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expected to commemorate this an-
niversary this year. Copying them
would have made us look like just an-
other tag-along. Second, with all of
these other GT40 commemora-
tions, our chances of attracting
very many of these historic cars
would be somewhere between
slim and none. And as they say,
Slim just left town.
We chose the 50th Anniver-
sary of the GT350 Hertz model
because in the panorama of
Shelby American history, it rep-
resents something unique. As
far as automobile production is
concerned, 1,000 cars is a drop
in the bucket, but when viewed
in the context of Shelby Ameri-
can production, the Hertz mod-
els represented fully forty-two
percent of all GT350s made that
year. We thought this was some-
thing worth acknowledging.
We also thought there might
have been a chance of getting
Hertz to participate, in light of
the fact that they had recently
introduced a 50th Anniversary Hertz
model of the Shelby Mustang, finished
in traditional black with gold stripes.
Only 140 were produced and made
available for rental at selected Hertz
airport rental outlets as part of the
“Hertz Adrenaline Collection” (Char-
lotte, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas-Ft.
Worth, Detroit, Ft. Lauderdale, Ft.
Myers, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami,
Orlando, Nashville, Phoenix, San
Francisco, San Diego, San Jose and
Seattle). The rental cost is about $350
a day or $47.73 in 1966 dollars; a bit
more than the original $17 a day cost.
For SAAC-41 we again chose to
partner up with the Sportscar Vintage
Racing Association (SVRA) when they
had their racing weekend at the Mid-
Ohio Sports Course, in north-central
Ohio. This was purely a financial deci-
sion because renting a track on our
own would cost upwards of $100K. We
knew that with open track interest on
the downward spiral each year, we
would have had as much of a chance
reaching the break-even point as the
employment prospects of a children’s
party clown with Tourette’s. Our three
days – Thursday, Friday and Satur-
day – would dovetail with their Thurs-
day-Friday-Saturday and Sunday
schedule.
Our schedule was made up of the
usual activities everyone has come to
expect at a national convention: con-
cours, popular vote show, open track,
parade laps, parts swap, a welcoming
mixer on Thursday night and a
dinner-evening program on Fri-
day night. We managed to toss
in a couple of surprises here and
there to keep things fresh – no
easy trick after forty years.
The convention started off,
as they all do, the day before the
convention – Wednesday. People
don’t all arrive promptly at 7
a.m. on the first day. They travel
from all over and if they arrive
at the track the afternoon of the
day before, they can get through
registration and if they are run-
ning the open track or vintage
race, they can get through tech
inspection instead of trying to
get all of this done with the
threat of missing the driver’s
meeting hanging over their
head. They also want to find a
good spot in the paddock to park
their trailer and unpack their
stuff. Wednesday tends to be on the
low-key side with a lot of waving,
hand-shaking and back-slapping.
Things take a slightly more serious
turn starting on Thursday morning.
One of the things almost everyone
who was checked into a local hotel did
on Wednesday night was to keep an
eye on the television weather reports.
Rain was forecast and, depending on
which report you listened to, it was ei-
ther going to be light, medium or
heavy. The word “tornado” was also
heard occasionally and that got every-
one’s attention.
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Summer 2016 33