The magazine of the Shelby American Automobile ClubSPRING 2019

Copyright © 2019 Shelby American Automobile Club. All rights reserved. Nopart of this publication may be reproduced or translated without prior express written permission from the
Shelby American Automobile Club.
saac@saac.com

If driving a ‘66
GT350 Hertz car up the Alcan Highway
from Seattle to Fairbanks on the Alcan
5000 Rally isn’t the antidote for concours obsession, we don’t know what is.
As our society becomes increasingly homogenous, strictly regimented and politically correct there are fewer andfewer opportunities to engage in contrary activities. Alaska is one of the last
frontiers in this country and it is a place
everyone should experience. Most get
there by flying or on cruise ships. But
imagine driving. Now, imagine drivinga GT350 Hertz car. The mind boggles.
SAAC member Karl Eisleben and Joan
McCabe grabbed the bull by the horns
and made the trip. They came back withenough memories to last a lifetime. One
look at their car and you’ll never look at
a concours car the same again.

. 13 pages. The Super Snake sells for $2.2M at auction.
That’s news! Is your car next? CSX3170 is crowned Autocrosser of the Year.
Does Road & Track have one foot in the grave? You may want to hold off on
renewing your subscription. Don Yenko: Chevy’s version of Carroll Shelby?
Not quite. If you’ve always wanted a Mangusta but never find a project car,we may have found one for you. A 427 Superformance Cobra joins the 200
MPH Club. Yeah, its a replica but it’s the shape that counts.
. 11 pages. It’s getting so you can expect certain
things in each issue: the three master eagle eyes are still trading blows inthis ongoing slapfest, our lady eagle eyes are continuing to make contributions, and we keep seeing auction companies using Cobras, Shelbys andGT40 to entice us to follow their trail. And then there are the usual (actually
unusual) sightings from SAAC members just attempting to live their lives
when they are confronted by Shelby trivia.

6 pages. If John Wayne was still alive and he was looking to make a point, the Duke would be driving a GT350 on the Alcan 5000.
And he would fit right in. Karl Eisleben and Joan McCabe made the trip andlived to tell about it. They share some of their experiences in this article thatjust may make you want to look into the Alcan 5000 and do a little thinking
as you’re driving to work on a clogged road amidst hundreds of fellow commuters. Maybe it’s time to break free and head out on a really open road.
7 pages. When most people think about Cobra racecars they envision road racers, driven by Ken Miles, Dan Gurney and Phil
Hill. But there were other racing Cobras. They competed on quarter-miledrag strips and the factory car was built and maintained not by a huge teamof mechanics, fabricators and engineers but by a small group of Shelby employees from the production shop. Brooks Laudin talks to a couple of theprincipals and uncovers the full story.

The SHELBY AMERICAN

Spring 2019 1

ike so many things, it all started
so casually, over a glass of wine.
The conversation drifted to, “Weshould go on an endurance
rally...with vintage cars.”
Jeff Wacker of Litchfield, Connecticut said he had always thought itwould be very cool to go endurance rallying in a vintage car. It sounded really cool to me! How hard could thisbe, right? There is a very special rally
called the Alcan 5000 that runs from
Seattle to Fairbanks, and goes throughsome of the most beautiful scenery on
the planet. The goal thus set, it wastime to make things happen.
Jeff struck first when he sent me
pictures of a 1964 Mercury Comet
Caliente “K” code rally car. It was upgraded to a rally car in 2000 and has
participated in rallys all over theworld, including London to Athens,
Targa Newfoundland, New Zealand,
and the Pan American Rally. The

LThe SHELBY AMERICAN

Caliente had all the needed prep work
done, but it had been used and abusedso it needed freshening and updating.
He strikes, and the deal is made.
I decide the best rally car would bean old race car. That way I would startwith all the chassis upgrades, the rollcage, etc., and would just need to makeit street legal. And maybe add back in
an interior. How hard could it be,right? So, I looked at a lot of cars, andnothing was right: not set up correctly,
twisted up, cobbled together, etc.
Then I found the ad for SFM6S819. I

called Howard Pardee and he confirmed the car and its colorful history.
Most normal 1966 Shelbys have ahistory such as, “was owned by so andso, then sold, and sold again, and now
restored as a show car.” Not 819. It
took up a half page in the SAAC Registry. The car started life being
shipped to Hertz and was a rental car
for the calendar year of 1966 in New
York. After faithful rental car duties
with warranty work on the transmission twice, it was sent to Francis for
Fords for disposal. Then the fun began.

6S819 was not your average Hertz car. It
was prepared for vintage racing at one
point and then it was fitted with a blown
small block Chevy engine and became awheel-standing drag car.

Spring 2019 27

The first private owner purchased 819
for a Hill Climb car. He stripped out
the interior, race prepared it, and forthe next six years used it in hill climbs
all over the East Coast. When the opportunity to purchase a 289 Cobra presented itself, he sold the car and 819
passed on to two short term owners.
In 1975, 819 was sold for the fourth
time to an owner not interested in hill
climbs but in drag racing. Soon 819 is
set up with a Chevy engine, a blower
and two four-barrel carbs. It was now
a full-on drag car.
In 1979, he brings 819 to SAAC-4
in Downingtown, Pennsylvania where
he performs several epic burn outs.
Like a kid in a candy store with a buckin his pocket, Ken Young cannot resist.
He purchases the car and quickly discovers that “819 is scary fast pullingthe front wheels off the ground in firstand second gear.” Young sells the carin 1981, saying, “I had to let it go or it
was going to kill me.”An Ohio road racer purchased
6S819, removed all the drag stuff andinstalled a race-prepared 351 and set
the car up for road racing. The car goes
through several owners in Wisconsin
and is road raced from 1981 through2015, running at Road America,
Watkins Glenn, Lime Rock, Sebring,and other tracks. 6S819 showed up
racing at SAAC-31 at VIR, with its
last race being at SAAC-40 at Pocono.
On New Year’s Day of 2017 I got wordof an ‘66 Shelby GT 350H race car sitting in a metal building in central

Florida. There is only one thing 6S819
had never been: a rally car.
I thought about and decided thata rally car must be four things:•1. Must be safe
•2. Must be durable•3. Must be dependable•4. Must be awesome looking
6S819 could be all those. It had been arace car for a long time. It had a very
robust roll cage, a racing suspension
and was a slide-through-the-window
car with no interior, a plastic windshield, no side windows, open exhaust:bottom line, a full-on track car.
What is needed for a rally car andrace car are two different things.
Races are usually 15-45 minutes. Endurance rallys can be 10+ hours every
day for 10 or more days at a time andare thousands of miles long. Races require only a few gallons of fuel. Rally’s

require major league range. Rally carsmust be street legal. Racers no. It
takes two people to go endurance rallying: driver and navigator. And you
must be able to hear your navigator.
The list goes on. Lots of changes wererequired to convert a race car into arally car.
Pete Geisler and the team at Orlando Mustang and Shelby stepped up
and converted 6S819 into a very robust rally car. They started with theroll cage modifications which included
adding side protection. Now you can
open the doors and get in – no moreslide through the windows. Also included were side windows, two very
COMFORTABLE Sparco race seats,complete interior, a 34-gallon fuel cell,
mufflers, a TKO 600 five-speed transmission, a skid plate, and a heater!
After all, we were going to Alaska on

The first gas stop in Alaska was in a town called Chicken.

Racing isn’t the only way to compete with a car. One of the most popular forms of competition is rallying. There
are several forms and, no doubt, you are envisioning the clips you see on You Tube showing fully-prepared pro rallycars flying down dirt roads and spectacularly getting air when they crest a hump in the road. There are tight hairpin
turns with spectators lining the sides of the road, many of whom appear to have a death wish because they havechosen the most dangerous spots possible to watch from. If this is your image of rallying, change the channel.
A standard TSD (time - speed - distance) rally, sometimes called a “regularity rally,” is essentially precisiondriving over a pre-determined route, usually but not always on public roads, below posted speed limits. The basic
formula is time = distance/speed. A team consists of a driver and navigator and they are given a route map withvery specific directions and instructions to maintain a certain speed over a specific distance. Speeds and distances
can change at checkpoints where each team’s arrival time is recorded. The difference between a team’s actual timeand correct time determines their penalty. Penalty points are assessed for being too early or too late.
To participate in a rally, a car does not need special equipment. The basic requirement is an accurate stopwatch,odometer and speedometer. As with anything, there are numerous types of special equipment made specifically for
rallying – computers and calibrated odometers, as well as specialized apps for smartphones, but they are notessential for TSD rallys. As far as vehicle choice goes, one type is probably as good as another, and that’s what makes
rallying so enjoyable. You can use the car you have, not something like a race car that is built for a single purpose.

The SHELBY AMERICAN

Spring 2019 28

the ALCAN 5000!! Everything needed
to be safe, dependable, and durable.
Then came adding everything needed
to make it street legal. And last of all,it had to look fantastic in the process –but not so much that it took away its
history. It was important to maintainthe car’s race car past. The car was
also expected to receive assorted nicks
and bruises from the Alaska logging
roads, gravel highways along the way,
so doing a concours-quality restoration
would be a waste of time and money.
Then came the additional spares
we would need to carry: a fuel pump,alternator, distributor cap, spark
plugs, wires, oil, water, etc. Add all thenecessary tools to fix anything thatbroke or needed to be repaired if you
were 200 miles from the nearest
garage – as it is in the middle of the
Yukon Territory. Think “self-sufficient.” We added radios: VHF, CB, anda satellite tracking InReach (as required by the Alcan organizers so if we
needed help, or did not show up atnight, we could be found). And a minimum amount of luggage for two people, and 34 gallons of gas.
Once the car was completed, dynotested and we were set up and ready,we test drove the car for 1400 miles
just to make sure everything was
working and to make any adjustmentsthat might be needed. Finally, the day

arrived to ship it to Seattle.
Jerry Hines and his team havebeen running the Alcan 5000 for
thirty-four years. They know what
they are doing and it shows. They put
on a fantastic event. The 2018 Summer Alcan had approximately forty
teams in cars, and almost that many
motorcycles participating. By the time
the starting flag dropped, five cars had
already dropped out due to various
mechanical failures or failed to gettheir cars completed. The routine wasbasically the same each day: start witha TSD rally segment lasting about anhour; then cover several hundred
miles to the next TSD section, andthen several hundred more miles tothat night’s hotel. It was awesome.
As we headed north from Seattle
into British Columbia, our first obstacles were the forest fires. We had fires
on both sides of the route and had todrive with surgical masks on. Thatnight at our first hotel, we washed theash out of the air filter, changed out ahead light, and made sure we wereready if we needed to evacuate thetown in the middle of the night.
The scenery just kept on getting
more breathtaking as we worked ourway north through British Columbia
to the Yukon Territory. And the roads
keep getting “more challenging” (aAlaska is the land of photo ops. It’s like the Southwest used tobe sixty-five years ago. Imagine after a long day on the road, seeing this four-engined DC-6 coming in low, barely clearing the filling station. Oh, wait – it’s just part of the service station’s theme.
No charge for the wake-up call!

The SHELBY AMERICAN

code name for worse). Our TSD sections were sometimes dirt or rock logging roads. I learned that the term“highway” was used very loosely.
After crossing into the Yukon, we
stayed in Whitehorse, the capital of
the Yukon Territory, a great town andwelcome respite from the rough andtumble roads we had been travelingon. Then at 8:25 a.m. the next morning
it was off to Dawson City.
Dawson City is a gold mining townwith mud streets and board sidewalks.
It is the location of Discovery Channels “Gold Rush.” This is also the location of the ferry that has to get us all
to the other side of the Yukon River.
Another piece of the adventure.
Now we are literally on the “Top of
the World Highway” and 165 miles
from the Arctic Circle. The “Top of theWorld Highway” is a lane-and-a-halfwide mud and gravel road that is littered with water-filled pot holes. It isonly open to traffic when the snow has
melted off, about twelve weeks out of
the year. Everyone is on their own
here – no services and you’ll see very
few people along the way. There weresemi-paved sections, with “frost
heaves” that buckle the pavement. So,
we went from doing everything possible to miss the water-filled craters andsliding in the mud, to driving on a
paved snake of a road, banging the ex-

This stop in Watson Lake, British Columbia had a fence festooned with 72,000 signs and license plates from all over. It issomething to see, but think about this: how many people travelwith a large sign from their city or town that they can leave asa souvenir? It’s more like you see this the first time and bringsomething with you to leave on a subsequent second trip.

Spring 2019 29

Fires in the wilderness areas are difficult
to put out and most of the time they are allowed to burn out by themselves unlessstructures are involved. The smoke was so
bad that face masks were necessary.

haust pipes on the surface and seemed
like it was jarring every nut and boltloose in the car.
By now we have deduced a pattern
to the “frost heaves.” At the first frost
heave, the rear tires rub the outerfenders, filling the interior with thesmell of heated rubber. The second
frost heave bottoms the suspension
and we slam the pipes into the pavement. Then it was lather-rinse-repeat.
It wasn’t until we had burned off halfa tank of gas that we began to get overthese heaves without drama.
Jeff, in the Comet, was doing better with its extra ride height. But thendisaster happened: the rear brake line
separated from the junction block on
the axle and he lost his rear brakes.
We pulled the broken parts off and hedrove 245 miles on front brakes only,
down shifting at times on the 10%
grades. Exciting, but no real problem.
The temperature dropped to 37°
and sleet started hitting the windshield. We crossed into Alaska andstopped in Chicken for gas. Then we

The SHELBY AMERICAN

pushed on to Valdez. This is a worldclass road with glaciers, lakes, hugewaterfalls and amazing vistas, sometimes through deep valleys loadedwith wildlife. Truly magnificent. The
Valdez NAPA store had all the partsneeded to fix the Comet and a kindsoul nearby even opened his shop so
Jeff could put the car up on his lift to
fix it. This is the kind of thing thatmakes Alaska so special. There is asense of community that embraces visitors as well as residents. Would thishappeninConnecticut?
Forgetaboutit….
The Hertz car draws a crowd evencovered in mud. Every time we stop forgas, travelers and locals are allamazed it is being used and abused,
and then the comment, “You are doing
5000 miles in a GT 350H?? Up here?
You must be crazy, but that’s awesome!!”On up through Alaska past Denali, the North Pole, (yes there is a
North Pole, Alaska) and on to Fairbanks. The final Finishers Party is at

the Fountainhead Auto Museum – aworld class collection of brass and prewar autos you wouldn’t expect to findup here. It was a great place to handout trophies to winners (not us) andcelebrate the fact that we just completed the Alcan 5000. We felt likewinners, merely having completed thisamazing adventure. Our fellow competitors were awesome and it didn’t
matter
if
they
were
on
a
KTM/BMW/Suzuki adventurer motorcycle, vintage car, or monster Jeep.
Everyone shared a love of the adventure and the beauty of the scenery on
the Alcan 5000.
Like the Olympics, Jerry and his
team hold the summer Alcan 5000
every four years. Also like theOlympics, there is a winter Alcan 5000
coming up in 2020. The thought occurs
to me that maybe we should take theGT350H...but I shake that off quickly.
Clearly the GT 350H is not the rightmachine for a Winter Alcan. But if I
could talk Joan into that Shelby Raptor…

Spring 2019 30

Here are a few facts:
We traveled on the•Top of the World Highway•Dalton Highway•Denali Highway•Dempster Highway•Klondike Highway•Parks Highway•Richardson Highway•Logging roads with no name
•Dirt and mud roads that weren’teven on a map

The temperature ranged between 92°
in Seattle, to 37° and sleet at the border crossing at Poker Creek from the
Yukon Territory into Alaska

The question that everyone asks
is, “Did the GT350H break anything?”
Yep. But never anything fatal. It neverleft us on the side of the road and wasalways ready to go by morning. Someof the broken parts were not discovered till we shipped it back.
What broke:
Farthest distance between gas sta- •Replaced an over-active fuel pumptions was approximately 185 miles.
•Adjusted the clutch three times•Broke left side motor mountPlaces along the way:
•Bent and twisted exhaust pipes•Kirkland, WA(from HUGE rock)•Whitehorse, YT•CB Radio quit
•Valdez, AK•Very large dent in the fuel cell
•Chicken, AK(the same rock that bent the•Delta Junction, AK
exhaust)•Dawson City, YT•Replaced one headlight•Fairbanks, AK•Used 3 quarts of oil•Anchorage, AK•Repaired both tail lights•Copper River, AK•Replaced rear springs (the car was•Tok, AK2-inches lower at the end of the•Quesnel, BC
Alcan than the beginning)•Watson Lake, YT•Timing gear on distributor severely•Blackwater, BC
worn•Cassiar, BC•Rear tires worn due to “rubs” on the•Teslin, YT
outside edge
•Telegraph Creek, BC•Assorted rock chips•Canol, YT•Tighten or re-torque almost every•Other towns too small to namenut and bolt

The SHELBY AMERICAN•Gas consumed… LOTS. 91 octane
when we could get it or 87 most of thetime as it was the only choice.
•Entry Fee: $3,000 for one car andtwo passengers.
We shipped 6S819 back to Florida
and did NOT wash it. It was shown at
the Hilton Head Concourse and received the Ford Award presented by
Moray Callum, VP of Design for Ford
Motor Company as his favorite pick of
the show.
What is next for 6S819? Finish therepairs, clean it up, and get it ready to
be shipped to Europe for the HERO
London to Lisbon Endurance Rally!
You never know. Peking to Paris in
2028? The Alcan 5000 was not the end,
but the beginning of a new rally careerfor 6S819.

•www.Alcan5000.com•https://www.facebook.com/NittoTire/videos/vb.127494713927669/
1029679050556165/?type=2&theater•http://www.alcan5000.com/pdf/Dri
vingLineFall2018.pdf•https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnySjjcaDZI•https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6PJW-owHQw

Spring 2019 31

Yes, Virginia, there is a North Pole.

TSD Rally stage completed. The rally makes it more than just avacation drive. It gives you a purpose and allows you to churnsome of those competitive juices.

The SHELBY AMERICAN

Spring 2019 32

Who were those guys behind Shelby American’s drag race Cobra project?
The Cobra Experience’s Brooks Laudin catches up with them, and we tag along.
he Fates brought these two guys
together in 1963 at Shelby
American where they managed
to pull off an unusual transition; theywent racing from the production sideof SAI. The racing was in 1320-foot increments and in a straight line, but it
was racing nonetheless. About twelve
seconds at a time.

chanic for eventual Hall of Fame
Midget racer “Bullet” Joe Garson. This
was the cageless racing era formidgets, when men were men andwhere the driver’s heads and shoulders were exposed above the open
wheeled body work. Jere grew up at
the tracks in Southern California, predominantly Gardena, Ascot and
Gilmore, and grew to love “the dirt.”
Tony Stoer’s family came west
By junior high he was racing hisfrom New York in 1938 and he wasown midget and had developed theborn in Petaluma, California in 1941.
view that “asphalt was for getting to
His father, a clinical psychologist, wasthe race track.” He won his last midget
pressed into running the Petaluma
race in 1958. In high school Jere took
Poultry Producers Co-Op during
every shop elective he could and
WWII, which provided and allocatedworked summers for a local machineprocessed poultry for the troops. Tonyshop, Kellogg Engineering. After graddidn’t grow up in a car-oriented familyuation in the fall of 1962 he went full
but found his street racing muse withtime at Kellogg’s as an apprentice machinist, which meant a not very exciting existence de-burring holes anddoing simple machine set ups.
The owner’s son, Jim Kellogg,
shared Jere’s interest in working on
cars and one day came by with a magazine article about a company over in
Venice that was building sports cars.
Jere was skeptical; sports cars weren’t
exactly his thing, but off they went one
lunch time in the fall of 1962 and wandered into Shelby American Inc. His
skepticism evaporated as soon as hesaw a full boogie race shop. Jere can’t
remember who talked with them but
the word was that the race season wasover and they didn’t need any help on
the racing side, but try across thestreet. “Maybe they need someone.”
Over to Carter Street Jere went,
Jere Kirkpatrick [left] and Tony Stoer today, fifty-five years after their Cobra Dragonand knew his short-lived career at
snake days. People change but cars don’t.

The SHELBY AMERICAN

a few buddies in high school. He says
his ’34 five-window coupe wasn’t fast
but he did pretty well with it. There
were just a few mods to the engine but
the real trick was the 3:54 rear end,
which allowed him to wind by the competition in second gear while they
were searching for third. He and his
buddies learned how to modify a car at
the school of hard knocks, laying on
their backs in the dirt, wrenching on
the latest modification or the lastthing that broke.
Jere Kirkpatrick’s family camewest from Gadsden, Alabama in theearly ‘40s and landed in Culver City;
California. Jere was born in 1944 at
Santa Monica Hospital. Dad worked
for Bill Murphy Buick in Culver Cityand spent his spare time as a me-

Spring 2019 33