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The SHELBY AMERICAN
344 Fall 2015
tage event would tempt some race fans
to arrive a day or two early so they
could catch both events. It was quickly
falling into the “how could this miss?”
category.
After announcing the convention
dates and details, we discovered some
positive outcomes from positioning the
convention a couple of days before the
Brian Redman International Chal-
lenge (BRIC). One was that a fairly
large number of historic race cars
which would be normally attending
the BRIC let us know they would be
arriving a couple of days early to join
our party: a couple of GT40 MK Is, a
couple of MK IVs and the 427 Daytona
Super Coupe just for starters. They
were all looking for additional track
time on Road America’s magical four-
mile course.
As the convention neared, we dis-
covered that the number of convention
participants planning to stay to see
the vintage races directly following
the convention was less than we had
expected. The cost of adding two or
three more hotel nights probably fig-
ured into the equation, as did the need
to take additional time off. When the
dust settled from the convention, our
take-away was that at best, dovetail-
ing a convention with a major vintage
race weekend was a wash. The num-
ber of people choosing the vintage race
over the convention was greater than
we expected, leading us to wonder if it
was actually hurting SAAC conven-
tion attendance. Tough to tell.