The Shelby American (Fall 2021)

t all started when a friend told me I should go to the Cars and Coffee at Hunt Valley Mall in Cock- eysville, Maryland eight years ago. They meet every Saturday morning between 8:00 and 10:00 a.m. all year long. On a good-weather Saturday morning they will host 500 to 600 cars and for a special event it can be as many as 3,000 cars. We go most every week. The mall is like a hub. It is con- nected to major roads and Interstate Rt. 83 and to a lot of scenic country roads. The drive from home is a half- hour. We usually have a variety of car enthusiasts meet at our house to make the drive with us. During the short days of winter we leave before day break. There are several places along the road that you can capture an ex- plosive sunrise that is breath-taking. We left our driveway one Saturday and picked up a County Sheriff in the mix. For the trip home I often take dif- ferent routes and this triggered me into organizing my Road Rallys to Lunch. I lay out a two-hour tour with a dif- ferent route each time with regroups, rest room stops at large service cen- ters and reservations at a family restaurant for lunch. These rallys are in Maryland and Southern Pennsylva- nia. I have a call list of over forty car enthusiasts from all walks of life. A lot of these people have collections of four or five cars and this gives us a large pool of cars available. It usually con- sists of a dozen classic Mustangs, Galaxies, a Starliner, Falcon, a handful of original Shelbys, Boss 302s, 351s and a 429, all generations Shelby Hertz Mustangs, Cobra Mustangs, Fox Body 5.0 cars, Panteras, Ford GTs, early T-Birds, an AMX, GTO, street rods, Corvettes, Camaros, Chevelles, Porsches, Hemi Road Runners and a whole lot of Modern Mustangs. It’s al- ways a surprise and a treat to see who is driving what. Since we had a very mild winter, our first rally was at the end of Janu- ary. We left Hunt Valley after Cars & Coffee with eighteen cars and headed up through Greenspring Valley and past the Vanderbilt Race Horse farms. We went through the Patapso Valley State Park across one of Liberty Dam’s The SHELBY AMERICAN Fall 2021 83 – Jim Walsh I