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The SHELBY AMERICAN
Summer 2016 14
TEAM SHELBY GOES INTERNATIONAL
BROCK IN FORBES
Well, sort of. This notice arrived by
email, informing us of a Team Shelby
International Assembly to be held at
the Circuit Paul Ricard, a road course
near Marseille, in southern France.
The email was from the new official
Director of Team Shelby Europe, who
is listed on TS’s website only as
“Patrick.” Allen Grant, Cobra team
driver, was announced as a special
guest. We began imagining a bumper-
to-bumper parade lap of new Shelbys
until we read a little further and dis-
covered that this inaugural event was
open only to vintage Shelbys and Co-
bras. “
Due to the late announcement it
was not possible to allow late model
Shelbys, but we are working on that
for future events
.” The event was held
on April 26, so we will keep our ear to
the ground for reports and photos.
We don’t normally read
Forbes
magazine so we’re indebted to SAAC
member Duane Carling who sent us
this brief article about Peter Brock.
Written by Mark Ewing, the piece was
titled, “800 Miles In The 2017 Ford
Shelby GT350 Mustang: A Raucous
Muscle Car For Everyman.” The arti-
cle began, “
Over dinner Pete Brock
mentioned that his colleagues from
the early days when Shelby American
was based in Venice, California, are
ramping up to build a series of “new”
1965 Mustang fastbacks. Known as
the “Original Venice Crew,” they will
use Chinese-stamped but U.S.-assem-
bled reproduction bodies
.” The story
went on to describe, mistakenly, that
“
Shelby engineers developed a proto-
type independent rear suspension,
whick if adopted would have changed
the engineering and brand trajectory
of the Mustang, but Ford bean coun-
ters of the time spiked it.
”
The Mustang IRS was actually de-
signed and engineered by the folks
back at Ford. A Mustang equipped
with an IRS was sent out to Shelby
American for testing. [
See separate ar-
ticle elsewhere in this issue
.]
Writer Ewing was driving a new
2017 GT350 and stopped by to visit
Brock at his shop in Henderson, Ne-
vada to talk about the IRS both cars
shared. One of his takeaways was that
the Original Venice Crew was plan-
ning to build reproduction ‘65 GT350s
using Dynacorn bodies with IRS sus-
pensions. These cars would be covered
by the new federal laws which allow
small manufacturers to build a maxi-
mum of 200 turn-key cars a year. This
means the cars will have to be pow-
ered by currently certified crate mo-
tors. It remains to be seen if that many
buyers will line up to buy one of these
cars, but we wish them well.
What did catch our attention was
a caption to the above photo that
noted Brock was 80 years old. Yikes!
We continue to see him as a perpetual
60 year-old kid.