5 / 150
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Summer 2016 5
it would get there): Seinfeld’s
Speedster generated a lot of feed-
back from
SCM
readers. The one
letter to the editor we homed in on
was from
SCM
contributor and
Porsche expert Jim Schrager. His
comments were Porsche specific
but we saw them applying as much
to Cobras and Shelbys, so we will
paraphrase them without altering
their sentiments.
Who owns your Cobra or
Shelby? Do you? Or does your car
own you? ...You can tell if your car
owns you if you clean it so thor-
oughly that you actually don’t want
to drive it. Do you take it on a
trailer everywhere it goes? Is your
main connection with the car writ-
ing checks to others to work on it?
Do you lose sleep about the way
that front bumper doesn’t quite fit
where it meets the lower edge of
the passenger’s side front fender?
Do you spend hours looking for
NOS parts which might someday
wear out on your car?
Do you live your life in fear of
driving the car, that you might
scratch the paint – or that a small,
meaningless part will be judged to
be improper? If so, your car owns
you, and as Seinfeld famously said,
“
Not that there is anything wrong
with that.
” I am not here to judge
your passion, simply to understand
it.
If you have had a “perfect”
Cobra or Shelby, most likely, it has
owned you. The opposite of that is
the heady allure of Seinfeld’s latest
acquisition. This is a car that he
owns, which means he can drive it
anywhere, anytime. He does not
sweat the details; the car is what it
is, and he’s fine with that. He does
not write huge checks to restore it
to like-new condition. Instead he
uses it. It’s ok if there is some rust
showing and that the emblems are
tarnished. Those flaws open up
wide horizons of pleasure for those
willing to use a car for its intended
purpose.
Some jerk opens his door into
yours? It’s just another ding in a
car full of flaws, and it actually
MYSTERY PROGRAMME
Exactly where this photo of the
cover of a 1968 Australian race pro-
gramme came from remains a mystery
to us. A lot of interesting stuff flies into
our in-box and gets trapped there. And
every once in a while we overlook
making a note of who sent it, when
and why. Nothing nefarious – it just
happens sometimes.
We know that Surfers Paradise is
a suburb within the City of Gold Coast
in Queensland, Australia. It is the
area’s entertainment and tourism cen-
ter. Surfers Paradise International
Raceway, a 2-mile circuit, was opened
in 1968. A drag strip was part of it.
The circuit was closed in 1987. After
years of neglect it was finally de-
stroyed in 2003 and was reconfigured
as a real estate development.
WE’LL DRINK TO THAT
The Palm Springs Road Races on
the weekend of November 16-17-18,
1990 were actually a tribute to Carroll
Shelby. The vintage event was a re-
vival of the Palm Springs races of the
1950s and 1960s where sports cars
competed on a circuit laid out at the
Palm Springs airport. Needless to say,
there was some partying involved
back then, sprinkled with Hollywood
starlets and leading men.
As vintage racing gained popular-
ity in the late 1980s, it was thought
that an event at Palm Springs would
be a popular venue with a link to the
past. A road course was laid out using
city streets with paddock areas occu-
pying a couple of the larger hotels’
parking lots.
The highlight of the weekend was
a dinner and “Tribute to Carroll
Shelby” which turned out be little
more than a roast, as a seeming never-
ending line of well-lubricated former
drivers and Shelby American crew
members took to the podium to tell a
few memorable stories about ‘Ol Shel.
Shelby was in excellent spirits, having
had a successful heart transplant only
six months before. In fact, Dan Gurney
brought the house down when he
referred to Shelby’s transplant. He
said they originally had trouble find-
ing an acceptable donor so they used
the heart of an old goat.
Bottles of wine, specially labeled
and presented in wooden boxes with
the event’s logo burned into the top,
were available at the event. The rea-
son why we bring this up is that we re-
cently received an email from Bob
Shaw advising us that several presen-
tation boxes with unopened wine in
them were available from someone
who was apparently thinning out a
collection of memorabilia. It makes lit-
tle sense to provide contact informa-
tion at this point because the few
boxes that were available are certainly
now long gone, having moved on into
the hands of new collectors.