The Shelby American (Fall 2021)

The SHELBY AMERICAN wouldn’t make a mistake like that again and might even have be- come a better writer because if it. The level of both inquisitiveness and intelligence of today’s crop of what pass for automotive writers has deteriorated to the point where this kind of codswallop is presented without the slightest sense of embarrassment at all. Trust us – it wasn’t always this way. Standards were, at one time, much higher. JURASSIC PARK: Vintage Rac- ing Today. You no doubt remem- ber the plot line from the original 1993 Steven Spielberg movie “Jurassic Park”: replica dinosaurs for an amusement park are cre- ated from original DNA (extracted from blood cells in prehistoric mos- quitos which were trapped in amber and preserved over millions of years). The DNA code was de- duced by scientists who used DNA from other current species (like frogs and lizards) to complete it. Author Michael Crichton’s sci-fi fantasy had enough believability for those not schooled in biology or paleontology to accept it. The story line worked – why let a little skep- ticism ruin a good movie? Consider today’s vintage racing as the amusement park to show- case extinct sports cars. With orig- inal race cars now exceedingly rare and outrageously valuable, few owners choose to put their cars at risk in wheel-to-wheel com- petition. Race organizers, once very strict about accepting only cars with verifiable racing history into their fields, realized that as fewer and fewer real cars showed up, the number of spectators would diminish proportionally. They needed full fields to attract paying spectators; to give them a show. So they began allowing replicas to compete – cars that looked like the originals but with no actual race history. Fall 2021 8 Lewis Hamilton Goes Green It almost sounds like something you’d read on the Babylon Bee. Seven- time Formula 1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton recently decided to downsize his carbon footprint so he sold his expensive collection of exotic cars. The 35 year-old is concerned with the amount of damage gasoline en- gines cause to the environment. He also turned vegan, and specified that the Mercedes Racing Team would have to transport him to and from races in electric vehicles. He has also sold his personal $25M Bombardier Challenger 605 jet which seated ten. Sir Lewis is one of only four British F1 drivers to be knighted. The other three are Sir Jack Brabham, Sir Stir- ling Moss, and Sir Jackie Stewart. His collection of exotic hi-perfor- mance cars included two 427 Cobras (CSX3282 and CSX3244), a recreation ‘67 GT500, a McLaren R1, a Ferrari 599 SA Aperta, a LaFerrari and a Pa- gani Zonda, among others. After pur- chasing CSX3244, he then claimed was too nice to drive so he turned it over to Mike McCluskey for spiffing- up and bought a second 427 he wasn’t afraid to use. Hamilton has apparently been brainwashed by environmentalists be- cause he has yet to explain how flying from race to race doesn’t result in a huge carbon footprint. Put that on hold for a minute – let’s have another helping of tofu and kale.