The Shelby American (Winter 2021)

The car has all original sheet metal, a rare all-steel hood with the 8˝ hole and all original interior with the orig- inal 3˝ wide seat belts. The car has all Shelby-unique original parts it was born with: a matching-numbers 289 Hi-Po with large letter intake, special 715 Holly carburetor, open-letter Buddy Bar valve covers, Cobra T-pan,, original Hi-Po C4 three-speed Cruise- O-Matic transmission and the correct 350:1 open rear. It has the original 14˝ Magnum 500 wheels and original Goodyear Blue Streak spare tire. The car has the Mico piggyback master cylinder, override traction bars with the kink and rear axle-limiting cables. It also has the two pop rivets in each drip rail, correct date-coded radiator, Cobra tach, Koni shocks all around, radio and the brake warning decal on the dash. The last five months of 2017 we drove the car 1,900 miles. We get a lot of enjoyment driving the Hertz. JR and I were coming from a show in Charlestown, West Virginia and sit- ting on the front row at a red light with three other cars, it made you feel like you were at the drag strip back in the 1960s. The light turned green, I put the pedal to the metal, the wheels spun and we were off. The trans shifted at 5500 RPM with a jerk and a chirp from the tires. I told JR that this was legal because we were driving a Hertz Rent-A- Racer just like back in the ‘60s. This Shelby really sends you back in time. It has the separation in the rim of the steering wheel, the odometer reads 10,000 miles and the Cobra tachome- ter is nestled down on the dash like it’s been for fifty years. The drivers seat is showing some wear, the carpet is faded, headliner has a couple small holes and the wheels have a little rust. The Shelby is similar to what you would have bought off a used car lot in 1967. It took me exactly fifty years after first seeing a GT350H to finally get one. The following year at a cruise-in, I met a gentleman who was the man- ager of Hertz’s Baltimore office in 1966. He remembered having a dozen GT350Hs available for rent. All were black and gold. His cars were some of the Hertz rentals we saw at Schmit Ford in 1967 and he said the rest of the cars came from Washington DC. This past year, 2019, we trailered the ‘66 GT350H to SAAC-44 at Pitts- burgh International Race Complex in Pennsylvania with Tony Conover. In the past two and half years we have logged on over 8,000 miles on the car. I use the ‘06 GT-H for the longer driv- ing trips and we have logged on over 7,000 miles. A special thanks has to go out to Tony Conover, a personal friend for forty-two years and to Curt Vogt for finding the car. I’d also like to thank Tommy Walsh for the photography. And a thanks to the Shelby American Auto Club, Greg Kolasa and Rick Kopec for helping to make the Shelby GT350H what it is today. The SHELBY AMERICAN Winter 2021 67