The Shelby American (Winter 2021)

The SHELBY AMERICAN Winter 2021 1 The SHELBY AMERICAN #124 The magazine of the Shelby American Automobile Club Copyright © 2021 Shelby American Au- tomobile Club. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be repro- duced or translated without prior ex- press written permission from the Shelby American Automobile Club. saac@saac.com WINTER 2021 ON THE COVER. The very first Shelby, SFM5S003, was very recently restored. Again. It is probably as close to being perfect as humanly possible. The car is 56 years old now. It has 56 years of history and that account is in- teresting. We did a deep dive into that history and here it is, warts and all. Well, maybe not so many warts. The car has provenance. That’s a word that has become overused by the auction indus- try but when you apply it to this car you begin to get an idea of what it means. You will see this car at some point in the future because now that it’s fin- ished it will be entered in almost every major car show or concours in the coun- try. When you do see it, take some time to appreciate it. Because it is a piece of history. Photo by Nick Smith. THE MAIL SAAC. 13 pages. A few thoughts about changing the color of your car. We welcome Ford’s latest CEO who is an honest car guy. And a Cobra owner, And a SAAC member. A little story about “Gentleman” Tom Payne. And – stop the presses – some information about the Cobra’s origi- nator, John Shelby, that we saw on the Internet (so it must be true). A tidbit about one of the GT40s used in Ford v Ferrari. And a link to a video about a ‘67 GT500 made out of wood that you’ll want to watch several times. At least. SHELBY AMERICANA. 11 pages. A new book all about the movie “Bullitt.” Those master eagle eyes Ken Young, Ted Warren, Jim Hutchinson and Tom Dankel keep pulling rabbits out of hats. Two cobra movies from our cinema- tology historian Steve Sloan. Plenty of auction promos featuring cars with a magnetic attraction. And a couple pages of sightings from our lady eagle eyes. Thanks to Jami Young we now know there are more cobra rings than we ever imagined. She will need more than ten fingers to wear them all. SNAKE HANDLERS. 11 pages. We guess we can refer to Brooks Laudin as our Cobra Historian. His latest installment is about Shelby American’s team Cobra drivers. It was the perfect storm: these young hot-shoes were moving along in their careers to the point where they were demonstrating their driv- ing skills and the Cobra came along as the vehicle (pun intended) to show- case those skills. We can’t help wondering if Dan Gurney would have made such a splash as a driver if he would have driven MGAs or Formula Vs. 003 - THE FIRST SHELBY. 13 pages. Putting together the full story of 5S003 wasn’t easy. Trying to follow the car through its chain of ownership was, at times, dizzying. But we think we got it right. The first Shelby de- serves nothing less. About halfway through its lifetime someone realized it was the first one, and at that point everyone’s attitude towards the car changed. It was sort of like when you have an old hatchet and you discover it belonged to George Washington who used it to chop down the cherry tree.