The Shelby American (Fall 2021)

the best test driver I have ever worked with .” On the other hand, Mario An- dretti once quipped “ if Amon became an undertaker, people would stop dying .” Despite the bad luck, Amon won his share of non-F1 races includ- ing eight non-championship GPs, the 1000KM Monza (1967), the Daytona 24 Hours (1967), the Tasman series (1969) and most notably, counter to the run of bad luck, the 24 hours of Le- Mans in 1966. By the mid-70s he had already seen a number of his racing friends killed and after the 1976 Ger- man GP was stopped on the second lap for Niki Lauda’s horrific crash, Chris Amon refused to re-start the race and was fired from the Ensign Racing team. He retired to New Zealand; widely considered one of the best driv- ers to never win an F1 championship race. Chris Amon died in 2016 from cancer. He was 73. P/1015 MK II: Ken Miles and Denny Hulme drivers. The car was completed at SAI for the 1966 Daytona 24 Hours where Miles and Lloyd Ruby brought the car home 1st OA, on Gurney’s last lap bad luck. Ruby would have been Miles’ co-driver again at LeMans in June 1966 but for injuries sustained in a crash of his own private plane a cou- ple of weeks earlier. The scramble was on to find a replacement and yet an- other New Zealander, the versatile Denny Hulme who had been con- tracted to Holman-Moody (with Fred Lorenzen) for the race in a J-car that was subsequently pulled before the event, was jumped over to the SAI car. After gridding the car 2nd (3:31.7), Miles survived a minor shunt at the start and then pitted on lap one with a door that wouldn’t close properly (video shows a hammer being the tool of choice for the fix). Miles went on to set a lap record (3:31.1) as he set off from near-last place for his date with a controversial finish 24-hours later. (November 1, 1918 – August 17, 1966) Miles was born outside of Birming- ham, England and kept his distinctive “Brummie” accent throughout his life. His first attempt to get to America failed, so in 1933 he left school at 15, met his future wife Mollie and bought a used Austin 7 Special which she painted British Racing Green. He went to work as an apprentice at Wolseley Motors which sent him to trade school where he was immersed in vehicle construction. In his spare time he raced motorcycles, something he started at age 11 in 1929 which re- sulted in his crooked nose. The war came early to England and in 1939 then 21-year-old Ken Miles joined the British Territorial Army and was posted to an anti-aircraft gun on the home front. But his mechanical apti- tude could not be denied, and he was ultimately assigned as a tank me- chanic in a unit that took part in the D-Day landings in Normandy. After mustering out in 1945, Miles joined Morris Motors as an engineer and took up motor racing on the week- ends. He first appears in the race record at Silverstone in April 1949 for its inaugural Vintage Sports Car Club trials where he finished 2nd in the over 3-liter class in his homebuilt, Mercury powered, Frazer-Nash. By 1950 Miles, Mollie and their new-born son Peter had decamped to Los Ange- les where Ken went to work for Gough Industries, the MG importer of note, as Service Manager. Miles couldn’t help himself and was soon racing a stock MG-TD while building what would become his hall- mark, an MG Special. In just his fifth race in the states, and the first in his new, tube-framed MG Special, he lapped all but three cars on his way to winning the under 1500cc class at the 1953 Pebble Beach Road Race. He won 14-straight races in 1953 in that car. A couple of years later he designed and built “The Flying Shingle,” a low pro- file MG based special with which he dominated the SCCA F modified class. Miles picked up his first paid ride with MG in 1955 at the 24 Hours of LeMans where he and Jonnie Lockett brought their car home 12th OA and 5th in the 1500cc class. The next few years found him racing a Porsche 550 for John von Neumann, mostly in Cal- ifornia with consistently impressive results. In 1959 he moved up to a Porsche RSK in the 2000cc class and continued to perform well, including an 8th OA, 3rd in class at Sebring. More importantly, Miles was racing with some of the best sports car driv- ers of the day. All that success, and some trouble with the Internal Rev- enue Service, led to big leap to Shelby American in January 1963. Almost immediately his skill as a driver and mechanical engineer earned him the title of Chief Develop- ment Driver at Shelby American and in that role he participated in every major advance in racing cars produced at Shelby American from 1963 to 1966, including but not limited to, the development and advance of the 289 Cobra through SCCA, USRRC and The SHELBY AMERICAN Fall 2021 66 P1015. Ken Miles