The Shelby American (Summer 2022)

by air, “ a full 1967-specification race 289 engine, bench-tested, strong, and delivering at least 390 horsepower, a new transmission and rear axle with a No-Spin differential with 3.25 ratio, a complete set of front end parts, steer- ing, suspension, brakes, etc. and new electrics – alternator, starter, etc. ” Dubois received no response but a week later everything was delivered, billed by Shelby to Ford in Dearborn and approved by Ray Geddes (with whom Dubois had developed a good working relationship). The car was rebuilt in Dubois’ shop, with the addition of a hand-made front spoiler to eliminate “ unbelievable front end lift on the Mulsanne Straight,” a special windshield wiper, a quick-jack front bracket, Marchal driving lights and NASCAR fire-sup- pression system among other modifi- cations. In the chaos of the LeMans start, Dubois recalled that the R-Model was struck by another car. He pitted after two laps and discovered that half of the front spoiler had been torn off. It affected the handling on LeMans’ long straight. After the first hour the car was 52nd; after the second hour it was 46th and by the seventh hour it had worked its way up to 41st when it went out with a cracked transmission tailshaft. When Dubois told Shelby about of the problem, his response was, “ Yeah, we knew about that f***ing problem. It happened all of the time on the early Cobras with that transmission, always on fast tracks like Reims, Spa or LeMans .” Dubois recalled that he wasn’t happy with Shelby’s answer. “ He could have warned us about that weakness before LeMans, not after .” Dubois raced 5R539 again that season at Zolder in Belgium. After that the car’s history seems to have gotten lost. After I bought my own Mustang in 1992 I stumbled across a story about 5R539. Initially I could not be- lieve it and it has troubled me over the past thirty years. I recently received rare photographs of the car taken by a famous German female motorsports photographer that helped to explain some of 5R539’s mysterious history. Ms. Jutta Fausel-Ward emigrated from Germany to California in 1989. During the heyday of Ford Perform- ance she worked for a well-known magazine in Germany called Auto, Motor und Sport . During that time, the mid-to-late ‘60s and early ‘70s, she attended many hillclimbs and airport races, but also went to Formula 1 and Formula 2 races as well as Indianapo- lis. Her racing photography from this The SHELBY AMERICAN Summer 2022 52 Dubois in 5R539 at Zandvoort, The Netherlands in 1967. National Sports Commission of Automobile Sport of Germany log book for 1969 shows 5R539 as a notchback in the Touring car class.