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The SHELBY AMERICAN
Summer 2016 18
LOST MUSCLE CARS
by Wes Eis-
enschenk. 6 1/4˝ x 9 1/4˝ hardcover;
240 pages, 90 color photos, 49 black &
white. Published by Car Tech, Forest
Lake, MN. wwwcartechbooks.com
$26.95
The term “automotive archeology”
seems to have been coined about a
dozen years ago, around the time that
“barn find” entered the automotive en-
thusiast’s lexicon. This coincided with
a noticeable jump in prices of col-
lectible cars, which some have attrib-
uted to the arrival of televised
auctions on cable TV, notably Barrett-
Jackson in Scottsdale, Arizona. They
are all interconnected, although which
came first and led to the others is a
chicken-and-the-egg question.
Finding a long-forgotten car in a
barn is one of the Holy Grails that car
enthusiasts search for. Initially one of
the motives is, certainly, the idea of
being able to find an abandoned car,
ideally with low mileage and not
picked clean of significant parts, and
buy it at a bargain basement price.
Another aspect is the thrill of the
hunt, only occasionally followed by the
pleasure of the kill. More often than
not the search leads to a dry hole. This
only motivates the dedicated detective
to continue, and stories of close calls
and dead ends are sometimes as inter-
esting as finding a car itself. And find-
ing it is no guarantee of anything.
Neglected and forgotten cars can often
turn out to be virtually worthless and
serve as little more than a thinning of
the herd. One less treasure to be dis-
covered.
Not all barn finds are created
equal. There is a hierarchy which val-
ues the aforementioned low mileage,
condition and rarity. Up near the top
of the scale are race cars, prototype or
show cars, muscle cars, cars with
unique history or that have had
celebrity owners. Stories about “lost”
cars are always of interest to auto en-
thusiasts and are eagerly read in car
magazines and on Internet websites
and blogs. They also provide material
for books. Like this one.
Wes Eisenschenk has collected
forty-five stories about, as the book’s
subtitle says, “the most elusive and
valuable muscle cars.” Not all of them
have been found, which provides hope
for the dreamers among us. The book
is divided into four sections: concept/
promo/prototype muscle, rare muscle
cars, race cars and celebrity-owned
muscle cars. Eisenschenk has not per-
sonally engaged in all of these
searches, but has combined stories
from a number of others to form the
body of this book. It makes for a very
fascinating read, even if, as a Shelby
guy, you’re not really that interested
in Camaros or Dodges. You begin to
see it’s the story that counts, not the
kind of car it centers around.
On particular interest to Shelby
enthusiasts are the chapters on two
famous cars which remain missing to
this day: Jim Morrison’s ‘67 GT500
“Blue Lady” and 1969 Playboy Play-
mate of the Year Connie Kreski’s pink
‘69 GT500. Interest in both cars is off
the scale because although they are
well known, neither has ever turned
up, leaving the possibility – however
slim it might be after four decades –
that someone could hit the lost car lot-
tery. There is no way to predict
whether that might come as the result
of painstaking and dedicated detective
work or just dumb luck. Either way,
help won’t come from either celebrity
as they have passed on to a place
where cars are not needed for trans-
portation.
As a sub-category, probably the
largest number of lost cars are the
ones that have been drag raced. Not
all of them were campaigned by
names you would recognize or by big
name performance dealers. Sometimes
someone working at a dealership
would convince the owner that spon-
soring a car optioned for drag racing
would be exactly the kind of advertis-
ing that would attract hoards of buy-
ers to their doors. Sometimes it did,
but often it took a long time commit-
ment for a dealership to become noted
for performance – not one car.
Typically with most drag cars,
after something faster was found the
owner would sell the “old” car and it
usually started it’s way down the food
chain. At some point enough parts
were taken off of it that it no longer
had any value as a race car. Cars like
this often passed through so many
owners that their original history was
lost. Many of the features that made
them identifiable had been removed,
replaced or modified. Stories about
cars like this are interesting and this
book is filled with them. Once you
start reading it’s hard to stop.