reads as 'XTK-387'.