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It took about six hours to fill the
ballroom because the cars had to be
unloaded and pushed inside, one at a
time. The first one in, sheerly by coin-
cidence, was a white ‘67 Shelby. The
rain had begun, so trailers were
backed just inside the large door. You
don’t let cars like this sit outside in the
rain while they are waiting to get in.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
The SAAC-40 story began back in
January when we were discussing a
location for our fortieth get-together.
While a 40th anniversary is certainly
a milestone, we really didn’t see the
need to make it into a Big Deal: the
kind of event that inspires fireworks,
a cake with 40 candles or party hats
on each table at the dinner. There was
even a suggestion that Howard Pardee
jump out of a large cake. That idea
was quickly tabled, but it’s likely to be
reappear for our 50th anniversary.
In May of 2014 we had a discus-
sion about organizing the 2015 con-
vention as something very close in
concept to SAAC-2, back in 1977; pri-
marily a social event surrounded by a
lot of cars. In fact, Hershey, Pennsyl-
vania was even suggested as a possi-
ble site. However, the thought of
having a SAAC convention without an
open track really didn’t gain much
traction. The location would, however,
be in the northeast.
With major tracks like Watkins
Glen and Lime Rock booked years in
advance, SVRA once again came up on
our radar. They were holding an event
at Pocono International Raceway in
mid-August and they invited us to join
them. We kicked it around and one of
the downsides we saw was that it
would be the same week as the re-
cently announced Monterey Motor-
sports Reunion which would be a
tribute to the GT350’s 50th Anniver-
sary. After some back and forth, we de-
cided that with 3,000 miles separating
the two venues, it wasn’t likely that
the number of people choosing Mon-
terey instead of SAAC would put a no-
ticeable dent in our attendance. To
someone in the middle of the country
it might be a tough decision, but not
many on either coast would have a dif-
ficult choice. All things being equal,
most people will go to the closer event.
But all things were not equal. As
they do at Monterey, they were plan-
ning to make the GT350’s 50th a
major splash. Ford had unveiled a
2016 GT350 model which included an
open track version they called the
“GT350R.” It was clearly an homage to
the original R-Model, to the point
where only 37 cars would be built for
the first year. More would follow in
2017.
While we would not be competing
directly with Monterey, sharing the
date would mean that we couldn’t ex-
pect any attention from Ford. All of
their public relations and promotional
eggs would be put in the Monterey
basket.
We decided that Pocono was cer-
tainly in the right location for us and
the August 13-15 date was acceptable,
so we signed on and started making
plans. Howard Pardee stepped for-
ward to be the pointman on the hotel
(actually, when he was distracted
everyone else took a step backward).
Initially he looked into the Split Rock
Resort which was about fifteen min-
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Fall 2015 271