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The SHELBY AMERICAN
Fall 2015 343
We also tried not to automatically
discount the requests, suggestions
and, in some cases, pathetic pleas to
consider Road America as a conven-
tion site. We took each of them with
the proverbial grain of salt because
our experience was that everyone
wants to see a convention at the track
closest to them. It is the equivalent of
voting for your own car in the popular
vote show. It proves nothing.
For SAAC-22, the planets were be-
ginning to come into alignment. We
contacted the track and they sounded
amenable to a SAAC convention. The
dates just before the Brian Redman
International Challenge were avail-
able. The track rental was expensive;
it would cost more than anyplace we
had yet been. But we were convinced
that we could make it up in volume.
The track was a draw all by itself.
Holding a convention at Road
America offered SAAC members who
had previously only read about it an
opportunity to experience it – either as
spectators or as actual open track par-
ticipants. Team Cobras (as well as in-
dependents) had raced there from
1963 to 1965 and the circuit was no
stranger to GT350s and 427 Cobras.
The Northwoods region had demon-
strated the track’s popularity by hold-
ing an annual event and attracting a
large number of participants to pay
the bill. If they could get that many
people to come to a regional event, we
figured a convention would attract at
least twice that amount. And dovetail-
ing the convention with a major vin-