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SAAC: The way tech is run at a SAAC
convention, it’s a friendly relationship
between those working tech and the
participants who want to run on the
track. It’s not an adversarial relation-
ship, an initiation or a gauntlet that
has to be run. People get a sense of
that.
LISKA: Most of the people who come
through tech appreciate it, even if they
think we’re giving them a hard time
on some of the smaller things. It’s ben-
eficial and no one has missed any
track time because they had to put
tape on the positive post of the battery
terminal or if the wheel bearings have
to be tightened. We get everybody out
there. And some people even come
back to thank us for finding things
that need attention.
SAAC: When we first started putting
the registry together Doug Waschenko
was the 1968 registrar and Jim
Cowles handled the 1969-1970 cars.
They did a great job of setting things
up, establishing a format and taking
information from club members who
responded to our requests for informa-
tion on their cars. At that time we
were limited to only getting informa-
tion from owners who responded to us.
And with 4,451 1968 cars and 3,150
1969-70 cars that was a fairly large
number – although not even close to
the total number of cars produced. The
registry consumes a great deal of time
and no one can understand that until
they start doing it. Jim Cowles was
spending more and more time on his
Shelby parts business and by the time
we were putting together the 1997 edi-
tion, he asked to be replaced.We didn’t
have far to look. As an original owner,
Liska was a natural choice. Once in a
while you could pick up information
from a magazine article or a classified
ad, but as a rule, in those early days
most owners didn’t attach a special
significance to their cars’ serial num-
ber the way Cobra and early Shelby
owners did.
LISKA: They knew their car was a
Shelby but they often didn’t know
much of its history before they owned
it. And they didn’t really know how the
cars fit into Shelby history, how many
were made of a particular combination
of colors and options and things like
that.
SAAC: There were certainly a lot of
blanks to fill in. But then something
happened that changed all of that.
LISKA: In 1994 we got microfilm from
Ford. Prior to that Howard Pardee had
developed a contact at Ford’s archives
in Dearborn with the archivist. After
a visit, she felt very comfortable with
him and allowed him to look through
some of the files they had. They pro-
vided the use of a copy machine but
there was so much there it was more
than one person could handle. So he
brought me with him on the next visit.
We immediately hit it off because she
had a dog and I love dogs. She also saw
in me the same dedication Howard
had.We were trying to preserve an im-
portant part of history and she
thought that she could be of help. She
let us look at all the stuff that was in
the archives. They were housed in the
Highland Park storage center which
was Ford’s old tractor factory. The
building was a mile square and six
floors high. If you set up an assembly
line it would be thirteen miles long.
Each Ford department has a storage
space that was a specific size. They
could put as much stuff in their space
as they wanted but they could not get
any additional space. So as new docu-
ments arrived, older things had to be
thrown away to make room for them,
and there was no way to tell if any-
thing thrown away was historically
important. The archivist we were talk-
ing to knew, generally, what she had
but did not have the time to organize
it and inventory it and record it for
history. But she saw, in Howard and I,
two people who were seriously dedi-
cated to history and would be able to
make use of the material. In the begin-
ning, she would ask her boss if she
could give Howard and I documents
and files and he said no. But eventu-
ally she became the boss.
SAAC: How many times had you been
there?
LISKA: Howard had probably been
there a dozen times. I went there
twice. She would let him look at things
individually and he was picking up a
lot of information. We went over to
Highland Park to review anything she
had there that she may have over-
looked, so we could feel comfortable
that, “
Ok, we got it all
.” She called
ahead in advance and there was a gen-
tleman who signed us in. He gave us a
little box with twenty-six microfilm
tapes. They were Shelby warranty
service records from 1967 to 1970. He
handed it to me and said,
“You guys
might want this
.” It was just reels of
film, 9mm, with a little square on
every frame. We realized what it was
because it said “Warranty Service” on
each reel. We figured there was some
good information there but we needed
to find a machine we could view it on.
My local library had a microfiche ma-
chine where reels could be viewed,
frame by frame, and each frame could
be copied. For a price. Even at 5¢ a
frame, with 26 reels and each one
with, maybe 100,000 frames on it, that
adds up to a lot of money.
SAAC: What kind of information was
on these warranty microfilms?
LISKA: When someone took their car
into the dealer with a warranty prob-
lem – anything from a taillight that
wouldn’t work or a loose interior mir-
ror to a blown engine or clutch – the
service manager filled out a warranty
form: the date, owner’s name and ad-
dress, car serial number, mileage and
description of the problem. The
dealer’s name was also on the form.
When the car was repaired under the
warranty, a work order was written,
describing the work performed and
the cost of parts and labor.
SAAC: It must have been frustrating,
knowing all this information was
available on these reels but you could
only see them, not get actual copies.
LISKA: I immediately started looking
for a microfiche machine of my own. A
friend in the club who lived nearby,
Pete Larkin, got me an old DataMate
400 from where he worked. It was a
microfiche reader; I could see each
frame of the microfilm but had no abil-
ity to print anything. I had to modify
it a little to run the reels through it
flat, and spool them back onto an
empty reel. But as I was pulling the
film through, I could see each frame on
the screen. I was getting VINs, origi-
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Summer 2016 57