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of people seated on the fairway below re-
mains unblocked by any would-be photog-
raphers. I did not want to be one of the
jackasses who disrespected this. I might
have taken photos from the Lodge, but in
2015 I declined the walk down the hill
from the Equestrian Center, where I sat
overlooking the Lodge and the bay before
the ceremony began. I preferred not to
walk back up the hill where my Jeep was
parked, or wait in line for a golf cart ride
at the end. I didn’t think the world needed
photos from my camera. I knew they would
be available from other sources. Maybe
next year.
This year, on the 50th anniversary of
the GT350, one of the most important
things happened in the history of these
cars, for their current and past owners, for
the Shelby American Company and the
people who worked there. In 2015, the
owners of eight 1965 or 1966 GT350s
placed their cars on the 18th fairway be-
hind the Lodge at Pebble Beach, and that
was a great thing. They were accepted into
the 65th Pebble Beach Concours d’ Ele-
gance, to be displayed and judged for the
first time alongside Ferraris and Bugattis,
Rolls-Royces and Bentleys, Duesenbergs
and Packards; all the great automobiles
that graced the field since the inaugural
event in 1950. One of the most selective
automotive shows in the world, this places
the GT350 as one of the great automobiles
of the 125 or so years, so far, of the auto-
mobile age.
I’m not a reporter, a historian, an ex-
pert on any GT350 of any year. I’m a gen-
eral purpose car guy who happens to like
Shelbys and the people who own, show,
race, restore, tour with, and maintain
them. I am unqualified to address the
specifics or significance of the cars which
were accepted, and competed, in the class
reserved for 1965 and 1966 GT350s at the
2015 Pebble Beach Concours d’ Elegance.
Any genuine Shelby guy who is reading
this knows much, much more than I ever
will, about any Shelby. The best I can do is
describe the experience of attending.
A Shelby owner with a car in the show
put it this way: “
Having a car accepted by
the Pebble Beach Concours is like reaching
the Olympics
.” The best way of explaining
what an owner with an unlimited budget
is willing to do to get his car on the fairway,
is to tell the story of the man who discovers
his car isn’t running before the day of the
show, dispatches a failed component with
a mechanic in a private jet, to a small town
in a different state, where an expert on
this particular component lives, so the re-
pair can be made and the device returned
for installation before Sunday morning.
What of the owner of modest means,
who performs himself as much of the
restoration as possible, on a limited
budget, working nights and weekends in
his garage with his own hands – and wins?
Not enough can be said in honor of his
labor. If only an award can be given to the
owner whose car is accepted by pennies
pinched, knuckles scuffed and dirt under
his fingernails.
A car may be great or humble. It may
be preserved, restored, or abandoned and
left to return to dust. The aspirations of
humans are even more fleeting, impossible
to preserve except in memory, in photo-
graphs, in video, in print. For some of the
owners of the cars on display this year,
placing them on the fairway was the
achievement of a half a lifetime or more, of
owning, preserving, and restoring automo-
biles, the fulfillment of a lifetime dream.
There is no suspense in telling contempo-
raries about something that recently hap-
pened, but maybe someday, twenty years
from now, someone will hand this issue of
The Shelby American
Annual to his son, or
his nephew, or his grandson, and say, “
Here
kid – I was there. Read about it
.”
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Winter 2016 47
2015 Pebble Beach Concours
Class S: Shelby GT350 50th Anniversary Results
S-01 JohnAtzback,Redmond,WA
1965GT350CompetitionPrototype
5R002 1st
S-02 MarkHovander,Seattle,WA
1965GT350StreetPrototype
5S0032nd
S-03 DaleSpahr,York,PA
1965GT350ProductionPrototype
5010
S-04 BrentGalloway,Chesnee,SC
1965GT3505S246
S-05 BobbyRahal,Chicago,IL
1965GT3505S558 3rd
S-06 LenandLindaPerham,CarmelValley,CA
1966GT350Prototype
6S001
S-07 Michael&BarbaraMalamut,ThousandOaks,CA1966GT350Hertz
6S698
S-08 Neal&VickyHasheider,SantaClara,CA
1966GT3506S1749