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The SHELBY AMERICAN
with two circles for the wheels, drawn
using a quarter. The lines of my sports
racing car were surprisingly similar to
Brock’s.
This is not to say that I am even
remotely in the same league with
Peter Brock as a designer. I’m not even
in the same area code. But his flowing
lines were as natural for him as they
seemed for me. And one of the most
surprising aspects of this whole thing
is that this car is also one of his fa-
vorite designs. – RK
The first time I saw this car was
on the cover of
Road & Track’s
March,
1966 issue. I wasn’t sure what it was,
other than it was Italian, but it caught
me. I don’t know what it was about
this car but every line just fit. In high
school I spent a lot of time sketching
cars (some of my teachers would prob-
ably say too much time) and when I
saw detail photos of Brock’s P70 a few
months ago I suddenly realized this
was one of the race cars I had been
drawing back in high school. I always
drew side views because I could never
get perspectives right, and started
The completed P70 was shown at the 1965
Turin Auto Show and then, basically, never
seen again. The design was never eclipsed
by cars like the Lola T-70, Chaparral or
McLaren and it remains timeless, today.
Spring 2016 35
Heads Up! Peter Brock has just
completed a new book about early
sports car racing on the West Coast
and it includes detailed informa-
tion about the P70 as well as the
Lang Cooper and Dave MacDon-
ald. MacDonald’s importance to
the Shelby Team has been under-
rated, both because he was sur-
rounded by drivers like Ken Miles,
Bob Holbert, Bob Bondurant and
Dan Gurney, and because his pre-
mature death in 1964 cut short his
driving career just as it was pick-
ing up steam. Carroll Shelby said
of MacDonald that, “
he had more
raw talent probably than any race
driver I ever saw
.” The book will be
available in August and you can
order it from Brock’s website,
www.bre2.net