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also operated a small welding busi-
ness at home out of his garage. Some-
body said, “
Hey Burgy, you should
meet Stu, here. He could do a cage for
your Pantera.
” That sounded interest-
ing, so I drew up the plans and he built
a roll cage and welded it into the Pan-
tera. I designed side impact bars that
pivoted and swung out. They were
held in place with Shelby hood pin
latches. I didn’t want to climb over it
and I knew my wife wouldn’t want to
do that, either. I lowered the car and
then did some artwork for an outfit in
California named Mind Train. They
were one of the big Pantera parts sup-
pliers. I bought most of my parts from
Gary Hall at Hall Pantera or Fred
Matsumoto of Mind Train. I did art-
work for Mind Train and got one of
their exhaust systems for about half-
price. I also did some illustrations for
Chris Hoverman at Mustangs Unlim-
ited when he first started out. I bought
a fiberglass hood from Gary Hall and
rear window deck louvers, ten-inch
Campagnolo wheels, new seats with
velour inserts and all kinds of stuff. I
polished the wheels. That was about
the time I ran into Paul Rebmann. He
had bought another ‘66 Shelby from a
friend of mine and that guy told him
to get a hold of me if he ever wanted to
get any work done on his car. When I
drove over there in a Pantera he said,
“
Hey - that’s a cool car. I gotta have
one of those.
” He sold the Shelby,
6S1253, to my brother Gregg in Ohio.
Rebmann bought a Pantera that
needed some work. It had been owned
by a guy who owned a car dealership –
Pat Milliken Ford Mercury in South-
field, Michigan. He had torn it up
pretty good, so I disassembled the
whole car for Rebmann so he could get
it painted. Rather than get paid for the
work, I took it out in machine work.
Rebmann had a machine shop with a
lathe, presses and dies and all kinds of
tools. That’s where I polished my
Campy wheels on his lathe during the
night shift. He built parts and ma-
chined things for me. If I needed some-
thing, I would make a drawing of it
and he would have his guys make it up
for me, no charge.
SAAC: When did you sell the Pan-
tera?
BURGY: In 1986 I was starting to
have trouble driving the Pantera so I
decided to let it go. I sold the car to a
guy in Michigan and he called me a
few months later and said he was
going to have Jack Roush rebuild the
engine. I told him it wasn’t the original
engine and probably had 100,000
miles on it. With the Webers on it I
thought I had washed the rings. He
was going to have it completely re-
built, so I said, “
Why don’t you go with
some other engine block and let me
buy that one back, because it came out
of my dad’s Boss 351 Mustang. It has
some sentimental value to me.
” So we
made a deal and I got the engine back
and just put it in the corner. I knew
that someday I was going to build a
Cobra kit car.
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Fall 2016 56
Burgy was one of the most knowledge guys
in the club’s early days when it came to
‘65-‘66 Shelbys. He wrote a column in the
club magazine about GT350 technical top-
ics, so when he started showing up in his
red Pantera, powered by a Weber-equipped
351 Cleveland, some wondered if he had
gone over to the Dark Side but he tried to
explain it away by referring to the car as
his “Italian Mustang.”