The Shelby American (Summer 2022)

Shelby American put it, he really knew how to surround himself with a talented group of people. The guys in the shop, the one thing they had in common, is that they were hot rodders first. SAAC: Outside of the Cobras, AC never made too many of any particular car. SERB: They made, what, 650 or so Aces and 350 Acecas. But that was it. SAAC: There were almost a thousand Cobras, and it didn’t last a long time. 1962 through 1967: five years. SERB: Only sixty months; the whole thing was up and running and then gone. After Ford screwed up at Le- Mans in 1965, The Deuce and every- body at Ford put pressure on Shelby. So, they stopped working on every- thing else except the MK II GT40s. All of the development work on the 427 Cobra stopped. It was never finished at Shelby’s, whereas the 289 was re- ally well developed. But the 427 was a mess. The cooling system never was adequate, a few very important sus- pension parts never did get fixed, and the constant changes from both Ford and AC made reliability almost impos- sible. Everything was adjustable – that was the good news. The bad news was that everything was adjustable. To get it set up, you’ve got to really pay attention to it. If it’s not set up right it’s a very, very dangerous car. Espe- cially on bias tires. It’s taken us years to make the 427 Cobra bulletproof. SAAC: When did you become involved with the museum? SERB: We started the museum in 2013 and opened in 2014. Over the years, when anyone would sell a car I’d call them and ask, what do you have left? They would have a hardtop or side curtains or a set of wheels, lit- erature, whatever. So I’d buy all that stuff and I had a pretty good collection under the house. I also bought out Royal Krieger when he packed it in and I had a few cars by then. And I thought it was be pretty cool to share this with the general public, and let everyone know what Shelby had done. We set the museum up as a 501 (c) (3) non-profit corporation. It’s a clever way to continue the Shelby American legacy after I’m gone. My daughter Emily is the one running the mu- seum – I just work there! It most likely will be her decision to keep The Cobra Experience alive and well, or donate it to another museum after you-know-what happens. I picked the name “Experience” because it says this is a place where the story is told. Not only about the cars; it’s about the people who created them. We’ve tried to make it a Disneyland for Cobra peo- ple. It’s the whole package – the cars, the art, the artifacts, the docents, and a 15,000-lumen, 100,000-watt, 40-seat theater – that tells the Shelby-Ford story. I’ve learned from the Cobra 1000 that it’s about the experience and the people, it’s not about the cars. Lynn Park and I have discussed this for decades, I think now that both of us are old dudes, we both agree it’s the people. The cars bring us together, but the wide open road and people make it a blast! By the time we started the museum we had been doing the Cobra 1000 tours for about twenty-five years. My wife, Janet, and I put them on. We just have the best time. We do it the second week of September; 1000 miles, rain or shine, no chase vehicle. You break, we fix it on the side of the road and continue on. Everybody took their The SHELBY AMERICAN Summer 2022 43