The Shelby American (Fall 2021)

steel wheels with hub caps, AM radio, torque sensitive rear axle and special sound package. It was also listed as having a 428 Cobra Jet engine with fuel injection. The original engine was a 428 cubic-inch Police Interceptor but when the 428 Cobra Jet engine be- came available at mid-year one was installed in this car. The fuel injection unit and all relating hardware was re- moved from the car and a standard carburetor and intake manifold was installed on the Cobra Jet engine be- fore the car was sold as a used car. It went to Courtesy Ford in Littleton, Colorado. Littleton advertised the car for $3,486 – a discount of $2,000 – and it was sold at the end of April, 1969 to an unknown buyer. Two owners later and within the year, it was still in Col- orado, owned by G.W. Aschenbrunner. He kept it until 1976, when it was pur- chased by Jan Dansdill. It was painted black by then and sold, again, in 1980 to Gail Rhoten in Iowa. Rhoten in- stalled a 427 tunnelport engine. In 1990 Rhoten sold it to the first of five owners (one in Texas, three in Alabama and one in New Jersey) who each kept if for a year or less. It finally came to rest in 2001 in the hands of Jose Armario in Chicago, Illinois. Be- fore purchase by Amario it was adver- tised on eBay and went unsold. Just about any 1968 Shelby that is adver- tised on the Internet attracts the at- tention of Pete Disher. His website, theCoralsnake.com is a repository of detailed 1968 Shelby information which includes deep dives into special paint, engineering prototypes and Conelec fuel injection. [ Spoiler alert: we relied heavily on it while research- ing this article. ] Disher identified the serial number of this car as one of the 1968 factory engineering cars and one that received a Conelec fuel injection set-up. He shared this information with SAAC member Phil Murphy, also someone with a heightened interest in unique ‘68 Shelbys. Murphy checked the car out and agreed that it was a factory engineering car. It was subsequently purchased by Jose Armario and Disher contacted him with the news. This new information changed Ar- mario’s perspective on the car. It was not obvious that it was special and re- quired special treatment. Disher was an expert in 1968 Shelby restoration. He served as a con- cours judge and, as one of the few ex- perts on the Conelec fuel injection system (perhaps the only one) Armario realized Disher the perfect individual to handle the car’s restoration to its original configuration, which would in- clude an operational Conelec fuel in- jection system. When the car was brought to Disher’s shop, it was basically a nice driver car. But it was far from perfect. It was decided to disassemble the car completely and bring it through a total, nut-and-bolt restoration. This was completed in January of 2020, with everything except the fuel injec- tion. Disher had been researching a GT500 convertible, #00056, which had also been a factory engineering car. It could not be determined if it was a fuel injection car but it led to Disher’s con- tinued research into the EFI cars. Disher, ably assisted by Murphy, tried to track down engineers involved with the fuel injection project but did not have much luck. There were nu- merous dead ends because Shelby En- gineering subcontracted work to Conelec, and the company went bank- rupt shortly after Shelby disbanded The SHELBY AMERICAN Fall 2021 30 Conelec’s inventor, David Long at SAAC- 37 at Watkins Glen in 2012. He was 84 when he passed away in 2014. #101 on display at Barrett-Jackson in Scottsdale, Arizona in March, 2021. It was one of the headliner cars.