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The SHELBY AMERICAN

Summer 2016 14

TEAM SHELBY GOES INTERNATIONAL

BROCK IN FORBES

Well, sort of. This notice arrived by

email, informing us of a Team Shelby

International Assembly to be held at

the Circuit Paul Ricard, a road course

near Marseille, in southern France.

The email was from the new official

Director of Team Shelby Europe, who

is listed on TS’s website only as

“Patrick.” Allen Grant, Cobra team

driver, was announced as a special

guest. We began imagining a bumper-

to-bumper parade lap of new Shelbys

until we read a little further and dis-

covered that this inaugural event was

open only to vintage Shelbys and Co-

bras. “

Due to the late announcement it

was not possible to allow late model

Shelbys, but we are working on that

for future events

.” The event was held

on April 26, so we will keep our ear to

the ground for reports and photos.

We don’t normally read

Forbes

magazine so we’re indebted to SAAC

member Duane Carling who sent us

this brief article about Peter Brock.

Written by Mark Ewing, the piece was

titled, “800 Miles In The 2017 Ford

Shelby GT350 Mustang: A Raucous

Muscle Car For Everyman.” The arti-

cle began, “

Over dinner Pete Brock

mentioned that his colleagues from

the early days when Shelby American

was based in Venice, California, are

ramping up to build a series of “new”

1965 Mustang fastbacks. Known as

the “Original Venice Crew,” they will

use Chinese-stamped but U.S.-assem-

bled reproduction bodies

.” The story

went on to describe, mistakenly, that

Shelby engineers developed a proto-

type independent rear suspension,

whick if adopted would have changed

the engineering and brand trajectory

of the Mustang, but Ford bean coun-

ters of the time spiked it.

The Mustang IRS was actually de-

signed and engineered by the folks

back at Ford. A Mustang equipped

with an IRS was sent out to Shelby

American for testing. [

See separate ar-

ticle elsewhere in this issue

.]

Writer Ewing was driving a new

2017 GT350 and stopped by to visit

Brock at his shop in Henderson, Ne-

vada to talk about the IRS both cars

shared. One of his takeaways was that

the Original Venice Crew was plan-

ning to build reproduction ‘65 GT350s

using Dynacorn bodies with IRS sus-

pensions. These cars would be covered

by the new federal laws which allow

small manufacturers to build a maxi-

mum of 200 turn-key cars a year. This

means the cars will have to be pow-

ered by currently certified crate mo-

tors. It remains to be seen if that many

buyers will line up to buy one of these

cars, but we wish them well.

What did catch our attention was

a caption to the above photo that

noted Brock was 80 years old. Yikes!

We continue to see him as a perpetual

60 year-old kid.