This year the GT350 was chosen
as the honored marque to commemo-
rate its 50th anniversary. Being
named the honored marque at this
event isn’t the result of having your
name drawn out of a hat. It is, first
and foremost, a unique marketing op-
portunity for a manufacturer who
pays a princely sum for the “honor.”
Exactly how much is a closely guarded
secret, but suffice it to say that you
won’t be seeing a Smart Car garner
this distinction in your lifetime.
Ford, of course, had an ulterior
motive in stepping into the honored
marque spotlight. They were unveiling
a new 2015 Mustang GT350 model
which they had designated the
GT350R. It was a state-of-the-art, out-
side-the-envelope, smashmouth per-
formance car that is sure to cause Z-28
Camaros and Chrysler Hellcats to
whimper and cower in their garages.
The Monterey Motorsports Reunion
was the ideal venue to plug this car.
FoMoCo’s marketing wizards under-
stood that the company was in busi-
ness to sell new cars, not to promote
fifty-year old antiques that would,
with additional publicity, only enrich
their present owners in the event they
wished to sell them. Ford would not
profit one whit. Like most other man-
ufacturers, Ford didn’t think twice
about standing on the shoulders of the
original Shelby GT350s in order to
beat the drum for their new car. Ma-
nipulating the Tire Photo would be
just one example.
A couple of Ford’s junior varsity
PR whiz kids were assigned to organ-
ize the tire photo op. Stands to reason:
it’s not a job for a marketing vice pres-
ident. The original concept was to po-
sition all forty of the vintage racers
entered the special all-GT350 race in
the shot with the Michelin Tire bridge
in the background. A pair of prototype
2016 GT350Rs would be positioned
prominently up front. To underscore
the historical connection between
these new cars and the original
GT350s, there were four GT350 fac-
tory R-Models at the event, two of
which were entered in the GT350 race.
They should have been parked in the
very first row to show the direct con-
nection between the original racers
and the new cars after which they
were named. There were also a hand-
ful of GT350s with actual race history
from the 1960s, when they were in the
hands of independent racers, and they
should have been behind the row of R-
Models.
The rest of the field would be
made up of GT350 street cars, turned
out with competition options so they
could be vintage raced. To the un-
schooled they might have looked like
original R-Models, but with 36 of those
cars built originally – and about 29 re-
maining – the difference was signifi-
cant. Additionally, there were a few
Mustang fastbacks in the field dressed
up as Shelby racers, but these cars
were based on little more than the de-
sire of their owners to participate in
the vintage racing phenomena.
Organizing a photo op like this
takes a great deal of thought and ad-
vanced planning because there is only
one chance to get it right. There are no
do-overs or rewind button. The track
is available for a specific time frame
and once the cars are moved into place
they cannot be jockeyed around and
rearranged. And this is where the Ford
PR flacks tripped on their shoelaces.
The time of the shoot was made
known in advance and for competitors,
getting their car into this picture was
one of the must-do things of the week-
end. When the time came to assemble
the cars on the track it was like a
school of fish; once one began turning
the others all quickly followed suit.
The cars had to be driven counter-race
direction on the track. They entered
where the race cars normally exited
into the paddock and drove up the
Corkscrew and around the back of the
track, coming to a stop on the far side
of the Michelin Bridge.
Due to a lack of organization at
the start, owners of non-race GT350s
quickly saw an opportunity to get
their cars into the picture. Out in the
GT350 parking corral, adjacent to the
paddock, there was something of a
bum’s rush as astute GT350 owners
realized there was no one in charge
and no system to separate vintage
race cars from all the others. They
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Fall 2015 311
Race cars line up in the pits. As soon as the
first ones were started and made some
noise, all the others quickly followed suit.
All lined up, it was “hurry up and wait”
until someone, who really wasn’t sure of
what to do, started giving directions.
The two R-Models (5R103 on the left and
5R098 on the right) were two cars with ac-
tual 1960s racing history. They were
parked so far back they were practically in
another zip code.
With owners safely out of the picture the
photographers could get down to business.