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The SHELBY AMERICAN
Winter 2016 14
VINTAGE RACE ADDED TO AMELIA ISLAND SCHEDULE
Word reaches us that the already
fully-packed Amelia Island Concours
weekend, beginning on March 10, will
be adding vintage racing to their
schedule. They won’t be using Day-
tona, as the picture at the right might
lead you to believe; we got this image
from Darek Stennes, driving 5S424 on
Daytona’s banking, and we have to
admit that we love that track so it
doesn’t take much to get us to use a
picture of it.
The track that will be used at
Amelia is the Fernandia Beach Munic-
ipal Airport (Shelbys raced there in
1966, 1967 and 1969) and the SVRA
has the event scheduled four days
after the Amelia concours wraps up. It
will give some people who desire
sounds to go with the sights. We also
expect the race will prompt a fair
number of vintage race cars to show
up at Amelia. Credit Amelia’s forward-thinking honcho Bill Warner for that.
Using an airport for a sports car race isn’t a brand new idea. Back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, sports car rac-
ing was going through a major transition. Races had originally been held on public roads which were temporarily closed
at places like Bridgehampton, Watkins Glen, Pebble Beach and Elkhart Lake. After a couple of accidents resulting in
the deaths of spectators, the use of public roads was ended. Since single-purpose sports car race circuits took years to
build, an agreement was reached with the Strategic Air Command’s commanding general, Curtis LeMay (running mate
of George Wallace in the 1968 presidential election). A sports car enthusiast himself, he invited the SCCA to organize
weekend races on SAC air bases and rolled out the red carpet for them. Other smaller, regional airports were also used
through the mid-1960s. Eventually, as the cars got faster the airport circuits were deemed less safe. However, by then
there were enough purpose-built road race circuits to provide venues for racing. With big tracks getting increasingly
expensive to rent maybe smaller airports are the answer to the continually growing costs of vintage racing.
“GANGSTA WHEELS”? WHEN DID THIS START?
Did you ever get the feeling you
walked into a movie after it had
started and you’re not sure what you
missed? We’ve noticed a growing num-
ber of Cobras showing up with black-
painted mag wheels. No polished rim.
This didn’t happen overnight, but it
seems that way. We feel like we’ve
been caught napping. Trends like this
usually have origins somewhere back
in the 1960s: LeMans stripes, comp
quick jack pads, diagonal fender
stripes. But the wheels on Shelby
American’s cars always had polished
outer rims. Are we seeing the effect of
present day drifting rice rockets with
black-painted mags and coffee can
mufflers? And when did they start
being called “Gangsta wheels”?