The Shelby American (Summer 2022)

The SHELBY AMERICAN Summer 2022 1 The SHELBY AMERICAN #130 The magazine of the Shelby American Automobile Club Copyright © 2022 Shelby American Au- tomobile Club. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be repro- duced or translated without prior ex- press written permission from the Shelby American Automobile Club. saac@saac.com SUMMER 2022 ON THE COVER. One of the hidden treasures in the 3 Dog Garage in Boyer- town, Pennsylvania is the one and only Kemp Cobra II. Built in 1976 to compete against the Chevy-powered Dekon Mon- zas in IMSA competition, Charlie Kemp’s tube-frame racer was powered by a Jack Roush 351 cubic-inch 635 horsepower en- gine. Kemp received no help from Ford. IMSA should have welcomed him for bringing a Ford to the Chevy party which would have helped sell tickets to a crowd that appreciated a good Ford-Chevy bat- tle. But for some reason they confronted him with as many obstacles as they could come up with. Despite this the 212 mph rocket grabbed the pole it it’s sixth race and had a best 2nd OA finish before Kemp packed it in 1980. He could battle the Dekons but not IMSA’s bureaucracy at the same time. Photo by Bill Andresen. THE MAIL SAAC. 18 pages. The first Toyota 2000 GT sells for $2.535,000 – the highest price ever paid for a Japanese car. We dig into the story and it’s one you probably won’t read anywhere else. When an R-Model sells it’s like the old Dean Whitter commercial, where everything comes to a stop and everyone listens up. Ford GT Heritage Editions are getting interesting. You can buy a carbon fiber bodied Cobra replica from Shelby American for a ‘mil- two. And once again, we’re attracted to some really low-quality click-bait. SHELBY AMERICANA. 9 pages. Even though Carroll Shelby has been gone for ten years he still casts a shadow on the cars he built. One of our Master Eagle Eyes, Randy Sands, spotted a picture of it in a Facebook ad. We keep looking over our shoulder for Rod Serling. Another of our Master Eagle Eyes, Ken Young, has been sending a steady string of Shelby-related cheesecake. We’re not opposed to that, mind you, but we are curious where he is finding them. He won’t tell, but apparently he has a limitless supply. 3 DOG GARAGE. 8 pages. Pardee and Kopec visited a unique car collection in Southeastern Pennsylvania that is a combination museum and history lesson come to life. Every car collection is guided by one man who deter- mines what is important to him, and makes no excuses for it. Ross Myers’ collection of 75 cars, all Fords, is a must-see on any Ford guy’s bucket list. It’s worth your time. You’ll spend a day that will fly by like an hour and you’ll wish you had a week to do the place justice. DREW SERB. 12 pages. We finally get around to interviewing one of the genuine Cobra Guys out there. He had been keeping a low profile, working on Cobras without a lot of publicity. Cobra owners knew him but no one else did. Then he started the Cobra Experience museum in Martinez, California (east of San Francisco) and lost some of his anonymity. We’re not trying to intentionally pierce his cloak of secrecy, but we think you’d like to know who he is, what he does, and how he got there.