The Shelby American (Winter 2021)

shop closed in early 1963, he and the Sunbeam Tiger project moved over to Shelby American. Little did he realize how his life would change. Shelby knew of and admired Miles for his skill in a race car. Between 1958 and 1963 Miles won 38 of the 44 races he entered. But what Shelby did- n’t realize was Miles’ ability to take a car out on the track, drive it hard, come back in and efficiently communi- cate to the mechanics what needed to change. Early in 1963 Miles was in the rotation as a team driver with Dave MacDonald and Bob Holbert but his real value soon took him off the race track and he was assigned to develop a series of the “next” race cars for Shelby American. That first led to re- fining the 289 race cars for Europe. The Daytona Coupe was literally built around Ken Miles. Then came the 427 Cobra which was largely his effort, en- hanced by design work at Ford. The first win for a GT350 Mustang came with Ken Miles behind the wheel. What followed was the GT40 when that program was pulled back from Ford Advanced Vehicles in Europe and handed over to Shelby American. No one had more to do with the success of the Ford GT40 program than Ken Miles. Miles finally received his just re- ward when Ford focused Shelby Amer- ican on the GT40 program in 1965 and 1966. He was allowed to race the cars he had developed and the results were spectacular. Just 60 days after Ford Advanced Vehicles shipped the two barely running GT40s to Los Angeles in December 1964. Ken Miles and Lloyd Ruby took GT103 home 1st OA at Daytona in 1965, followed a month later by 2nd OA at Sebring with Bruce McLaren. Two months later Miles and McLaren brought GT103 home 3rd OA at Monza, followed by a disappointing DNF at LeMans in June. Daytona in 1966 found Miles paired once again with Lloyd Ruby for 1st OA in P/1015 and the pair repeated the feat the next month at Sebring in GT110. June 1966 saw Miles finish a controversial 2nd OA at LeMans in P/1015. After pitting on lap one of the Le Mans race because his door wouldn’t close properly, Miles set off on a series of lap records to catch up with the front runners. In the process, he became the first man to run the speed trap on the Mulsanne Straight at over 200 mph. A couple of months later, in August 1966, Miles was gone. He was killed at Riverside when J-2 came apart in test- ing. He was 47 years old. “ We have nobody to take his place. Nobody. He was our baseline, our guid- ing point. He was the backbone of our program. There will never be another Ken Miles ” - Carroll Shelby Pennsylvania born in 1923, Holbert wrenched on PT boats for the US Navy in the South Pacific during World War II. On his return he gravitated to what he knew and opened a garage and parts business that specialized in for- eign marques. Like so many others, he first raced an MG, but soon jumped into a Porsche. Porsche awarded him a dealership in 1954, one of the first in the country, and he eventually became a factory works driver in 1957. Acco- lades included a three-time winner of “Best Sports Car Driver” from the New York Times, six class victories at Sebring including 2nd OA in 1960, four SCCA National Championships and a 5th OA/1st Under 2.0L at Le- Mans with Masten Gregory in a Porsche 718 RS 61 in 1961. That re- sume attracted the attention of Car- roll Shelby and in April 1963 Holbert became the third Shelby American Team driver, joining Dave MacDonald and Ken Miles. MacDonald and Hol- bert often co-drove the longer races and became good friends. The Shelby team became a steam roller in 1963 and Holbert would walk away with the USRRC Championship, splitting time between the GT class in a Cobra or King Cobra and Sports 2.0 Class in his Porsche. The next spring Holbert and MacDonald found themselves teamed up in the first Daytona coupe, CSX2287, at the Daytona 2000KM race in February. The car was not even 90 days old and certainly not well de- veloped, but the duo was five laps ahead OA when Holbert pitted on lap 202. Unfortunately, a pit lane fire put them out of that race, but they came back five weeks later in the same car for a 4th OA and 1st GT 5.0 at Se- bring. May 10, 1964 found Holbert in Kent, Washington in Dave MacDon- ald’s King Cobra where he wrecked the car in wet conditions and landed hard in the hospital. Three weeks later his friend, Dave MacDonald, was gone, the victim of a fiery crash at Indianapolis. Holbert was devastated and a few weeks later,he retired from racing to focus on his family and his dealerships. Holbert died in November 2007 at age 84. The SHELBY AMERICAN Winter 2021 45 Bob Holbert Bob Holbert