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If you’ve ever run the open track
event at a SAAC convention, you know
Vinny Liska. He has been overseeing
SAAC’s Tech Inspection at the conven-
tion since the club began scheduling
open tracks at SAAC-5 in Dearborn.
Every time the club lets a car out on
the track to run at speed, it is rolling
the dice that the car is mechanically
safe. The people at Tech Inspection
help keep those odds in the club’s
favor.
A serious accident or fatality out
on the track could tie the club up in
legal knots that could result in the
end of open tracks as well as the fi-
nancial gutting of the club. That’s
the downside. What’s the upside?
Hundreds of members every year
get to experience the visceral thrill
of driving their car on a road race
circuit as fast as they feel comfort-
able going. How fast is that? There
have been 427 Cobras that have
touched 180 mph. A serious inspec-
tion of each car is made to uncover
worn or unsafe components which
have to be repaired before the car is
allowed on the track. The tech in-
spection process is overseen by
Liska, who gives the final thumbs-
up or thumbs-down. The buck stops
with him, and it has for the past
thirty-five years. In that time, not once
has a car been involved in an on-track
incident due to a mechanical malfunc-
tion that was not caught in tech in-
spection.
If you own a 1968, 1969 or 1970
Shelby you probably have Liska’s pic-
ture on your mantle. He is SAAC’s ‘68-
’69-‘70 Shelby Registrar and has been
responsible for digging out factory in-
formation on every one of these cars,
sifting through the sand and finding
the gold. When he talks about how
dealers handled orders or how the fac-
tory fulfilled them he speaks from ex-
perience. He was the original owner of
a ‘68 GT500 and a year later bought a
‘69 GT500 that he drag raced. In fact,
he still holds the record for F/Pure
Stock at New York National Speedway
and because that track no longer ex-
ists, his record will never be broken.
Like most of us, Liska was always
interested in cars. His father worked
on cars in the neighborhood in New
Jersey (back when anyone who could
open a hood could do that). He had
learned a lot from his time in the
Army, assigned to the motor pool. He
worked on his own cars and soon word
spread in the neighborhood and he be-
came the go-to guy for mechanical
work. Young Vincent picked up a lot
just from watching him and soon was
helping.
His father wanted to get him a car
after high school, before he got drafted
(in 1967 that was a pretty sure thing),
and took him to look at a Rambler.
Rather than submit to that type of au-
tomotive humiliation, Liska said he
would wait to get a car after he got
out. In its infinite wisdom, the Army
assigned him as a typing instructor
at Ft. Gordon, Georgia. It was a
tough job, but somebody had to do it.
In his time off he mostly read car
magazines and tried to decide what
kind of a car he would get after he
left the service. He had it narrowed
down to a Jaguar XKE, a Corvette
or a Shelby. As he got close to exiting
the military he had decided on the
Shelby because it had a good size
trunk and a back seat.
He lived frugally while he was on
active duty, sending all of his money
home except for $20 a month. When
he got out he was 21, so he immedi-
ately went to the local Ford dealer
and ordered a new Shelby GT500,
Highland Green with a black inte-
rior and a four-speed. After putting
down a $2,000 deposit, the monthly
payments were $60 a month. About a
year after getting the car, a river in the
town he worked in backed up and
flooded. His Shelby was one of the ca-
sualties. The water got up to the dash-
board, but not over it. The dealer did
an excellent job of cleaning the car up
but it began experiencing electrical
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Summer 2016 55
The Best Known Name in the Club?
It just might be SAAC’s 1968-1969-1970 Registrar
– Rick Kopec