The Shelby American (Winter 2021)

It was at this time Smith began to take an interest in early GT350s. The car he was looking at was valued at $100K, and at that point he thought it was way overpriced and lost interest. But when the same car sold for $400K a few years later, he began reconsider- ing GT350s. He spoke with restorer John Brown and in 2016 he purchased 5S477 and began reading everything he could about the cars. Especially the early ones. “ Most collectors seem more inter- ested in the way their cars look ,” opined Smith, “ than the way they drive .” He began driving 5S477 and started going through the car to im- prove its driveability without modify- ing it. He began thinking about get- ting an early car and discovered that Jim Cowles was selling 5S039 for its owner. He went to Wisconsin to look at the car and although it was nicely pre- sented, he decided not to pursue it. He told Brown to let him know if he heard of any other early cars coming on the market. Before becoming involved with Shelbys, Smith expected the owners and top experts to be somewhat snobby, like those involved with other collector car marques. They had the in- formation and you didn’t. He was pleasantly surprised to find Shelby people were different. As a rule, they were friendly and willing to share in- formation freely. One day John Brown called him suggesting he might want to look into 5S003 because he thought its owner, Mark Hovander, might consider sell- ing it. He was surprised to hear this and asked Brown to contact Hovander and follow up on the car. The result was a trip to Seattle to look at 5S003. After talking to Hovander, it seemed he was not ready to part with the car. He was still emotionally attached to it and had put too much of himself into its restoration. Still, Smith sensed something. He stayed in touch with Hovander for almost a year and during one phone call Hovander let it slip that he might be ready to let the car go. Smith pressed him a little and they danced around the car’s value and eventually got down to the “what’s the least you will take for it” bottom line. Realizing that they were talking about the first GT350 made, arguably one of the most significant and historical of all Shel- bys, Smith agreed to Hovander’s price. This was in mid-June 2018. Once Nick Smith became 003’s newest caretaker, the car was picked up from Hovander in Seattle by one of Smith’s employees and delivered to John Brown’s shop in Piedmont, Okla- homa. At the end of November it was inspected by ‘65 GT350 Concours Head Judge Charles Turner and judges Jeff Speegle and Brant Halter- man. They started to put together a punch list of things that needed atten- tion. As they went over the car with the proverbial fine-toothed comb, the list grew to six pages and resulted in The SHELBY AMERICAN Winter 2021 38 003 was restored as a knockdown unit and displayed at the MCACN. The 289 Hi-Po and Mustang GT 2+2 badges on the front fenders were attached using holes which had been drilled for that purpose during production. After the show when the car was con- verted to a GT350, the holes were filled, just the way they were when the car was built at Shelby American in Venice.