The Shelby American (Fall 2021)

The SHELBY AMERICAN Fall 2021 113 Mike attended most Shelby Alumni reunions while living in Southern California. He also man- aged to attend most SAAC conven- tions, which he enojoyed greatly. He especially liked meeting the owners of R-Models and discussing how the cars were built. When his health began to decline in 2018 he moved to Nebraska and lived with his daughter and son-in- law. He was still able to attend con- ventions despite his physical limitations. He was 88. ANTHONY MICHAEL “OSCAR” KOVELESLI December 28, 2020 Oscar entered his first sports car regional race in 1951 when he was 18 and he won it, thus providing the stimulant for a life of racing. He competed regularly in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s in SCCA events and at Sebring and Daytona. In 1958 he cashed in a $300 life insur- ance policy and started Auto World in a friend’s basement in Scranton, Pennsylvania. It was a mail order business specializing in model cars, airplanes, slot cars and accessories. It quickly grew to a Sears catalog- size wish book that offered hun- dreds of pages of model kits and virtually anything related to them and attracted a huge following of hob- byists, from first-time modelers to adult professionals. If you were a kid who built models or were a slot-racer, chances are you had an Auto World catalog. The business continued to grow and eventually Oscar opened a retail store. But the majority of busi- ness was mail order. He and his wife layed out the early catalogs on the kitchen table and an ironing board. He was a whirling dervish of a pro- moter, moving from one brain-storm to another faster than you could keep track, all the while operating Auto World and continuing to race. He was a frequent competitor at the Giants Despair Hillclimb in Northeast Penn- sylvania and held several absolute records there. In 1966 he co-drove with fellow Pennsylvanian Hal Keck in Keck’s 427 Cobra, CSX3008, at the SCCA Watkins Glen 500, They placed 1st overall and a photograph of Kove- leski in the Cobra became a staple of his bio. At the end of the 1965 season he received a call from Lew Spencer advising him of the availability of a pair of King Cobra Cooper Monacos and a Daytona Coupe. The Coopers were in various stages of disassem- bly. Koveleski purchased all three cars. He combined the Coopers into one car and installed a full-race Chevy engine and competed at Giant’s Despair. He recalled that he held onto the Coupe for about two weeks before selling it. He de- scribed that as one of his more as- tute financial decisions – unloading the car before it had a chance to fur- ther diminish in value. In the late ‘60s when Polish jokes ran rampant throughout the coun- try, he started the Polish Racing Drivers Association. It began as an