Alive Again
Racecarstuff.com has been dormant for quite a while. Forgive me for that, but I hope to make up for it in the future. I have some good ideas for interesting articles that will come along shortly. But for now I am simply going to catch everyone up with what has been happening since sometime in the spring.
Personally I have been very busy with life other than racing. Sometimes the real world complicates our ability to be totally immersed in racing. It is a sad thing, but it does happen. So lets recap what has happened in my personal world (since this is my blog) since March or so.
I have run a number of autocrosses. Some have been in the RX7 and some have been in the family Shelby. Throughout the year most have been rather uneventful autocrosses, but the last one near the end of August was very worth mentioning. As you may remember I have been running the Shelby with 5 year old Kumho V710 tires that by the standards for E Street Prepared (ESP) are way too small for the car. We have been happy with the results, but we know we are slower than we should be in the class. I have a certain love for running in C Prepared (CP), which is a class that is mostly populated by gutted out, trailered race cars. I have run cars that were good CP cars over the years, but I don’t have one in autocrossable trim these days. But the Shelby is legal in CP, even though it is a street car. My good friend, Marc Lisner made some Hoosier racing slicks available to me (HUGE Thanks Marc!!!!). I mounted them on some nice American 200S rims that we used to use on our old SCCA road racing Mustang. They barely fit the Shelby, even though there is a little tire rubbing. The car looks awesome on the new (old) tire and wheel combination.
Shortly before the August autocross, I got an email from our old friend Lee Mathias. Lee has gotten a new 2007 Shelby GT. Lee has been more excited about the new Shelby GT than he has been with any new car he has ever owned. You may remember mentions of Lee from some of my previous posts in that when my family started autocrossing, Lee was an autocross veteran in his ’65 Shelby GT-350, serial # SFM5S071. Any Shelby aficionados will notice that is one of the heavily sought after ‘65’s out of the first batch of 100 cars. These cars were sort of special and the most race car like street Shelbys built during the first run of cars. Lee is one of the drivers with very natural ability. Watching him autocross 5S071 was truly a religious experience to a Shelby lover like me.
Lee said that he and his son Matt, were going to come up to the Tidewater area from Georgia to visit some family and they would like to take in an autocross with the new Shelby. This would be a great chance to have the new and the old Shelbys at an event together. Plus we would get to catch up with a friend that we had not seen in years. Lee is the person who sold us our Shelby in 1974. He needed a new roof for his house and since he had 5S071 and was building a race car ’66 GT350 (SFM6S1774), the dark green ’68 GT350 had to go. Lee had owned some incredible Mustangs and Shelbys over the years. Recently he had been Shelby-less for a while, but when the 2007 Shelby GT was introduced, he found a great buy on one at Jackie Jones Ford in Georgia. He changed it to the CS66 rims (basically modern versions of the old ’66 Shelby ten spokes). Since he took delivery of the Shelby GT he has posted many great stores to the Shelby lists on the internet. He had said many times that this was the car he had waited 40 years to have.
So this was going to be a great opportunity to have our old ’68 GT350 at an autocross, and the car built 39 years later (would that be a grandchild to a person?). To make the long story short, the times of our two cars don’t represent anything about the performance of the two cars. We were on racing tires, and Lee was on pure street tires. I have also been autocrossing regularly, while Lee said his last autocross was about 20 years ago. In that time Lee spent much time road racing his vintage race cars, and he also has run a couple of open track type events in his Shelby GT. But there are many autocross specific skills that make someone a good autocrosser. Lee still has the natural driving ability, but those specific autocross skills are rusty.
But the important thing was Mom and I had a great opportunity to spend the day with several old friends that we don’t get to spend enough time with these days. One was with Lee and his son Matt. Another was the Shelby GT350 that has been a part of our lives for so many years. My daughter, Shelby, who has grown up to appreciate the cars that carry her name, also came out to the event. Finally it gave all of us the opportunity to say thanks in the proper way to an old Texan, named Carroll Shelby, that had a dream many years ago that made it all possible.
In the end we were faster with the old Shelby, but that is truly not a comparison of the two cars. Each was a proper icon of automotive performance of its time.
