56 / 113
erspective is a wonderful thing.
It can give you the opportunity
to view things from 30,000 feet. Time
provides perspective. Jeff Burgy’s in-
terest in Shelbys started when the
cars were introduced, but not many
high schoolers became Shelby owners.
That would come later. At the begin-
ning of the 1970s, Shelbys were used
cars and were available at afford-
able prices. Typical of used cars,
many needed work and that was
reflected in their prices. If you
were handy under the hood, a
blown engine was, in effect, a dis-
count that made a car which
might have been unaffordable,
suddenly within reach.
Burgy’s father was a car guy
and in 1965, when he bought a
1965 Mustang convertible, that
pretty much sealed Jeff’s fate. He
knew the Cobra was the fastest
Ford product on the road but it
was priced way out of his league.
Like most of us, he can remember
when he saw his first one. It was
at Bridenthal Ford in Greensburg,
Ohio, just outside of Akron. The
car was in the showroom, but it was
after hours, so all he could do was
stare at it through the window.
After high school, like most of the
rest of his generation, Burgy spent
evenings cruising the hamburger
joints. In his hometown of Cuyhoga
Falls, Ohio there were two main ones –
Lujan’s Big Boy and a place called the
Hungry I, where all the hoodlum kids
hung out. They were a couple blocks
apart and everyone spent most of the
time cruising back and forth between
the two. Burgy recalls one of the most
memorable events was when a red 289
Cobra showed up at Lujan’s one night.
On another night a white and blue
GT350 rolled through. He saw his first
actual 427 Cobra in Kent, Ohio, a col-
lege town that had quite a few active
bars which attracted fun-seekers of
that certain age. Burgy remembers
being home from college one night
when he saw a 427 Cobra parked on
the street with the soft top up. It was
snowing and the car didn’t have any
side windows. Hard to believe today
but in the early 1970s it didn’t get a
second look.
After college Burgy went to work
for Ford and remained with the com-
pany until he retired some thirty
years later. He worked in many de-
partments and was, among other
things, an illustrator and an audio en-
gineer. He was one of the first enthu-
siasts to join the Shelby Owners Asso-
ciation and when SAAC was started
he was one of the first ones to sign on.
He remains one of only two individu-
als who has attended every SOA and
SAAC
national
convention. He
founded the SAAC Motor City Region
and served on SAAC’s Board of Direc-
tors. Today Burgy is the registrar
for the 2005-2006 Ford GTs. After
retiring from Ford he moved out of
the snowbelt and down to central
Florida.
SAAC: When did you get your
first Shelby?
BURGY: I bought my first GT350
in 1971. I had to have one of those
cars. It was a 1966, 6S1206. My
dad ordered a new Boss 351 Mus-
tang that same year and in 1972 I
bought the Boss from him. In
1973 I bought another ‘66 GT350,
6S285, from a buddy of mine who
had blown the engine. I also
bought a ‘68 GT500 convertible
from a guy who worked as a me-
chanic in the Ford World Head-
quarters garage. Somebody had put a
427 engine in it and it needed a muf-
fler. He had a new muffler in the
trunk. After I bought the car and put
the new muffler on it I found out why
he had not put the muffler on it. With
the new muffler you could hear the
427 engine knocking. [
Laughs.
] I
pulled the 427 out and sold it to a
buddy who had a ‘65 Shelby and a hot
rod he wanted to put the 427 in. I put
the Boss 351 engine I had in my
Shelby and that was the car I drove to
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Fall 2016 54
SAAC’s Ford GT Registrar has been around forever, and we’re all better off for it.
– Rick Kopec
P