58 / 150
nal owners’ names and addresses and
whatever was done to the car: replace
an alternator or even a complete en-
gine. Obviously this information
would be important to the present
owner. Somebody might think his car
had the original engine but the war-
ranty information shows that the
block was replaced at 7,000 miles.
SAAC: How were you recording this
information?
LISKA: I was writing it down, long-
hand. I was sitting in front of this
screen for five years, sometimes from
6 or 7 in the morning until midnight.
I’d knock off and go to sleep and then
get up and go back to it the next day. I
found it so fascinating because it en-
abled me to fill in so many blanks on
cars we knew nothing about.
SAAC: So this information answered
a lot of questions about production.
LISKA: It answered questions like,
did Ford really put 427 engines in
1968 GT500s. A lot of owners thought
it did, but this warranty information
showed that it did not happen. Sud-
denly we had all of the serial numbers
and everything that was done to the
cars.We could now fill in the colors, be-
cause we didn’t have them for every
car. We knew things like transmis-
sions, rear ends and every option that
was on a Ford document.
SAAC: This was all done before we
created a computer database for reg-
istry information.
LISKA: Yes. I had 3” x 5” file boxes
and I typed the information onto
cards. Not that my handwriting was
difficult to read, but typing was just
neater and easier to read.
SAAC: So you had information on
every 1968, 1969 and 1970 Shelby.
LISKA: Almost every car. Some own-
ers never took their car in for war-
ranty service. But there were shipping
memos: if six cars were shipped by
Hadley Freight to a certain dealership
they were listed by VIN. So we could
determine the selling dealer. We were
also able to get copies of Lois Em-
minger’s documents.
SAAC: And for those who may not be
familiar with than name. who was
she?
LISKA: Lois Emminger worked for
Ford Motor Company and I think her
boss had something to do with copy-
rights. He was a big shot at Ford and
if he sent her somewhere to get some-
thing, whoever she was dealing with
jumped, because they knew who he
was. She had worked her way into a
lot of things that nobody else was able
to get to. She got to ride in the first
Ford GT40 before Henry Ford II, who
was standing there waiting for his
turn. She had a lot of contacts. She
was also an early T-Bird enthusiast,
and was able to find some of the
records through the archives, of the
1957 T-Birds. She saw a market for
this and in the process of still being
able to store her stuff at the archives,
because there was room there that she
didn’t have at home, she found in-
voices for all of the early Mustangs,
Torinos, Cougars and the 1968-1969-
1970 Shelbys.
SAAC: So, she started offering copies
to owners?
LISKA: The copies she sold were ini-
tially cheap – $20 or $25. You would
get the #6 copy, but it was the real one,
on Ford paper. The first copy was the
window sticker for the car. The copy
Lois sold was the accounting copy,
which was a carbon of the first copy.
There were a half dozen copies for
each car; they went to various depart-
ments.
SAAC: Once Lois sent someone the
copy she had, did she have anything to
represent the car?
LISKA: She made a copy for her files.
She also saw that Howard and I were
trying to protect the integrity of the
cars, so she trusted us. She said she
would loan me all of the invoices for
1968, 1969 and 1970 Shelbys. I agreed
that they would be used only for re-
search; I wouldn’t be offering them for
sale to owners. And I would put them
in order because she had never thor-
oughly sorted them and complained of
having trouble finding some of them. I
drove to Michigan one Friday with
Pete Larkin, Greg Kolasa and Carol
Padden. We picked up the boxes from
Lois and checked into a Red Roof Inn
in Dearborn with a small copier we
had brought, two boxes of copier
paper – not reams but boxes of reams,
and some extra toner. For two days
straight, four of is made a copy of
everything. The copier was running
full time, and we were sorting and put-
ting the invoices in order. We would
take turns going out to eat. Every time
someone would press the button to
make a copy the lights in the room
would dim. When the housekeeper
came to clean the room we told her to
just do a quick job and give us clean
towels. We stepped outside to let her
clean the place so she wouldn’t worry
about being alone in the room with a
bunch of thugs.When she finished, she
said, “
What are you guys doing in
there? Running a business?
” We said
we were just making copies but she
didn’t understand that.
SAAC: How many copies did you
think you made?
LISKA: We used most of the paper so
we must have made 10,000 copies on
a little, used copier. Pete knew how to
maintain it, to clean a wire to keep the
copies legible and to keep it from jam-
ming. We worked for two days and
nights making copies. The trade-off for
Lois was that she would get them back
organized by serial number because
they had been sorted by dealer. She
appreciated that.
SAAC: Is Lois Emminger still around?
LISKA: She passed away in 2005. All
of the Mustang and Shelby paperwork
she had was purchased by Kevin
Marti. When someone purchases orig-
inal factory paperwork from him,
that’s where it came from.
SAAC: You acquired knowledge by
repetition, by looking at each invoice
and sorting them. Today, somebody
gets a registry and looks at all of the
serial numbers in order, and they have
no idea how they got into the registry.
LISKA: Exactly. How long it took to
put it all together, and all of the ways
that individual pieces had to come us
before we were able to get it to that
point. The final outcome, to me, is still
amazing. I find that when I’m talking
to a new owner, I am still experiencing
that thrill of putting another piece of
the puzzle together. And I can tell this
new owner who the car’s original
owner was and after these cars chang-
ing hands a number of times over the
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Summer 2016 58