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drove their cars through the paddock
confusion and joined the conga line.
Instead of the forty cars that filled the
special vintage GT350 field, there
were almost sixty GT350s lined up to
be in the photo. One uninvited gate-
crasher was a black 1965 resto-mod
Mustang convertible. Its owner could
not be deterred by the owners of
GT350s near by and there was no
track official within shouting distance,
so the car was left where it was, in the
very back.
Two of the genuine R-Models in
attendance (5R002 and 5R535) made
it into the front row. The other two
were lost in the sea of white-and-blue-
striped cars and ended up at the very
back. Track officials were adamant
about not driving on the dirt on either
side of the track, so there was no way
they could be driven up to the front
row.
The original R-Models were the
cars directly responsible for the cur-
rent level of excitement, adulation and
name recognition that allowed Ford to
create a special model, some fifty
years later, named after them. It only
made sense that special attention
would be paid to have all four compe-
tition cars up at the very front of the
picture.
It didn’t turn out that way, and the
situation seemed to spotlight the lack
of history that Ford’s junior PR men
had. Former R-Model owner and one
of the top early GT350 experts in the
country, Craig Conley, attempted to
patiently explain what was going
wrong and to educate these thirty-
something know-nothings about the
historical significance of the four R-
Models, 5R002 – the first factory com-
petition prototype, 5R103 – the former
1966 SCCA B/P National Champion,
5R098 – the Essex Wire race car which
has been almost continually vintage
raced since 1989 and 5R535 – one of
five cars raced in Peru in the late
1960s. Two of them were parked as far
back as they could be and still be in
the picture. They should have been up
in the front row, illustrating the direct
connection between the fifty years
that separated them from the newest
generation of GT350s.
As Conley explained all this to
them, he saw a brief spark of acknowl-
edgement in their eyes but it was
quickly extinguished as they realized
they had totally lost control of the sit-
uation and with the time constraints
they were under, there was no way it
could be corrected. The two R-Models
would have to stay where they were.
History had been stood on its head by
the basic incompetence of a pair of jun-
ior level drones. Once the picture was
taken and their mission was accom-
The SHELBY AMERICAN
312 Fall 2015
Nature abhors a vacuum. No sooner were the pair of 2016 GT350Rs driven away when
the two tribute GT350R2s took their place for another rendition of the Tire Photo.
5R103, originally driven by Walt Hane; the car finished fourth in B/P in the 1965 ARRC
at Daytona and Hane qualified for the 1966 ARRC at Riverside where he finished 1st.
Today the car is owned by Ross Myers of Perkiomenville, Pennsylvania and is restored
to the way it was raced in 1966 at the SCCA national run-offs.