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The Terlingua Racing Team
emblem—a mean-looking rabbit,
silhouetted in black on a chrome
and yellow crest—is probably one
of the more recognizable logos to
become attached to the Shelby
American legend. It was displayed
prominently on the 1967 Shelby
Trans-Am team car driven by
Jerry Titus, which was ostensibly
sponsored by the “Terlingua Rac-
ing Team.” Titus’ car was painted
“Gawd-Awful Yellow” with a flat
black hood and black center
stripes. The Terlingua emblem
was also displayed on the flanks
of Shelby American’s GT350 R-
Model and 427 Cobra team cars,
5R002 and CSX3002 respectively,
when they raced at Green Valley,
Texas on February 14, 1965. Ken
Miles drove the new R-Model to
its first race victory that day.
The logo was designed by
noted automotive artist Bill
Neale, a long time friend of Carroll
Shelby’s and a fellow Texan. The
Shelby-Neale connection goes back to
1951, when Neale first saw Shelby
race. They were friends ever since.
Further cementing their relationship
was the fact that Neale’s late wife,
Nelda, had a brother who went
to high school with Shelby. She
knew him before her husband
ever met him.
In the early 1960s Shelby got
involved in a real estate deal
with another friend, Dallas
lawyer David Witts. As Shelby
told it, he and Witts wound up
owning about 220,000 acres of
rocks in southwest Texas, near
the Mexican border. It was some
of the most inhospitable land
imaginable, virtually all desert
wilderness and jagged mesa. In-
cluded was a ghost town named
Terlingua. Shelby and Witts
bought the land for practically
nothing (which was a fair esti-
mation of its worth) with the
idea of subdividing it into 30-
acre parcels which would then be
sold to hunters, who would own
their parcel as well as hunting
rights on the total acreage. The
area abounded with mule deer,
coyote, wolf, rattlesnake and other
wild animals highly regarded as hunt-
ing trophies.
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Springr 2016 62
– Rick Kopec