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he question is always asked,
“
Which came first…the Shelby or
Bonnie?
” Bonnie and I started
dating in high school in 1968, when I
was sixteen and she was fifteen. I
bought the Shelby in the fall of 1969.
Therefore, she will always be first. Of
course, looking at it another way, at
least I know she didn’t marry me for
my car.
My passion for cars ignited right
around the time my sister began col-
lege. Because she needed to commute,
my Dad bought a red ‘65 Mustang for
the two of us to “share.” It was a real
beauty! At that time the movie “Bul-
litt” was a box office hit and a favorite
at the height of the muscle car era.
Street racing was the norm and life
imitated art when I raced a Charger
one night, and met a telephone pole on
Layhill Road. It turned my fastback
into a horseshoe. Luckily, only my
pride was hurt and my Dad didn’t
learn the real truth about my racing
until forty years later.
In the fall of 1969, still having the
“need for speed,” I talked my Dad into
letting me buy a one-owner 1966
Shelby GT350 (6S2186). Although the
$1,650 price was money that I had
earned, I was only seventeen and not
old enough to title it in my own name.
He didn’t think it was a good idea for
me to buy a “race car,” what with my
driving history, accumulation of points
on my license and the improbability of
finding a company to insure me. It
took a month of “negotiations” but I fi-
nally wore him down. He warned me
that he didn’t want to have to say “
I
told you so
” and begrudgingly signed
the title. Although he technically
owned the car for a little less than a
year, I don’t ever remember him driv-
ing it. In his later years, he would tell
me I made two good choices in life,
Bonnie and the “Blue” car – in that
order.
We drove the car everywhere dur-
ing the “Glory Years” of high school; to
the beach, skiing, vacations, football
games, homecomings and proms. I
taught Bonnie to drive a manual
transmission with the Shelby and she
hopped around the high school park-
ing lot for quite a while until she mas-
tered it. In those days, it had a 3400 lb
ZOOM pressure plate that took two
men and a boy to push the pedal in.
Although I had mostly given up street
racing, I was still the “Parking Lot
Eliminator” at school. We spent many
a Saturday night at 75&80 Dragway,
but there was always a “class” prob-
lem. Was the Shelby “Factory” or
“Modified”? I argued that it came from
the factory with headers and a hi-rise,
in which case they would class me
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Fall 2016 28
– Kevin Cauley
6S2186
T