The Sagging Book ShelfRead any good books lately? There has never been a shortage of books written about Cobras

and Shelbys. The popularity of the cars, reflected in both heightened interest and the continuing

escalation of values, has resulted in an ever expanding number of books written about these cars.

Rick Kopec has reviewed just about every book relating to Cobras, Shelbys, GT40s or racing in

that era. While most are no longer in print, amazon.com is usually pretty good at finding used

copies that are in pretty good shape. The books included here are in no particular order.

BOB BONDURANT Ame r i c a ’sUn c r o w ned Wo r ld Dr i v in gChamp io n by Phil Henny.Hardbound; 11 3/ 8˝ x 8 3/ 4˝; 189pages; 138 black & white photos, 74color photos. Published by EditionsCotty, Portland, OR.www.philhenny.com $75.00

Phil Henny has done it again. Theformer Shelby American race mechan-ic and fabricator turned author hasput together an excellent narrative ofthe life of Bob Bondurant, one of theCobra Team’s most notable drivers.Turning the pages of this book is likegoing through Bob’s personal scrap-book, and maybe that’s the way it wasenvisioned. There are a dozen pages ofintroductions, a foreword, an author’snote, two pages of acknowledgementsand some dedications before the bookeven begins, giving it the feel of a goodold boys network — which it is. All ofthese guys were attracted to ShelbyAmerican early in their careers andnow, in their golden years, they arelooking back with an appreciation andsense of obligation to each other. Thebooks is filled with photos of most ofBondurant’s races, those he raced withand against, and a bit of narrationexplaining what happened and why itwas important. Portions of race pro-grams, grid sheets, posters and trackdiagrams all help to put you there. Ittakes you from Bondo’s sports car rac-ing days through his driving school inPhoenix. It’s a pleasant trip.

SHELBY, THE RACE DR IVER –With Remembranc es by Carro llShelby by Art Evans. Softbound; 11˝ x8 1/ 2˝; 192 pages; 229 black & whitephotos. Photo Data Research, LLC,800 S Pacific Coast Hwy, RedondoBeach, CA 90277. 310-540-8068 pho-todata-research@yahoo.com $29.95

Just about every book writtenabout Shelby or his cars makes refer-ence, usually very briefly, to his racingcareer. His competition experience inthe 1950s provided him with the prac-tical knowledge and background—thegravitas—which enabled him to speakwith authority about sports car racing.When Ford became excited aboutusing the Cobra and GT40 to burnishtheir performance image, they turnedto Shelby. And he was anything butbashful about being their racingexpert.

His racing experience lasted eightyears, from 1952 through 1960. Thisbook provides a year by year examina-tion of his racing record, using periodphotographs and Shelby’s own remem-brances of each event. The five pageappendix lists every race he drove in:date track, event name, car, entrantname and finishing position.

Art Evans has written a handfulof books dealing with various facets ofwest coast sports car racing in the1950s. Like the others, this one is wellresearched and profusely illustrated,using period photos that provide anexcellent examination of the history ofShelby’s career.

M IL L ION DOL LAR MUSCLECARS by Colin Comer. Hard-bound; 91.2˝ x 11 13/ 4˝; 192 pages, 242 colorphotos. Published by Motorbooks,Galtier Plaza, Suite 200, 380 JacksonSt, St. Paul, MN 55101. $34.95

Five years ago this book wouldhave been a work of fiction, written bysomeone with an overactive imagina-tion and maybe a touch of wishfulthinking. But today, thanks to theatmosphere that swirls around theupper levels of the collector and mus-clecar market (which includes the tele-vised-in-real-time Barrett-Jacksonauction every January in Scottsdale,Arizona, the speed-of-light communi-cation of cell phones, text messagingand the internet and the automobile-as-investment climate), like it or notmillion dollar musclecars have becomemore or less a reality. The book isdivided into two sections: seven-figurecars and six-figures and rising. All areworthy of being mentioned. This is acoffee table book which means thephotography, almost all of it in color, isnothing short of superb. The exampleschosen for inclusion are all restored toperfection. You don’t have to be a bigmoney investor to appreciate thisbook. You can thumb through it andhope that your dreams come true.

SHELBY. The Man. The Cars. TheLe g end . by Wallace A. Wyss.Softbound; 6˝ x 9˝; 208 pages; 49 black& white photos. Iconografix, PO Box446, Hudson, WI 54016. $19.95.

Wally Wyss is no stranger to theworld of Shelby American. He hasbeen lurking around the periphery ofthe hobby for more than 30 years. Hisfirst book, “Shelby’s Wildlife,” is theworst reference source for these carsever written. Ironically, it has proba-bly sold more copies than any otherbook on this subject. This has, nodoubt, prodded him into this follow-upbook.

It contains 18 chapters. Each onebegins with an anecdote or narrative,written in the second person by some-one who was there—someone whocould see someone else sweating orcould hear someone’s comments madeunder there breath. The problem isthat Wyss wasn’t there for any of it.He puts words into people’s mouthsand extracts thoughts from theirheads—things he records as facts butwhich he could not possibly know. It’sfine writing as far as fiction goes, butthere is no room in a book like this forfiction.

In relating the oft-told Shelbystory, Wyss gets most of the factsright. What is troublesome are hiscontinual attempts to draw conclu-sions which may or not be right. Hedoes this with such certainty that heleaves no room for doubt. And we haveplenty.

There are also some sloppy errorsyou would expect from a freshman ina high school writing class. For exam-ple, describing the finish of the 1968Daytona 24-Hours, which includedGroup II (Trans-Am) cars, he says, “Atthe end of the race, it rolled to the fin-ish in third overall just behind threePorsche 907 prototypes...” Huh?

Here’s another example ofspecious thinking: In describing the1968 Trans-Am program, Wyss says,“Shelby’s mechanics during that yearstill tell horror stories of engines arriv-ing from Dearborn that were missingvital parts like push rods. The longsimmering belief of the Shelby crewthat Ford Dearborn favored theNASCAR racers was fueled by Ford’ssending of bum engines to the Shelbyteam in ’68.”

So, someone at Ford (unnamed, ofcourse) wanted Shelby to lose the 1968Trans-Am series—even though thecompany was paying them a fairamount of sponsorship money.According to Chuck Cant-well andLew Spencer, when Ford sent tunnel-port engines to Shelby they came withorders to install them without touch-ing them. They had already beendyno-tested. Uh, without push rods,Wally?

These are just a couple of exam-ples. Trust us, there are plenty more.We found questionable comments,quotes or ideas on just about everypage. Truth be known, we could notbring ourselves to read the entirebook. It was just too tedious. That’sthe way it was for us, and if you’refamiliar with the story of Shelby andhis cars, we suspect that’s the way itwill be for you, too. The things weknow are erroneous made us wonder ifthings which we didn’t could also beerroneous. This doubt clung to everypage. We suspect the buyers of thisbook will form two groups. Those whodon’t know very much about theShelby story, and those who are curi-ous to see how badly that story can betold.

SHELBY CARS IN DETAIL.Car s o f th e Sh e lb y Ame r ic anCo llection by Frank Barrett & BoydJaynes. Hardbound; 11 3/ 4”x131/ 4”;272 pages; 154 color photos. 3 black &white. David Bull Publishing, 4250 E.Camel-back Rd, Suite K150, Phoenix,AZ 85018 602-852-9500. $149.95.

If you look up “coffee table book”in the dictionary you’ll see a picture ofthis book. It’s that good. Here’s thepremise: take 26 of the most histori-cally interesting cars currently beingdisplayed in the Shelby AmericanCollection in Boulder, Colorado, com-pile a synopsis of their history andwhy they are important, and then geta professional photographer to takestudio shots of each one — both por-traits of the entire car and detail shotsof significant features. Take the pho-tos, which are virtually perfect in com-position and execution, and put theminto an oversized, hard cover book.Other marques wish they had some-thing like this. Since the ShelbyAmerican Collection features primari-ly Cobras, they make up most of thisbook. But there are a few GT40s, acouple of R-Models, a ‘65 GT350, andAC Ace, one of the Ferraris thatShelby raced in the late 1950s and thewhite-with-blue-stripes Falcon SedanDelivery used by Peter Brock when hewas running Shelby’s driving school.When you stare at these photos, timewill virtually stop for you.

RACING SPORTS CARS –Memo r ie s o f th e Fi f t i e s by ArtEvans. Softbound; 11˝ x 8 1/ 2˝; 273pages; 234 black & white photos. PhotoData Research, LLC, 800 S PacificCoast Hwy, Redondo Beach, CA 902773 1 0 - 5 4 0 - 8 0 6 8photodataresearch@yahoo.com $39.95

Art Evans has combined the recol-lections of sixty of the best knownAmerican sports car drivers of the1950s with photos of 74 different carshe shot when they were racing on thewest coast during that time. Theresult is an interesting read, toldthrough the eyes of the drivers whowere there. And it comes throughtheir own words. The Cobra justdidn’t pop up one day in 1962—andneither did those who built them,drove them, or competed againstthem. They all began cutting theirteeth in the 1950s. Books like thishelp provide a context for the pre-Cobra days. Carroll Shelby, DanGurney, Peter Brock, Lew Spencer,Phil Hill, Bob Bondurant, DaveMacDonald, Bill Krause and KenMiles are names familiar to anyonewho knows Cobras. This book tellswhat they did prior to their “Cobradays.” And it’s not limited to thosewe’re familiar with due to their Cobrainvolvement. Drivers like ZoraDuntov. Briggs Cunningham, AugiePabst, Scooter Patrick, ColinChapman, John Fitch, Jim Hall andStirling Moss all pitch in to tell theirstories. Sports car racing in the 1950swas the preamble to the Cobra’s emer-gence into the sports car world in the1960s. This book helps weave thetapestry. It is definitely worth a read.

BUD MOORE - Man and Machineby Dr. John A. Craft. Hardbound; 83/ 8”x 10 7/ 8”, 401 pages; 176 b&wphotos, 68 color. Published by CarbonPress, 520 Ridgewood Ave, Holly Hill,FL 32117 www.carbonpressonline.com$44.95.

This is a very unique book.In fact,it’s not really like you’re reading abook at all, but more like you’re sittingin Bud Moore’s race shop listening tohim and everyone else he came intocontact with during his more than 50years in racing, tell stories about whatwent on during those years. In theirown words, with no sugar-coating. It isa fascinating read.

Bud Moore’s story is, in a sense,the story of NASCAR. He began racingas soon as he returned toSpartanburg, SC after WWII. As an 18year-old infantryman, he hit UtahBeach on D-Day in the first wave. Hisunit was later attached to Patton’sThird Army and he fought throughFrance, Belgium (including Bastogne)and into Germany. He received twoBronze Stars for Valor and five PurpleHearts but rarely spoke of his experi-ences.

Of particular interest to us—andyou, if you’re reading this—were theyears 1967 through 1971. Moore foundhimself hip-deep in the SCCA’s Trans-Am series. His name is linked with theMercury Cougar Team and then Ford’sBoss Mustangs. In 1971 his school busyellow cars, driven by George Follmerand Parnelli Jones, became Trans-Amicons. And the chapters on these carscontain all of the insider’s info youcould want.

A lot of this book is in the words ofthe people whose names come up asBud Moore’s story is unfolds. AuthorJohn Craft (a long time SAAC memberand owner of some restored vintageNASCAR iron from the 1960s) chose tolet Bud Moore and the rest of themajor and minor players use their ownwords. Through skillful editing, hekeeps the story flowing along a time-line, occasionally taking side trips bydirecting Moore and others into specif-ic areas like individual races, particu-lar engines, special equipment, otherteams, drivers (those who were withhim as well as those against him),NASCAR officials, and whatever elsehelps to provide a rich context. Butthere is no question that Bud Moore isat the center of it all.

We can’t recall reading anotherbook that has made so much use of theinterview to move the story along. Alltoo often an author will speak, atlength, with the book’s principal aswell as a few others who he feels areperipheral to the subject. That, alongwith the rest of the research, allowsthe creation of a narrative in theirown words. Occasionally they willinclude a few quotes, but a lot gets lostin the “translation.” John Craft’smethod provides a sense of realismthat cannot exist in narration. Youhear the story in the very words ofthose who are telling it. When it is thelife and experiences of someone likeBud Moore, it makes for a very com-pelling story.

The one thing we found irritatingabout this book is that every timeCraft moves from his narrative intothe words of Bud Moore himself, orone of the dozens and dozens of otherswhose words were transcribed, he usesa quasi-freehand typeface that is diffi-cult to read in a full page width for-mat. That said, it’s a minor criticismthat we put up with in order to appre-ciate the content. The story of BudMoore’s life is rich, colorful, interestingand absorbing. Through it you can seethe growth and evolution of stock carracing, beginning as pure sport, andmoving into occupation while stillmasquerading as sport. By the 1970sit has become a business (still mas-querading as sport). In the 1980s and1990s it moved into the realm of enter-tainment. Through it all, Bud Mooreand his contemporaries rode along.Sometimes they thought they were incontrol but mostly they were chasingsomething. John Craft helps us to seewhat it was.

GO LIKE HELL – Fo rd , Fe r rar iand Their Battle fo r Speed andGlo ry at LeMans by A. J. Baime.Hardbound; 6 1/ 4˝ x 9 1/ 4˝, 304pages; 14 b&w photos, 6 color.Published by Houghton Miffl inHarcourt Publishing Co. $26.00.

Just when you thought you’d readeverything there is about the leg-endary Ford vs. Ferrari battle atLeMans, along comes A. J. Baime.We’ll be honest: when we first openedthis book we were expecting anothershallow rehash of the Ford versusFerrari story. After all, we’ve read justabout everything written on this sub-ject since 1963. That isn’t bragging orexaggerating; it’s simply the truth. Sowhat more is there to the tale?

Quite a bit, as it turns out. Weknow the basic outline by heart, hav-ing been through it more times thanwe care to recall. However, A. J. Baimebrings something new to the party,mostly by widening the scope of hisnarrative to provide more context toexplain the “why” behind a lot of whattook place. Most of our interest hasalways centered on the Shelby side ofthe story. We’ve read several booksabout Ferrari here and there, butbecause they were primarily aboutFerrari we had a tendency to skimthrough them, mostly looking for ref-erences to Shelby or Ford.

We began reading this book and ithooked us pretty quickly. The story ofhowFord won the 1966 LeMans 24-

Hours can, on one hand, be distilleddown to the period between the drop-ping of the French Tri-Color flag atexactly 4 p.m. on Saturday, June 18,1966 to start the race and waving thecheckered flag exactly 24 hours laterto end it. However, “Go Like Hell” is alot more than a race report.

The book provides a great deal ofwell researched context—of personali-ties, cars, events and history—andweaves them together to form not onlyan easy-to-read chronological narra-tive but an accurate relating of one ofthe most interesting stories in theautomotive world.

A. J. Baime is an executive editorat Playboy magazine, where he isresponsible for automotive topics andother feature articles. The idea for thisbook began about four years ago, whenhe was driving a new Ford GT with ayounger car columnist who admittedthat he had never heard of Phil Hill.Suddenly Baime realized that therewere a lot of people—including thosewho considered themselves knowl-edgeable car enthusiasts—who knewvery little about the Ford/Ferrari warsthat had taken place forty years ago.He read the profiles of Stirling Mossand Masten Gregory written KenPurdy, considered one of America’sgreatest automotive writers, and hesaw the Ford versus Ferrari storybegin to take shape. As a book, itwould work on several levels: it had anamazing cast of colorful characters, itwas an incredible—and true—story,and it was a metaphor for the halcyondays when performance in the auto-motive industry trumped everythingelse. If done right, it would be of inter-est to the general public as well as carenthusiasts.

It’s done right. Once we startedreading it we had a difficult timeputting it down. We especially likedthe way the people involved werebrought into the story. No one justpopped up; their roles were explainedand how they came to be where theywere at a particular point in the storywas logically presented. It was alsoexplained where each person wentwhen they were no longer part of thestory. Our only complaint,and it’s a small one, is it that the num-ber of photos in the book is far toosmall. There were more pictures takenof these cars and the men who drovethem than any other period of racinghistory. There are 20 pictures; thereshould be 200. It’s a small point. Wehighly recommend this book.

MARK DONOHUE - Te c hn ic a lExc e l lenc e at Sp eed by MichaelArgetsinger. Hardbound; 8 1/ 2”x 91/ 4”, 344 pages; 17 b&w photos, 25color. Published by David BullPublishing, 4250 E, Camelback Rd,Suite K150, Phoenix, AZ 85018. 39.95.

Mark Donohue doesn’t need anyintroduction to anyone interested inCobras, Shelbys, GT40s or sports carracing in the 1960s and 1970s.However, most of what is known abouthim comes from magazine articles andrace reports and the book he co-wrotewith Paul Van Vanklenburgh, TheUnfair Advantage—which is, basically,an examination of the cars he droveduring his career. This book is a prop-er biography, and after reading it youwill feel as if you knew Mark Donohuewell. It is that good of a book.

Author Michael Argetsinger hasdone a superb job of capturingDonohue’s life and placing it in thecontext of the time in which helived—and raced. Like most biogra-phies, it is layed out in chronologically,beginning with his childhood, and fol-lowing his through school and into rac-ing. Argetsinger spoke with those whoknew Donohue best, and uses theirstories and remembrancers to tell thestory of who he really was, what heaccomplished and how he was able toaccomplish it. It is all masterfullydone. It is well written and complete,and when you’re done you feel as ifyou really did know Mark Donohue.Which is what a good biography issupposed to accomplish.

If there is one weakness to thebook it is the paucity of photographs.The total of 42 is almost embarrassingwhen there were, certainly, so many tochoose from. Donohue was a magnetfor photographers. The book shouldhave had hundreds.

C O B R A D AY T O N A C O U P ECSX2601 by Peter Brock. Hardbound;11 1/ 4˝ x 8 3/ 4˝, 65 pages; 53 b&wphotos, 55 color. Published by MecumAuctions, Inc. $49.00.

No small amount of fanfareaccompanied the auctioning ofDaytona Coupe CSX2601 at theMecum Auction in Indianapolis thispast May. The car was the crowningjewel amid almost three dozen Cobrasand Shelbys that went across theblock at that auction, quite likely themost ever presented at one event. Theauction was carried live on cable TV,Peter Brock and Bob Bondurant werethere, and the whole shebang was pre-ceded by a tsunami of publicity thatincluded predictions the car wouldeventually sell for “eight figures”($10,000,000). Despite all of this, theplanets proved not to be in alignmentand the top bid of $6.8M was notenough to meet the reserve (rumoredto be $8M).

The car was again presented atthe Mecum Auction in Monterey, CAon August 15th and part of the promo-tion for that event was a hardcoverbook, detailing the history of this par-ticular car and a large batch of photostaken during the season it was raced.Written by the undisputed authorityon Daytona Coupes, Peter Brock, thethin edition sold out quickly duringthe auction. In fact, there was such ahigh demand for the book that a sec-ond printing was undertaken. Thosebooks are now available, and likelywon’t last long.

Brock recaps the history of theDaytona Coupe in a few short, concisechapters. This is not the retelling ofhistory decades later by someone whowas not there and only has access toinformation compiled by others. PeterBrock was at the very center of theproject from Day One, so his wordscarry more weight than anyone else’sever could. He provides insight intothe cars which is simply unavailablefrom any other source.

CSX2601 was the fourth Coupebuilt and, according to Brock, the bestone. In fact, one chapter is titled, “TheBest of the Six... CSX2601.” This car,explains Brock “...would end up beingthe best detailed of the six coupes built.CSX2601 would retain the subtlety ofthe originally intended lines, with amore rounded nose and the subtle com-pound curves of the door line thatswept up into the rear fenders, a fea-ture which was compromised on thelast two cars built when the crush fortime pressured the Italians to cut cor-ners.” That’s the kind of insider base-ball in this book; it’s what makes it soinformative.

The black-and-white photos takenin 1964 and 1965 are captioned byBrock and although all Cobra enthusi-asts have seen them many timesbefore, they acquire a new significancewith his captions. It’s as if Peter Brockis showing you each photo and com-menting on some aspect of what isdepicted—an aspect that you had notbeen aware of when you originally sawthe picture.

CSX2601 was raced in eightevents during the 1965 season and itwon four of those. They are all detailedin the text. This was the car that BobBondurant drove at Reims, France onJuly 4th when the points he wonclinched the World ManufacturersChampionship for Shelby American in1965. Following its return to the facto-ry it was rented to ParamountPictures for use in the movie “Redline7000.” Then Bob Bondurant wasseduced by Carroll Shelby into buyingit. The car sold, by the way, at therecent Mecum Monterey auction to acollector from Ohio named HarryYeaggy for $7.25M.

This is a wonderful, little book.Most of the superb color photos weretaken prior to both auctions so theyare crisp, clear and, best of all, they’refresh. One of the books purchased atthe Monterey auction recently sold for$260 on eBay. Here’s a chance to getthe same book for $49—and it will beautographed.

The easiest way to get a copy isthrough the BRE website:www.bre2.net>products >books

MARK DONOHUE - Te c hn ic a lExcellence by Michael Argetsinger. 81/ 2˝ x 9 1/ 4˝ hardcover; 344 pages; 25color photos, 18 black & white photos.Published by David Bull Publishing,Phoenix, AZ www.bullpublishing.co$39.95

We grew up with Mark Donohueand we watched his career progress ashe moved up the food chain fromSCCA amateur to seasoned profession-al. He was a very likable guy; youcould tell that even if you never methim. You could tell from what otherssaid about him or wrote about him,and you could tell by the pictures yousaw of him in the car magazines. Hewas a perfect example of good thingshappening to good people. Except thatthe good things didn’t just happen tohim—he worked hard at making themhappen. It wasn’t obvious.

His driving career lasted an alltoo short fifteen years. It seems muchlonger because most racing enthusi-asts who took note of Mark were fol-lowed him most of the way; certainlyfrom 1966 when he went to Daytonawith the Ford GTs. That was his jumpinto the pros and it was followed at adizzying rate by the USRRC, Trans-Am, Can-Am, USAC, NASCAR andfinally Formula 1.

Argetsinger does an excellent jobof getting it all right by talking to theright people. He digs to unearth thingsyou never read about before. The chap-ters are choppy and early on you’ll findyourself wishing there were a lot morephotos to provide context. The onesthat are there look more like theycame out someone’s photo album. Butnone of this detracts from Mark’sstory. It’s just a little somber becausewe know how it turns out.

MOTION PERFORMANCE – Talesof a Muscle Car Builder by MartynL Schorr. Hardbound; 9 1/ 2˝ x 11˝ ,176 pages; 147 b&w photos, 117 color.Published by Motorbooks,Minneapolis, MNwww.motorbooks,com $35.00.

Every bowtie enthusiasts knowsJoel Rosen and Motion Performance inBaldwin, Long Island, NY in the sameway that Shelby enthusiasts are famil-iar with Tasca or Mel Burns Ford.When it came to modifying and tuningChevy V8s, especially for drag racing,Motion was the place to go and Rosenwas the guy to see—at least in thenortheast. Marty Schorr has beenwriting about performance cars since1965 and probably wrote about—andphotographed—Rosen’s cars morethan anyone, so he was the ideal per-son to put together a book like this.

The book concerns the cars thatJoel Rosen and Motion Performanceeither built, modified or raced. Ninety-seven percent of this book concernsGM cars, and especially bowties. So,why are we reviewing it? The answeris, the other three percent. JoelRosen/Motion Performance drag-racedtwo Cobras in between 1965 and 1969.Despite Rosen’s obvious affinity forCorvettes, Camaros, Chevelles andNovas, early on he had the hots for aCobra. He filled his trophy room withthe bling that those Cobras broughthim.

In the summer of 1965, Joel Rosenpurchased a small block Cobra fromNew York City disc jockey Bob Dayton.The serial number of this car hasnever been determined. Rosen says hehad the car for a year or so and duringthat time rarely lost a race.Unfortunately, he didn’t keep any ofthe car’s paperwork so he doesn’tknow the serial number. He sold theCobra in 1966, shortly after theCamaro came on the scene, and he justlost track of the Cobra.

In 1966 Rosen pitted next to 427Cobra owner Clem Hoppe. One thingled to another and pretty soon Rosenwas driving CSX3159 at drag stripsthroughout the northeast. He contin-ued piloting that car until 1969.Hoppe, from Ridgefield, NJ was thecar’s original owner

In an interesting twist to thatstory, Hoppe mysteriously dropped outof sight in 1969. His Mercedes, withhis luggage in the back, was foundabandoned in a parking lot at JFKInternational Airport in New York.Years later it was learned that justprior to his vanishing he had secretedthe Cobra in his parent’s barn, whereit remained. They later sold the car toCarl Mentz of Reamstown, PA whorestored it as a Guardsman Bluestreet car and unveiled it at SAAC-4in Downingtown, PA in 1977. It waseventually purchased by Tony Conoverin 2004. He restored it to its 1966 dragrace livery, complete with the large“King Cobra” name on the side.

The Cobra chapter contains 9 pho-tos of the small block and 9 shots ofthe 427. Be warned: all the rest of thebook is mostly bowties because theyare what Rosen is famous for. It fol-lows him through the 1970s and 1980swhen Motion ran afoul of the federalgovernment and was effectively putout of business. It’s en absorbing story.

This is a well written and thor-oughly researched book, and it pro-vides an excellent picture of JoelRosen’s career as well as the cars hewas associated with. Including theCobras. Especially the Cobras.

428 COBRA JET Registry 1968 1/2-1970 compiled by Scott Hollenbeckand Chris Teeling. 8 1/ 2˝ x 11˝ spiral-bound; 280 pages; 336 color photos, 3black and white i l lustrations.Published by Applied Arts Publishing,Lancaster, PA. www.428 cobra jet.org$37.50

We are always interested in reg-istries, if nothing else to see how some-one else goes about assembling theirs;the nuts and the bolts. There had beenother attempts at putting together aregistry for the Cobra Jet Mustangs,but it was before the Internet whichhad the affect of increasing communi-cation geometrically. When ScottHollenbeck purchased a ‘70 Mach I R-code car in 1996 that needed restora-tion, he discovered that much of theinformation he needed to restore hiscar was nonexistent or contradictory.He began researching on his own. Heeventually met Chris Teeling who wasalso collecting R-code serial numbersand data. They combined their effortsand this book is the result. Productionbetween 1968 1/2 and 1970 was 21,492cars.

This registry is broken into threeparts: the first is made up of charts,tables and figures that decode produc-tion data. The second part lists serialnumbers and data plate info on carsthey have located (about 12%). Thethird section is a guide to componentidentification. It’s where all the colorphotos live.

This is a first-rate effort but suf-fers from a lack of photos of cars aswell as a written lead-in to providesome history. But that can be added tothe next edition.

SHELBY – The Complete Book ofSh e lb y Au tomo b i le s – Co b r asMustangs and Super Snakes byColin Comer. Hardbound; 10˝ x 111/ 4˝, 256 pages; 139 b&w photos, 309color. Published by MBI PublishingCo., Minneapolis, MN $45.00.

When you see a book described onits cover as being “complete,” your eye-brow automatically goes up. This isespecially true when that adjective isdescribing a book on Shelby cars.There are so many examples, permu-tations and exceptions swirling aroundin the Cobra/Shelby universe that it’salmost a slam-dunk to imagine thatsomething was overlooked. This isclearly not the case with SAAC mem-ber Colin Comer’s latest book. He tellsthe story and he gets it just right; hedoesn’t gloss over the important stuffand it’s not a puff piece or an homageto Carroll Shelby.

This book’s large size allows largephotographs, and that might allow itto be described as a “coffee table book,”but that would be a mistake. Coffeetable books tend to be heavy on glitzand light on text. This book has plentyof both. The photos—and there areover 400 of them—are a good mix ofperiod photos (many in color, which isfairly rare as most photography wasblack and white back in the day) andcurrent pictures of some of the nicestShelbys and Cobras you’ll ever see.The colors almost run down the page.

“Shelby” is an easy read—which isnot to say that anything is glossedover or diluted. The story of the carsthat Carroll Shelby created, wasinvolved with, or inspired is told in anhonest, straightforward way. The factsand figures are accurate and the textdoes not get bogged down with toomany of them. This is a common faultwith a lot of books on these cars: justbecause all the facts and figures areavailable (thanks to SAAC’s reg-istries), some authors feel obliged toinclude them all, even though they dolittle to add to the narrative.Thankfully, Colin Comer felt no suchneed.

The book is dedicated to PhilRemington, Shelby American’s chiefengineer. A personal opinion here: giv-ing Rem this kind of respect andpraise is long overdue. If there was oneindividual who overshadowed every-one else within the Shelby organiza-tion, and had the self confidence tostand in the background and notworry about getting credit as long asthings got done, it was PhilRemington. He possessed the rare,natural ability to look at a part orcomponent, understand that there wasa problem, visualize the solution, andthen create the part that would solveit—from a hunk of bare metal if neces-sary...all before anyone else in theshop even realized the problem exist-ed. He had an incredible talent andeven today has no equals.

The glossy pages of this book havea very high quality feel to them. Thereproduction of the photos are secondto none and the color values are per-fect. You will not be disappointed withthis book.

An amazingly large number ofbooks have been written about Shelbyand his cars over the past thirty years.Our book shelves are sagging undertheir weight. This is a subject which isas interesting to writers as it is toreaders, and if a book attempts to tellthe “complete” story, it seems there arealways new models which have comealong since the last complete book.Included in this one are the ShelbyDodges, the Series 1s and the latestgenerations of Mustang-basedShelbys. But the emphasis is still onthe early cars.

ULTIMATE AMERICAN V8 EngineData Book, 2nd Edition by Peter C.Sessler. 8 1/ 4˝ x 10 5/ 8˝ softbound;239pages; 188 black & white photos, 3il lustrations. Published by MBIPublishing Co, Minneapolis, MNwww.motorbooks.com $29.95

Peter Sessler is a busy guy. Itseems like every time we turn around,another book with his name on itbecomes available. He has writtenmore than forty books since 1983. Hecertainly knows his facts and figures,or where to find them. Usually he con-centrates on Ford cars and engines butwith this book he has widened hisscope to include all American manu-facturers—including Studebaker! Notonly are the usual charts with specifi-cations and part numbers included,but there are lots of photos of blocks,heads, combustion chambers andunique parts. It’s all nicely layed outand user-friendly. All the engines arethere, broken down by displacement,options and applications. You’ll findhorsepower and torque ratings, com-pression ratios, casting and part num-bers and internal dimensions. This isan excellent reference book to have onyour shelf. And if you want to take apeek at the Chevy and Chrysler sec-tions when no one is looking, just tosee how their engines compare withthe Ford stuff, that’s probably ok... justas long as you don’t spend too muchtime there. We wouldn’t want to haveto have you kidnapped and then sub-mit to deprogramming.

The SHELBY AMERICAN STORYby Art Evans. Photography by DaveFriedman. 11 1/ 4˝ x 8 3/ 4˝ hardcover;128 pages; 213 black & white photos.Published by Photo Data Research,Redondo Beach, CA. photodatare-search@yahoo.com $39.95.

Art Evans has created a cottageindustry out of writing about theSouthern California sports car scenein the 1950s and 1960s and the peoplewho populated it. To date he has writ-ten seven books: one each about theearly Pebble Beach, Paramount Ranchand Golden Gate sports car circuits;one about sports car racing in the1950s; and one about Ken Miles.Thisis his second book about CarrollShelby.

This book features the photogra-phy of Dave Friedman, who has, him-self, written a number of books center-ing around the photographs he tookwhile employed as Shelby American’sphotographer and after 1965, as afree-lancer. The book is made up of 116short chapters, each dedicated to a sin-gle subject (illustrated with Friedmanphotos—most of which have seen useelsewhere) or the remembrances of theShelby American days by sixteen teamdrivers or ex-Cobra team members.Reading what they have to say, andhow they saw things fitting togetherfrom their individual perspectives,provides insight into the overallShelby American story. It doesn’t tellit all, but it’s doubtful that any onebook could, because the subject is bothbroad and deep. The best we can hopefor are small books like this one fromwhich we can broaden our knowledge.

When someone who was therecomments about a photo taken duringthat period, even if you’ve seen the pic-ture before you will likely learn some-thing that you didn’t know. This iswhere the real value of a book like thislies. It is well written and one of thethings we like best is the context thatbrings everything into a sharper focus.

MARK DONOHUE – His Li f e inPh o to g r ap h s by MichaelArgetsinger.9 1/ 4˝ x 11 1/ 4˝ hardcov-er; 160 pages; 132 black & white pho-tos; 111 in color. Published by DavidBull Publishing, Phoenix, AZwww.bullpublishing.com $39.95.

When we reviewed MichaleArgetsinger’s previous book on MarkDonohue in the Spring/2010 issue ofThe Shelby American (“Mark Donohue– Technical Excellence”), our biggestcomplaint was that it didn’t haveenough pictures. At that time, weweren’t aware that Argetsinger wasplanning on a second volume withphotos.

This is one way to tackle a subjectlike this. One volume with the text ofthe previous book and the photos inthis one would have been a weightytome, that’s for sure. The pictures inthis book are presented in chronologi-cal order and the captions are fairlydetailed, providing identification ofalmost everyone who is in them aswell as other pertinent informationthat compliments the photo.

Rather than relying solely on thearchives of race phytographers, a lot ofthese photos come from the Donohuefamily’s photo collection. The candidshots bring a softness that plays wellin this book. Mark Donohue began rac-ing in 1960 and his life ended follow-ing a Formula 1 crash in 1975. The fif-teen-year slice of time during his driv-ing career precisely covered the periodin this country when amateur racingmorphed into professional racing.Most of us watched that happen withMark and his death signaled the endof that era.

427 Rac in g Magaz in e edited byJacky Morel. 11 5/ 8˝ x 8 1/ 4˝ saddle-stitched; 98 pages; 214 color photos, 17black and white. Text is in French.Published by Presse MagazineSpecialisee, BP 18, 33950 Lege CapFerret, France. jackymorel@pms-mag.com $5.95 €

Jacky Morel is a SAAC member inFrance who has been to a few nationalconventions collecting photographsand material for the magazine he waspublishing. It is finally done and wehave to say that it is packed with ter-rific photos and although we can’t reada word of it, the pictures, alone, areworth the difficulty it will take to get acopy—unless you’re fluent in French.If you’re not, don’t let that stop you.Go to www.o-kiosk.com and navigateyour way through the shopping cartand order form. If you persevere youwill be rewarded with an excellentmagazine.

Forrest Straight is on the cover,driving CSX3183, with an 8-page arti-cle on his Cobra inside. There’s also agood-looking six-page article on SAAC(maybe that’s why we like this maga-zine so much!). And an article on MikeEisenberg’s MAECO Motorsport, cov-erage of SAAC-32, an article aboutPeter Brock’s Superformance DaytonaCoupe, Jim Halsey’s ‘65 GT350 vintageracer, ‘66 LeMans coverage with pho-tos we’ve never seen before, and a lotmore. Vous avez realise un travailmagnifique, Jacky. Nous ne pouvonspas attendre pour voirle numero 2d’issue.

MUSTANG GT /CS R e c o gn i t io nGuide and Owners Manual by PaulM. Newitt. 11 1/ 4˝ x 8 3/ 4˝ hardcover;224 pages; 400 photographs and dia-grams. Published by Paul M. Newitt,PO Box 427, Danville, CA 94526.paul@pmndesigns.com $100 + $6postage and handling. Only 2,000printed.

Paul Newitt is the GT/CS go-toguy. Researching a particular car andthen assembling a registry of serialnumbers and owners names naturallyleads to publishing a book. It’s usuallya registry—a directory of serial num-bers and names—and then the regis-trar normally can’t resist the tempta-tion to add some details: specifications,production particulars, photos and thelike. Before you know it, it’s a realbook.

Calling this “a real book” is anunderstatement; it’s like saying BillGates is “well off.” The story beginswhen Paul bought his GT/CS in 1974for $1,500. That was his upper limit inlooking for a car to drive to college.After graduating he kept the car, usingit as his daily driver. Ten years later,and now a long-time owner, he becamedissatisfied at the lack of informationdirectly relating to the 1968 1/2 GT/CScars. While doing some catalog workfor Sacramento Mustang, Paul puttogether a “GT/CS Survey” and begansending it to as many owners as hecould find. He soon received fiveresponses. Then five more. And moreafter that. A year later a mention inMustang Monthly produced owner-supplied information on over 200 cars.And thus, the seed of a book onCalifornia Specials was planted andbegan to grow.

When one person sets out to col-lect information on a specific subject,such as a particular type of car, atsome point things do a one-eighty andinformation begins to come to them.SAAC’s registrars have discoveredthis. The more you learn, the more

you discover what you don’t know.And what you don’t know points youin the direction of unknown informa-tion (because you can quickly bypasswhat you already know). You becomethe “go-to guy” on this subject; thehub of a wheel of knowledge, and any-thing new or undiscovered finds itsway to you. The result is that youbecome geometrically more knowl-edgeable about your subject.

Paul’s first attempt at a GT/CSregistry was in 1989. It was a modestvolume, containing 375 serial num-bers. In 1996 a registry update waspublished, bumping the number ofcars in Paul’s database to 776. By con-trast, today’s book contains 1,039 seri-al numbers, plus 255 High CountrySpecial models. But it is a lot morethan just serial numbers and names.

Paul has tied just about every-thing in the world of GT/CS cars intoa neat package contained between thecovers of this book. There are lots ofsidebars and photos with interestingcaptions, reproductions of ads and lit-erature; dealer advertising; storiesabout Lee Iacocca’s involvement; LeeGrey (the “Father of the GT/CS”);Shelby American’s involvement; SA’schief engineer Fred Goodell’s involve-ment. There is a detailed sectionabout A.O. Smith with some greatphotos, and more photos about thecar’s introduction at the CenturyPlaza Hotel in Century City onFebruary 15, 1968. A week later therewas a second presentation in SanFrancisco at the famous FairmontHotel.

A section of the book is devoted tothe cars’ production, with factory pho-tos, reproductions of a window sticker,invoice, broadcast sheet and even aMarti Report. The High CountrySpecial is included. And there arespecifications and details on everyunique part on the car. Options andpowertrains are covered; color chipsand upholstery samples are pictured.There are chapters on estimating val-ues and restoration. The book iscapped off with a section on the cur-rent generation of GT/CS modelsstarting in 2007-2009 and the 2011models.

This book has been a long timecoming and like a lot of projects likethis, the author’s enthusiasm pushedhim to make a couple of prematureannouncements (we’ve been there anddone that). But that’s all water overthe dam. Only 2,000 of these bookswill be printed. Our advice is to getyour copy the first time around.

BONDURANT Scrapbook...the six-ties by Phil Henny. 11 1/ 4˝ x 8 3/ 4˝hardcover; 196 pages; 108 black andwhite photographs. Published byEditions Cotty, Portland, OR.www.philhenny.com $49.99 + postageand handling. Text in English andFrench. Available 9/ 11 in the U.S.

Phil Henny has put together a ter-rific book about Bob Bondurant’s rac-ing career. And there is a lot toinclude. Bondurant was building anexcellent reputation as a Corvettedriver in the late 1950s and in 1961 hewas named America’s Corvette Driverof the Year. When Carroll Shelby wasready to unleash the Cobra onSouthern California sports car circuitshe tapped Bondurant as one of histeam drivers. It was a double win forthe astute Texan: he got a talenteddriver and eliminated one of the topCorvette threats at the same time.

Bondurant went on to become oneof the top Cobra drivers at the wheelof just about everything: 289 comproadsters, Daytona Coupes, 427Cobras and Ford GT MK Is. This bookdetails them all. It really is like ascrapbook, with a different picture onevery other page and a succinct cap-tion identifying the car, date or loca-tion as well as some context on what isgoing on at that time with regard toBob’s career. It’s great stuff.

Phil Henny was born and grew upin Switzerland. He came to ShelbyAmerican in 1967 after working withScuderia Filipinetti on their GT40s inEurope in 1966. His mechanical andracing background landed him a job atKar Kraft and then at ShelbyAmerican where he worked as a fabri-cator on the GT40 MK IVs. He hasproven to be as talented a writer as hewas a race fabricator. This book con-tains some photos we’ve seen andsome we haven’t. That doesn’t matterbecause it is the explanations that tellthe story. The pictures merely illus-trate it. You’ll like this book!

SHELBY COBRA Fi fty Years byColin Comer. 10˝ x 12 1/ 4˝ hardcover;256 pages; 117 black & white and 308color photographs. $40. Order from:http:/ / colincomerbooks.com/ Shelby-Cobra-Fifty-Years-SC50.htm

Just when you thought you hadread every book you needed to readabout Cobras, along comes one moremust-have tome. While this won’t bethe last book written on these cars, itis probably the last one that needs tobe written. It is that good. And thetiming is perfect.

Shelby Cobra – Fifty Years is not acomplex technical history. And it is nota trite coffee table book. So, what is it?It is an excellent overview of the 50years that now comprises Cobra histo-ry from Day One. It is well researchedand well written and it contains anexcellent variety of photos—both his-torical as well as current—that pro-vide an insightful look at the Cobramystique. Every picture is intelligent-ly captioned and almost all of themcontain the cars’ serial numbers. Weespecially like that.

Colin Comer has proven, by thisbook, that he really does have anexcellent handle on the Cobra. Hebrings to his writing a solid and well-grounded background gained by work-ing on the cars, racing them, andmaintaining a dealership where heregularly buys and sells them. Whilethis book is not the be-all and-end allof Cobra books—and it does not pre-tend to be—if you already have a copyof the Cobra/ GT40 Registry, this isthe last Cobra book you willneed...until Comer writes the nextone: Shelby Cobra — One HundredYears. It’s due out in 2062.

MUSTANG BOSS 302 – Fr omRacing Legend to Modern Musc leCar by Donald Farr. 9 1/ 2˝ x 11 1/ 4˝hardcover; 160 pages; 53 black & whiteand 202 color photographs. $30.Published by Motor BooksInternational, Minneapolis, MN.

When a company like Ford resur-rects an iconic marque such as theBoss 302, once the cars are movingfrom the production line into the deal-erships, it’s time to chronicle the pro-ject with a book. Experience hasshown that it’s best to do somethinglike this immediately, before recordsare lost, memories have dimmed andcars have begun to deteriorate. Rightnow, they’re all new and all cherry.

There are any number of writerscapable of tackling a book like this,but finding just the right one is impor-tant. And you can’t do any better thanDonald Farr. When it comes to Boss302 Mustangs, you would be hard-pressed to name someone more knowl-edgeable and, as the editor of MustangMonthly magazine, someone withmore contacts within both FoMoCoand the Mustang enthusiast universe.

The first half of the book relates1969-1970 Boss 302 history, both pro-duction and racing. It is both authori-tative and complete. The photos aretop quality. The second half of the bookcovers the history of the marque after1970, culminating with the prototypesand Boss 302R race cars in 2010, therace models in 2011 and the 2012Laguna Seca model.

We experienced the initial excite-ment when it was announced that a“new” Shelby GT500 would be avail-able through Ford dealers. Now, it’shappening again with the Boss 302.Read all about it!

RACE MAN – Jim Travers and theTRACO Dynasty by Gordon Chance.11 3/ 4˝ x 8 3/ 4˝ hardcover; 189 pages;138 black & white and 55 color pho-tographs. $60. Published by TurnerPublications, Sequim, WA. turnerpub-lications.com

We’ve come to the point, withbooks about Cobras and Shelbys,where we have to dig deep to find newinformation. It isn’t going to be hand-ed to us on a silver platter anymore.After 50 years, most of what could bewritten about these cars has been. Butlike peeling an onion, there is alwaysmore. You just have to know where tolook.

Gordon Chance spent some timeat Shelby American as an engine man,in between stints at many of the raceshops in the 1950s and 1960s that arehousehold names—if you consideryour garage your “household.” Andmost of us do.

Rather than write a book abouthis own experiences, he has chosen tospotlight Jim Travers, of the famed“TRACO” team of Travers and FrankCoon. The book follows Jim Travers’life, in some of his own words, from hisexperiences during WWII, through theearly hot rodding days and his workwith Stu Hilborn and then joiningwith Coon to form a winning Indy 500team in the ‘50s. He was a fabricator,machinist and engine builder. TRACOEngineering (TRAversCOon) soonbecame the top engine builder of theera. They built engines for LanceReventlow, Roger Penske, and virtual-ly everyone else running Chevy V8s.There was no one better.

Reading Chance’s book is liketalking to Tavers, himself. And that’snot going to happen because “Trav” isin his 90s now and lives a reclusivelife in Utah. He is not interested intalking to anyone. So we have to thankGordon Chance for bringing his storyto us. Without his work all of Travers’experiences would have been lost.Magic was worked back then and JimTravers was one of the magicians.

2011 BOSS 302 REGISTRY byRandy Ream and Todd Eby. 8 1/ 2˝ x11˝ spiralbound; 302 pages; 10 black &white and 584 color photographs. $50.Published by Randy Ream and ToddEby, Lebanon, PA.boss302reg@aol.com

Registries have a life of their own.The people who dedicate the time andeffort to keep them current (which, ifdone right, is a perpetual task) givethem that life. In return, they give upsome of their own life. But their burn-ing desire to maintain what they havecreated, to keep adding to it, and tocontinue increasing their own knowl-edge and expertise as they do, isenough to fuel that desire.

It takes a certain type of person toperpetuate a registry. Randy Reamand Todd Eby have been maintainingBoss 302 records since 1981. Theyprinted their first registry in 1992 andwere able to account for 25% of the8,641 Boss 302s produced. The secondedition was printed in 2000, account-ing for 33% of production. This mostrecent edition has bumped the numberof cars accounted for to 42%. [Note: wedid some quick mathematical calcula-tions, based on the percentage of carsaccounted for vs. the time between edi-tions and then extrapolated the results.At the current rate Ream and Eby havebeen finding unknown cars, 100% ofall 8,641 Boss 302s will be accountedfor in their 9th edition, which shouldbe printed sometime around 2068.]

Registries are interesting readingas well as useful tools, for both ownersand would-be owners. It’s nice to seeeverything layed out in some kind oforder and books like this, when donewell, provide the reader with a senseof power—because knowledge ispower. And this registry is layed outperfectly.

In addition to the usual specs oneach car and individual histories, italso has photos of unique Boss 302parts and options and race parts. Andthey are in color. Not enough for you?Boss 429s are also included in greatdetail. Even if you don’t own a Boss302, this book is one that probablyshould be on your reference shelf.

IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT CARROLLSHELBY by Chris Brooke. 6˝ x 9˝ soft-cover; 78 pages; 29 black and whitephotographs. Published by ChrisBrooke www.itsnotyourfaultcarroll-shelby.com $16.50.

This book is a pleasant change ofpace. It’s not another “everything youwanted to know about Shelbys” book,full of specifications, features, serialnumbers, and Shelby American histo-ry. Don’t get us wrong: we like bookslike that but in between all of thefacts, figures, timelines and jargonthere doesn’t seem to be much devotedto the individual history of specificcars or their owners.

We’ve often said that every carhas a story. Some are more interestingor colorful than others. Most books gettoo wrapped up in the nuts-and-boltsdetails of the cars to spend any timeon the people who bought them anddrove them when they were new. TheSAAC registry comes close to that butthe sheer volume of cars makes itimpossible to tell the full story of eachone. To do the cars justice you mighthave to have a separate book on eachone. Can you imagine the bookshelfyou would need just for 562 1965GT350s? In our self-constructed fanta-sy world, if each car had its own bookto tell its story, Chris Brooke’s is anexample of what they might look like.It’s a memoir of the time he spentbehind the wheel of his father’s car,5S109.

One of the last chapters, titled“Looking Back,” begins: “In retrospectit seemed so harmless and innocentback then. We were just street racingon mostly empty roads.” There aremany aspects of this book that requiresomething movie and television worldcalls “suspension of disbelief.” Youknow reality—that a car launched ona 20-foot jump would never be able tocontinue driving once it landed. Whenyou watch it happen in a movie, whatyou don’t see is that the camera stopsafter the car crashes to the ground andstarts filming again when the actorgets into a duplicate of the jump carand drives away. Movies make theimpossible look possible and that’swhy we like to watch. What kind offun would be to see Bo and Luke Dukejump the General Lee, which lands ina pile of smoking parts. They get outand what—walk home? Hitchhike?

We live in the today, and that’s theyardstick we use to compare what weread in a book like this that tells thestory of yesterday. The first suspensionwe have to put aside is that a teenag-er’s father would use a 1965 GT350 toteach him to drive and then let himdrive it while he was in high school.The second one is even harder to imag-ine: the roads in and around LosAngeles would, at times, be virtuallyempty of traffic. This was 1965 and ifall you have as context is today’sround-the-clock, bumper-to-bumperL.A. traffic, the author might as wellbe describing driving on the moon.

And here’s the most difficult pillto swallow: the police would give chaseto motorized miscreants and thenbreak it off with a shrug and theunderstanding that they would catchthem another time. When someone gotcaught for speeding or street racingback then, there was a chance—nomatter how slim—of talking your wayout of it. Like that would happentoday.

Chris Brooke goes into a lot ofdetail about his high school days andsome of the non-automotive pranksand adventures and they all help topaint the background for a much dif-ferent time. Ozzie and Harriet, orFather Knows Best. It’s a look into oneboy’s life which, while hard to believetoday, was nothing that would causean eyebrow to lift back then. EveryShelby (and a lot of Cobras) were ini-tially used as daily drivers. That, initself, is hard to believe. And it’s whatmakes this book so interesting.

C A R R O L L S H E L B Y T h eAutho rized Bio graphy by RinseyMills. 6 3/ 8˝ x 9 1/ 2˝ hardcover; 552pages; 15 color photos, 50 black andwhite, 4 Bill Neale color illustrations.Published by Motorbooks www.motor-books.com $35.00.

This is the book that everyone inthe Shelby world has been waiting for.Carroll Shelby wrote his first autobi-ography (“as told to John Bentley”) in1965, providing the background of hisearly life and his racing career. In1960, after his doctor told him hisheart condition meant he could nolonger race, his career morphed intothe Cobra. “The Cobra Story” was com-pleted in the early summer of 1965,actually before the Daytona Coupeclinched the World ManufacturersChampionship at Reims, France onJuly 4th. A footnote had to be added tothe last chapter indicating that theCobra won the championship. Oneparagraph was devoted to the new 427Cobra and one to the “Mustang Cobra”(the GT350 name had not yet beenchosen). The point is, Shelby’s storyended right there. He left it to othersto continue telling the Cobra tale forthe next 47 years. And tell it they did,with him and without him. Shelby andthe Cobra were colorful, exciting sub-jects and they rarely got any badpress. Even after production hadceased and Shelby had walked away,the Cobra

Cobra’s electricity continued—andcontinues today.

There was something uniqueabout the alchemy that resulted inthese American icons (both Shelby andhis Cobra) and the story behind them.It was more than just the sum of theparts, any one of which would havebeen a lead article in any automotivepublication. This has, in fact, been thecase; whenever Shelby did anything,headlines and lead articles quickly fol-lowed. Despite the flow of publicity,what was lacking—and has been lack-ing for 50 years—is the story behindthe story.

That narrative has been ably pro-vided by Rinsey Mills. He comes to thefore with no shortage of Cobra experi-ence. He has written several books onthese cars over the years, and being aBrit, he brings with him a typicallyBritish perspective. That provides himwith a deep understanding of AC Cars,Ltd., their cars and the people whowere responsible for them. FollowingCarroll Shelby’s proposal to use theAC Ace as the basis for his new highperformance sports car, things at ACchanged. They had been in businessfor nearly 100 years but they hadnever seen anything like Shelby orhad been involved (peripherally) witha company like Ford.

Rinsey Mills’ writing style has adecidely British flavor (someone“wielding a spanner” instead of turn-ing a wrench, the use of words like“whilst” and “amongst,” or descriptionssuch as, “the motor had gone sick”). Itis a touch on the formal side with ankeen eye for irony without being criti-cal or opinionated. He remains,throughout, unbiased and non-judg-mental, even though in certain sec-tions you can picture him biting theinside of his cheek to keep from laugh-ing as he listens to someone recallingfarcical, scandalous or blatantly self-serving details. It is not the kind ofeasy reading you can breeze throughlike a fast-paced detective novel.Rather, Mills’ style makes the readertake it a little more slowly to considerthe facts he is presenting. And that’s agood thing because he places a greatdeal of food on the table. Rather thanwolf it down, you want to savor eachhelping.

It is obvious that Mills spent agreat deal of time researching whattook place during Shelby’s almost 90years. Probably more time than hethought he could spare,

but the results show it was time wellspent. Instead of dumping everythinginto a giant hopper and then putting itinto his own words, Mills wisely letsthe characters who populate this auto-motive equivalent of a CharlesDickens novel speak for themselves.They don’t always agree with oneanother, but that is a reflection of real-ity and adds to the narrative.

If you open this 550-page bookexpecting a puff piece written by acheerleader for Carroll Shelby, you willbe disappointed. Likewise, if you areexpecting a hit-piece filled with back-handed whispers and unproven innu-endos by a long line of people whowould agree that Shelby has no haloover his head, you won’t get thateither. What will you get? Shelby’scomplete story, from the circumstancesof his birth and childhood all the waythrough today’s CSX4000 Cobras andGT500 Mustangs. Mills leaves fewstones unturned.

There are several sub-plots andtangents to story of Carroll Shelby andhis Cobra (the two are destined to belinked for eternity), many happeningsimultaneously. But Mills is able tokeep track of them all without makingthe reader dizzy from jumping backand forth to maintain a semblance ofchronology.

One thing we have rarely seen inany books or magazine articles aboutShelby are details about his personallife: his parents, wives and children.These details could only have beenincluded with Shelby’s help as well asthe people who were named.Automobile journalists over the yearsall hesitated to tip-toe through thisminefield, but Mills includes it as partof the narrative and handles it matter-of- factly.

When Shelby’s life is broken intosegments, some are, of necessity, moreimportant than others. The lion’sshare of the book is dedicated to hisracing exploits and everything thatrevolved around the Cobra. It seemsthe closer Mills gets to the end of thestory, the less detail he provides. Itreminded us of someone writing undera deadline that is quickly approaching.

Other books about Carroll Shelbywill certainly be written, but none asthoroughly researched or with somuch attention to detail as this one. Itis a comprehensive and sometimesconfusing story; Mills perseveres andgets it right.

THE RACERS – Endurance MotorRa c in g Day to n a 24-Ho u r andSebring 12-Hour Races 1963-1973.Photographs by Al Satterwhite. 8 3/ 4˝x 11 3/ 8˝ hardcover; 97 pages; 126black and white photographs. Only100 editions produced. Published byRedcat Publishing - racers @redcatedi-tions.com $750.00.

Shelby American’s racing historyfrom 1962 through 1966 has beenillustrated, for the most part, by thephotos of Shelby’s in-house photogra-pher Dave Friedman. He probablytook close to 7,000 photos during histime as a Shelby American employee,95% of them black and white. Theyhave been used over and over again, injust about any book or magazine arti-cle about Cobras from the 1960s to thepresent. So, when a new book like thiscomes along that offers period photostaken by a professional lensman otherthan Friedman, it offers a differentperspective from the pictures that wehave been virtually force-fed over thepast 50 years.

Al Satterwhite has put together acollection of his best photos, taken athis two favorite endurance races,Daytona and Sebring, between 1963and 1973. Rather than choosing topublish a typical mass market coffeetable book, he made it an exclusive,high-end piece. Only 100 copies wereprinted and the price of $750 insuresno shortage of bells and whistles. Eachbook is numbered and signed bySatterwhite. The quality of the publi-cation is appropriate to the price. It isprinted on heavy stock, the pho-tographs are perfectly reproduced andit uses a new technology called

called “lay-flat,” which allows two-pagephoto spreads without the usual dis-tortion in the center. This book is filledwith them and they look great. It isshipped in a metal tin and severalactual enlarged photographs areincluded. The book can also be viewedusing an iPad, available throughiTunes ($19.99 retail) which includesaudio commentary about each page.

We won’t try to fast-step youpast the $750 price: it willmake you swallow hard.But then, it’s not for every-one—as the limited numberwould indicate. The photosare all black and white butSatterwhite scatters hismemorabilia, things like pitpasses and photographer’sidentification cards on everypage and they are in color. Itworks nicely.

The book has somegreat candid portraits ofShelby, Miles, Hill, Mossand Gurney. And SteveMcQueen, who raced atSebring in 1970. We areduly impressed with thisbook and regret that wehad to send it back, but itis just a wee bit out ofour price range. If it’swithin yours, our adviceis to move in on it quick-ly because the supplyprobably won’t last verylong.

AL BARTZ – ENGINE MAN by PhilHenny. 11 1/ 2˝ x 9˝ hardcover; 155pages; 26 color and 120 black andwhite photographs. Published byEditions Cotty, Portland, Oregonwww.philhenny.com $56.

This is the fourth of Phil Henny’sbooks since he swapped his wrenchesfor the computer. The preceedingbooks: “Just Call Me Carroll” (2004),“Bob Bondurant - America’sUncrowned World Driving Champion”(2007), and the “Bob BondurantScrapbook” (2009). Born inSwitzerland, Henny became a racemechanic in Europe in the 1960s, firstwith a French Formula One team anda year later with the ScuderiaFilipinetti team’s Ford GT40 LeMansprogram.

In 1967 Henny went to work forShelby American, where he assisted inthe construction and campaigning ofthe Ford GT40 MK IV which wouldeventually win the LeMans 24 Hours,driven by Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt.From 1969 to 1972 he went to work asa machinist for Al Bartz. Bartz EngineDevelopment in Van Nuys, Californiawas one of the best known enginebuilders in the 1960s and 1970s.During this time Henny came to knowBartz very well. Bartz specialized inChevy engines which powered Can-Am, Formula 5000 and Trans-Am carsdriven by some of the most successfuland best known drivers of the era:John Surtees, David Hobbs, JackBrabham, George Follmer, Sam Posey,John Cannon, Peter Revson, ChuckParsons, Jerry Titus, LotharMotschenbacher, Tony Adamowicz,Skip Scott, Roy Woods and MarioAndretti, to name a few.

Bartz passed away in 1981, at 43years of age. At that time he was atthe height of his craft. Henny’s bookbegins when Bartz was a young boy inrural Wisconsin, fascinated by any-thing mechanical. By the time he wasin his teens he was working part time

in an auto repair shop and buildingand repairing his own cars. At 16 hepacked his bags and went to Californiato find his future. He enrolled in highschool for the last two years and whilegoing to school nights, worked at abody shop in the daytime.

In 1959 Bartz began working forStu Hilborn, who had perfected fuelinjection, especially for Indianapoliscars. He also took night courses inengineering at Los Angeles CityCollege. Bartz learned all he couldfrom Hilborn and after five years heleft there. He landed at Gasoline Alley,looking for someone who needed afree-lance mechanic. That didn’t workout, so he went back to California. Afew years later he went to work forTraco Engineering.

Bartz left Traco in 1966 with noactual plans. After a couple of weeksat the beach in Santa Monica recharg-ing his batteries, he received a callfrom Lothar Motschenbacher, whoneeded an engine for his Can-Am car.With no other prospects immediatelyavailable, Bartz borrowed a corner of afriend’s shop and his tools and built analloy Olds F-85 engine.Motschenbacher won the Mid-Ohioevent and, just like that, there wassuddenly a demand for Al Bartzengines. George Follmer got a 333cubic-inch Chevy that enabled him toplace 5th at Riverside. Within a yearBartz had a shop of his own in VanNuys.

Everyone, it seemed, wanted aChevy small-block. Between theTrans-Am, the Can-Am and theUSRRC, there was more of a demandthan the top shops like Traco couldsupply. Traco averaged 50-60 of theirgrey-painted engines a year, or a littlemore than one a week. So there wasroom for Bartz and his trademarkdark blue small-block Chevys. Withina couple of years the ante for the Can-Am front runners was a big block,Chevy or Ford. But instead of thesmall-block builders scrambling toupgrade their skills and equipment, a

new SCCA series was created calledFormula 5000. They were single-seat,open-wheeled cars with engines limit-ed to 305 cubic-inches. Ninety-percentwere powered by Chevrolet engines. AlBartz’ business increased and by 1970he had seven full-time employees.

One of the tricks was to find thesweet spot between increased horse-power and reliability. Racing is a verypublic endeavor and everyone knowswho builds everyone else’s engines.When a car has a catastrophic enginefailure, it does not go unnoticed.Likewise, a victory is a great adver-tisement.

Al Bartz passed away in 1981. Hehad gone into the hospital with con-stant back pains. In short order theydiscovered a tumor and his conditiondeteriorated quickly. His doctor saidhis heavy smoking habit was ultimate-ly responsible.

This book is well researched, wellwritten and well illustrated. Hennymakes excellent use of others whoknew or worked for Bartz as well asbrief pieces from pertinent articles inU.S. automobile publications. Eventhough Henny is the only connectionbetween Al Bartz and ShelbyAmerican, this is a valuable book thatprovides context into the times andthe people who were involved. Roadracing in Southern California was asmall universe. Everyone knew eachother and their paths crossed andcriss-crossed continually. The moreyou learn about the people who wereinvolved, the better your understand-ing of what went on. Here’s anotherbook that should be on your shelf.Each book is signed by the author.

THE DEFINITIVE SHELBY MUS-TANG GUIDE 1965-1970 by GregKolasa. 8 3/ 4˝ x 11 3/ 8˝ hardcover;192 pages; 533 color photographs.Published by CarTech, Inc.www.cartechbooks.com $39.95.

Full disclosure, up front: GregKolasa is a SAAC registrar (GT40sand Hertz cars), has served on theclub’s board of directors, has contribut-ed numerous articles and photographsfor The Shelby American, and is along-time friend. All this considered,we believe we are still capable of accu-rately and honestly reviewing hiswork.

This book has been a long timecoming. It is a combination of the orig-inal “Shelby American Guide” pub-lished by SAAC in 1981, and RayMiller’s “Mustang Does It!” published1978. Only it is much, much betterthan either of them.

Miller’s book was a compilation ofphotographs of Mustang parts, badgesand components. Every year wasincluded, from 1964 1/2 to 1973(including 1965-1970 Shelbys). All thepictures were black and white. For hisphotos, Miller stuck close to home(Southern California) and unknowing-ly included cars which were not accu-rately restored. But back then notmany people knew what was right andwhat was wrong. Everyone was stilllearning the basics.

SAAC’s “Guide” was actually aresponse to Shelby enthusiasts whowere starving for details on these cars.Their questions never ceased, so weassembled as much information aswas known at the time, and put it intoa book .It filled a void and was animmediate success but was far fromperfect.

Think of it as a beginner’s primer.Despite more and increasingly

detailed information being publishedin a new edition of SAAC’s registryevery ten years, we still continue toreceive requests asking us to reprintthe “Shelby Buyers Guide.” Whatalways kept us from reprinting it wasthat a lot of the details in that bookhave since proven to be inaccurate. Inthose early days we were gatheringnew information at an astoundingrate. Each new registry containedwhatever had been learned since thelast one. However, as these books gotthicker and thicker, they contained somuch information that it becameincreasingly difficult to pull specificanswers out of it quickly. Thereappeared to be a demand for a smallerreference book but we simply did nothave the time to put it together. Itwould have to be left to someone elseto do it.

That someone else turned out tobe Greg Kolasa. When he was helpingon the last two registries he demon-strated that he was diligent anddetail-oriented (borderline obsessive)and he had a talent for researchingthe most obscure facts and details. Hewas able to weave these facts anddetails into a readable story. Add tothis an ability to take excellent pho-tographs. As they say in the televisionpolice shows, he had the motive andthe means; all he needed was theopportunity.

He had often thought of writing abook on Shelbys that would be sort oflike “Mustang Does It!” but moredetailed. He happened to meet anautomotive book publisher who likedhis idea but felt that kind of a bookwas outside his area of specialization.So he suggested another publisher,who also liked the idea, and gaveKolasa the green light. With that, theaccumulation of photos and informa-tion began.

The biggest problem with a booklike this is not the difficulty in gather-ing necessary information that will beused to fill it. That’s the easy part.Much more difficult is sorting throughit to pluck out those pieces that arenecessary to tell the story you intendto tell. Knowing what to use and whatto leave behind is the hard part.

This book is presented very logi-cally. It begins with a few brief chap-ters which lay out the history of thecars, putting it in context. because the

Shelby Mustangs just didn’t appear ina puff of smoke. Then the cars areaddressed one year at a time. Thechapter for each successive year iscomprised of some text whichdescribes the features that make thecar a Shelby. But more important arethe photos. All are in color and all areshot specifically for this book—no peri-od black-and-white factory public rela-tions shots are used. The captions forthe photos of individual parts andcomponents are expansive anddetailed, and filled with facts anddescriptions which bring the photos tolife.

Every year Shelby is treated withequal detail and Kolasa has done amasterful job insuring that the captioninformation contains meaningful factsand descriptions. Seeing the pictureand then reading what is being dis-cussed just below it makes the infor-mation both valuable and memorable.Every Shelby-unique part is featuredin this manner.

Shelby Mustangs are nowapproaching 50 years old. During thattime almost all of their productiondetails have been discovered andplaced before owners. Early on, somethings were “discovered” which sound-ed correct and true but which havenow been found to be incorrect and,hence, untrue. Unfortunately, oncesomething is deemed to be correct inmany enthusiasts’ minds, it takes a lotto change it when it is wrong. Thisbook makes a great effort to do justthat, and while it probably won’t beable to do it singlehandedly, it is anexcellent reference source for thoseowners and enthusiasts who continu-ally battle the know-it-alls who don’tbut who think they actually do.

One of the aspects that makeShelbys so interesting is that theretend to be, especially with the earliermodels, differences from car to car.Where production was concerned,there were almost as many exceptionsto the rule as there were rules them-selves. Noting these differences isalmost a hobby within a hobby forsome Shelby enthusiasts. Theseanomalies make it very difficult foranyone to lay claim to the title ofexpert. If any book will help, this onewill. Think of it as the “Cliff ’s Notes”version of the registry, only with 500color photographs. If you thought yourShelby bookshelf was complete, makeenough room to squeeze in one more.You will refer to this book again andagain.

COBRAS AT MONTEREY — 50thAnniversary Celebration photogra-phy by Doug Clark, Lynn Park andJim Yedor. 16˝ x 11 1/ 2˝ hardcover; 62pages; 325 color photographs. $200.

There are coffee table books, andthen there are COFFEE TABLEBOOKS! This is one of the latter. LynnPark, Doug Clark and Jim Yedor musthave each taken at least a thousandphotos during the Monterey weekend.They put them all together and chosethe best 325, and assembled them intothis oversized book. It is one you willpick up and look at, again and again.And each time you open it you’re goingto see something you didn’t see before.The photographs are sharp andvibrant, the paper is heavy and everypicture is briefly captioned with thedriver’s name and the car’s serialnumber. There are pages and pages ofdetail shots (two facing pages with adozen photos on each one of onlyengines, interiors or nose numbers).The cars are mostly those that racedbut other Cobras that weren’t areincluded here and there; cars at thePebble Beach show and at the QuailLodge are also included.

Unlike other Cobra books, thereare also pages and pages of peopleshots —drivers, wives, kids, friendsand assorted VIPs who were millingaround in the paddock. These pictureshave the feel of a huge family reunion.It all works and it gives you an honestand personal feel for what it was liketo be a part of this Cobra weekend ofweekends.

A few months after the event acopy of this book was sent to everydriver. If that wasn’t you, you can stillget your own copy (while they last).They are $200 each. You can obtainone from Lynn Park at

mrcobra@charter.netIndividual photos from the book areavailable from Jim Yedor at

jyedor@aol.com

MY 1967 SHELBY STORY by Huntand Pat Palmer-Ball. 12 3/ 4˝ x 107/ 8˝ hardcover; 44 pages, 74 colorphotos. Published by Lopez-BonillaResources LLC, Louisvil le, KY.www.lbrdesign.com $115.59.

We have often said that everyShelby or Cobra has a story and this isas good an example as we can find.When SAAC member Hunt Palmer-Ball was 19 years-old he saw a 1967GT350 on the showroom floor at BurnsFord, the local dealer. It was love atfirst sight. Within a couple of days hehad convinced his dad to accompanyhim to look at the car. This was fol-lowed by a full-court press to convincehim to co-sign for the car. It all workedand the story is a fascinating one. Itincludes meeting his wife and takingher for a hair-raising first ride, modify-ing the car for drag racing and afterputting it into storage for a fewdecades, pulling it out and giving it atotal restoration to as-delivered condi-tion.

If you’ve seen the various coffeetable books available you probablyfound yourself wondering what onewould look like if your car was thesubject of one. Along with some beauti-ful photography shot by Juan Lopez-Bonilla, Hunt Palmer-Ball relates thehistory of his car. Seeing everythingcompiled into a hardcover book aboutyour own car is very satisfying.Information about self-publishing isdetailed on the Blurbwebsite—www.blurb.com/self-publish-ing-overview—and you can have asfew as 20 copies printed. Ever wantedto be an author? Here’s your opportu-nity.

THE TASCA FORD LEGACY by BobMcClurg. 8 1/ 2˝ x 11˝ hardcover; 192pages, 107 black and white and 119color photos. Published by Car TechBooks, www.cartechbooks.com/ tasca$39.95.

Bob McClurg has a resume thatcould fill a book all by itself. He start-ed taking photos at drag races inSouthern California in 1964 and hiswork has appeared in print every-where. He’s also served as editor ofseveral magazines, written hundredsof articles and dozens of books. Hisphoto-journalist and drag racing back-ground made this book a perfect pro-ject for him. Back in the 1960s, whenmuscle cars were center-stage, a hand-ful of “super dealers” gained legendstatus, mostly through drag racing.Tasca Ford was one of the best known.Their drag team criss-crossed thecountry winning match races and set-ting records almost every weekend.The dealership was one of the mostsuccessful in the country and ownerBob Tasca even had Henry Ford II’sear regarding sales and performance.Pictures never tell the full story andMcClurg has done a masterful job ofdigging behind the scenes to providean understanding of this dealershipand the people who made it successful.

COBRA – The Story of an Ic on byTrevor Legate and Kay Hafner. 12˝ x12˝ hardcover; 206 pages; 82 black andwhite and 259 color photographs.Published by Collectors Car World;www.collectorscarworld .com U.S.price: $168 for standard version (289copies printed) and $325 for the specialslip-case edition (25 produced); postageadditional.

It’s about time another Cobrabook was published! Actually, we’renot being facetious: it has been almostsix months since the curtain camedown on last year’s 12-monthmarathon tribute to the Cobra’s 50year anniversary. It was some party.During that time four Cobra bookscame onto the market: Colin Comer’s“Shelby Cobra 50 Years,” AlSatterwhite’s “The Racers,” RinseyMills’ “Carroll Shelby” authorizedbiography and “Cobras at Monterey50th Anniversary Celebration” byLynn Park. Each one had a differenttake on these cars and they camealong every three or four months, sothere was plenty of time for the morededicated Cobraphiles among us toread and savor each book before theyplunked the newest one down in frontof them.

Trevor Legate is no stranger toCobras, having authored no less thansix books about the marque as well asnumerous magazine articles. Thebooks are well written and thoroughlyresearched but they all come from theBritish perspective: AC Cars was themanufacturer while Shelby Americanwas left to market, advertise, race andsell the cars. From our side of theAtlantic, of course, we see AC as thesubcontractor for chassis, bodies, hard-ware and interiors and ShelbyAmerican as the parent company andmanufacturer of record.

After Legate’s first book we bothvoiced our opposing opinions in lettersto each other, we went around a bit,and ultimately realized that neither ofus was likely to convince the other oftheir errant ways and good-naturedlyagreed to disagree. We have becomegood friends over the years and viewthis difference of opinion about ACCars’ role much like two fans of rivalsports teams.

Sharing the book’s authorship isCobra enthusiast Kay Hafner, aGerman business executive. He orga-nized a well-attended Cobra 50thAnniversary meet last June in a smalltown close to the Rhine river inGermany. Twenty-nine original Cobrasattended. A few months later Hafnerraced a Cobra at the GoodwoodRevival. Legate was there with hiscamera to document both events. Thisbook is the result of Legate’s highquality photos as well as his text,which is wrapped around the picturesto briefly recount the Cobra story.

One of the strong points of thisbook is that almost all of the cars pic-tured are European-owned cars. Foranyone who can’t get enough ofCobras, this is a welcomed changefrom the books written by U.S. authorsthat primarily showcase Cobras in thiscountry. Many of these cars arebrought to multiple events or areentered in numerous vintage racesand seem to be pictured over and over.Not that that’s a bad thing: if youbring your car out to events it will bephotographed, and those pictures canend up in magazines or on websites. Ifyou park it in your garage or ware-house and never take it out, it willremain your little secret.

We like this book. Print quality ishigh, photo reproduction is excellentand if we had one complaint—and it’snot a big one—it’s that the type isoversized. This is great for thosewhose eyesight is heading south, but itmeans an increased page count withless content. If the type size wasreduced and the size of some of thepictures was increased the page countcould have probably stayed the same.

New photos and information isalways of interest to both hardcoreand casual Cobra enthusiasts. BecauseEuropean Cobras are fairly rare inmost Cobra books put together in theU.S., this book provides things youmight not usually see. Only 289 copieswill be printed so like Cobras them-selves, the high price of this bookreflects the quality and quantity.

HOLMAN MOODY – TheLe g end ary Rac e Team by TomCotter and Al Pearce. 10 3/ 8˝ x 103/ 8˝ hardcover; 256 pages; 212 blackand white and 53 color photographs.Published by Octane Press,www.octanepress.com $75.

We reviewed the first go-around ofthis book back in 2003 (The ShelbyAmerican #72, page 11) and we said itwas a “must-read.” Except if you didn’tget a copy within a few years, youwere either out of luck or at the mercyof the eBay gougers. We’ve seen theoriginal $39.95 sticker price inflated to$250.

Even though there were twoprintings of the book, over the past fewyears enough people who didn’t getone when they were gettable con-vinced Tom Cotter to take anothercrack at it. The new edition has thesame photos but it allowed him to cor-rect some errors (and we know howthat works: as soon as your book getsprinted, things you thought were cor-rect turn out to be not so correct). Youalways feel good about correcting yourown record.

The new edition is updated withan additional chapter (this book is 14pages longer than the original). In thepast ten years the company had notbeen standing still or passing quietlyinto history. Today it is more recog-nized than ever, thanks to the productidentification of the latest generationof Ford enthusiasts. Having a carrestored by H-M today brings with itbragging rights, especially if it was arace car. Holman-Moody has even beentapped by Ford as the basis for a spe-cial niche-market edition Mustang.Only 500 “TdF” models will be made tocommemorate the first Mustang HMwas involved with in 1964 1/2, theTour de France rally cars. You’ll haveto get the book to learn more!

MUSTANG – Fi f ty Ye ar s .Celebrating America’s Only TruePony Car by Donald Farr. 12 1/ 4˝ x10˝ hardcover; 256 pages; 114 blackand white and 278 color photographs.Published by Motorbooks/ MBIPublishing, www.motorbooks.comprice: $50; postage additional.

Donald Farr’s Mustang book is thefirst one out of the gate for the car’s50th anniversary steeplechase, and hesets a very high bar for the books thatare certain to follow. Farr has beeninvolved with Mustangs since 1966and has been the editor of MustangMonthly for more than 30 years. Itcould be argued that no one knowsmore about the history of the Mustangthan Donald Farr. He has lived it, pho-tographed it and written about it. It’sas perfect a fit between author andsubject as you are likely to find.

This book is a history of theMustang, told through the enthusiast’seye—not a sanitized corporate view. Infact, as we were flipping through it onthe first go-round, it had the feel of atextbook. The Mustang is Ford’slongest running nameplate. It hasbeen around for 50 years, before manycurrent enthusiasts were born. Intheir lives, there has always been aMustang. They have distinct memoriesof the Mustang that was brand newwhen they first became interested incars, were in high school or enteredthe hobby. They need a review of histo-ry and Farr does a excellent job ofbringing everyone up to speed. Eventhose who were there at Day One.

There have been more articles andbooks written about the Mustang thanyou can count. Virtually all of themhave included pictures, and picturesare Farr’s long suit. He started byshooting photos at Mustang andShelby events while he was still inhigh school and was an early contribu-tor to SAAC’s magazine. Over the lastfive decades he has taken thousands ofphotographs and has assembled amonstrous archive. He has quite likelyread every book on Mustangs that hasbeen written, and choosing photos forthis book was not an easy task. Theyare necessary to tell the story andsome factory or historical photos, onesthat everyone has seen, have no sub-stitute. The choice for others is heavilyweighed towards using photos neverbefore, or rarely seen. And this coversa fifty year span.

The pictures are not all of cars.There are photos of some of the peoplewho were involved as well as a widerange of Mustang memorabilia andexplanations of how Mustangs fit intopopular culture, including televisionand the movies. In 1964, the new carwas pictured with Lee Iacocca on thecover of both Time and Newsweek.How do you put together a book likethis and not use them? You don’t.

This is not a book you will read inone or two sittings and put on theshelf. You will pick it up again andagain, and each time you will seethings you’ve previously missed. TheMustang has had an interesting histo-ry and thanks to Donald Farr, this isits textbook.

AMER ICAN AUTO LEGENDS -C lass i c s o f Sty le an d De sign .Published by the Easton Press,Norwalk, Connecticut; three monthlyinstallments at $49 each.

Up front, we have to admit thatwe have not seen this book. Thisreview is only based on a four-pagecolor flyer we received. Our opinion ofit would have been a lot differenttwenty years ago. We might have sug-gested it would make a good additionto your Shelby collection only becauseShelbys and Cobras (we assume) wereincluded. That used to be enough of areason for us. But in the interveningyears there has been so much pub-lished about these cars (a lot of it bySAAC) that it takes more than a fewphotos and brief mentions to compelus to suggest it be in your collection.There has just been too much outthere for anyone to try to keep up withit all and get one of everything. Thisbook has plenty of glitz: gold stamp-ings on the leather cover, gilded pageends and a satin ribbon marker. Noneof it seems to justify the $147 price.

INSIDE SHELBY AMERICAN–Wren c h in g and Rac in g w i thCarroll Shelby in the 1960s by JohnMorton. 6 1/ 2˝ x 9 1/ 4˝ hardcover; 248pages; 90 black and white and 46 colorphotographs. Published byMo to r b o o ks / MB I P u b l i s h i n g ,www.motorbooks.com price: $28;postage additional.

“Maybe you had to be there...”We’ve all heard that punch line, addedafter a long, tortured story told in thesecond or third person after it fell flat.Usually the storyteller lacked the con-text or emotion necessary to make thestory interesting. That happens a lotwhen someone tries to relate historythat he or she wasn’t there to witness.Not so, with John Morton’s book. Hewas there and he provides the neces-sary context. It may be a little short onemotion but, then again, he’s a racedriver. If he was emotional he probablywould have never raced.

This is one of the best books we’veread about what went on during theCobra days. It is not an all-encompass-ing story, following the Cobra narra-tive from the first car through the lastrace. It’s doubtful that anyone whowas there could write such a booktoday. This is the story as seenthrough Morton’s eyes. He grew up inNorthern Illinois and was a sports carenthusiast even before he had alicense or a first car. He began by sit-ting in the bleachers with his fatherand brother and soon progressed todriving go-karts and circle-track jalop-ies. He bought a used MG TD in highschool and tore up the twisting backroads. The die was cast. In one of those

life-defining moments, while in collegehe went to Sebring, saw the heros hehad been reading about, and imaginedhimself driving there.

He applied to the Carroll ShelbySchool of High Performance Drivingand (surprise!) he was accepted. Hetraded up to a Jaguar XK150 coupe,figuring that would be a passableschool car. Once there he was disap-pointed that Shelby, himself, wasn’this instructor. He spent five daysunder the watchful eye of Peter Brock.driving an early Cobra school car.

Morton’s story isn’t a tale of ne’er-do-well in state-of-the-art cars, racequeens, winners circles and wealthysponsors like, perhaps, ten percent ofthe A-list drivers. Real life was morelike making due with a seasons-oldcar, a clapped-out tow vehicle, livingin cheap apartments and stretchingan already limited budget to go rac-ing. All the time nursing a desire thatsuperceded just about everything else.At the track one day Brock introducedhim to Carroll Shelby and Mortonheard himself asking for a job inShelby’s new Cobra facility. A coupleof days later he was hired and shownhis new office: a broom closet. He was,as Phil Remington called him, “thejanitor in the Jaguar.”

Morton was kept busy and wassoon tasked with small jobs andbecame a parts-chaser. A modestinheritance allowed him to buy aLotus Super 7 and he began to fill hisweekends with regional races. Inbetween he kept busy wrenching teamCobras and following them to races. Itis all told in thoughtful detail, with alot of back-stories and insider infor-mation. Morton was the one whodrove the Daytona Coupes onto thetransporter before the ‘65 Daytonarace, except where he was elbowed outof the way by Allen Grant who wantedto load his own car because he wasafraid of clutch damage. Cobra fanswill recall the car slipped off theramps. Morton tells the story you maynever heard before. There are a lot ofthese stories in the book.

His experiences included justabout all the cars Shelby Americanwas involved with: competition road-sters, King Cobras, Daytona Coupesand even a driving stint at Sebring inthe prototype 427 Cobra. In fact,Morton was like numerous ShelbyAmerican employees, hoping to scorea driving assignment on the team.Shelby had explained that driverswere a dime a dozen and the line todrive one stretched almost to the hori-zon. Nevertheless, Morton’s dream ofbecoming a name driver remained.His writing is matter-of-fact but con-sistently interesting. Facts are accu-rate as only someone who was therecould recall. He has a tongue-in-cheeksense of humor and is self-depreciat-ing when he needs to be. It all works.

John Morton was terminated atShelby American before the team leftfor Europe. Cobra racing in the U.S.was winding down but he stayed inracing. His tenure at Shelby’s broughthim into contact with a large numberof fabricators, engine builders,mechanics and drivers. In SouthernCalifornia their paths criss-crossedcontinually. Only a few, it seemed,stayed at Shelby American forever.Morton moved on, building oil pansand working for USRRC and Can-Amteams, still hoping to snag a drivingassignment. Once in a while he scoredbut was yet to be dealt a winninghand, to get that big break that wouldturn things around.

If we have a criticism of this book,it’s that it ended too soon. We wereyearning for more. The BRE Datsunsonly got a slim chapter and you knowthere was a lot more to it. Morton wontwo national championships in 240Zsin 1970 and 1971. The 510s, withMorton as the lead driver, so dominat-ed the SCCA Under 2-Liter Trans-Amseries in 1971 and 1972 that Porscheand BMW quit and the series was ter-minated.

In the book’s epilogue, Mortonexplained that he ended the bookwhere he did because things began forhim at Riverside at Shelby’s drivingschool with Peter Brock. Ending itwith Brock’s BRE team seemed appro-priate. He said no sequel will be writ-ten. A shame.

BUILD YOUR OWN COBRA -Reference Guide and Helpful Tipsby Phil Henny. 6˝ x 7 1/ 4˝ spiral-bound, 138 pages; 45 black and white,100 color photographs and 56 illustra-tions and drawings. Published byEditions Cotty, www.philhenny. com$28.00. Kindle edition is $3.49.

You can’t say that Phil Henny isjust another writer who doesn’t haveany hands-on experience with thesecars. And plenty of books have beenwritten by such people. Henny is aEuropean-trained mechanic who sawhis first Cobra in August 1964 whenBob Bondurant drove one in the SierraMontana hill climb in Switzerland. Hewon the event and it made an impres-sion on Henny. A year later he wasworking as a racing mechanic atScuderia Filipinetti, the Swissimporter for Cobras and GT350s, han-dling all of their Ford stuff. In 1967 hecame to America to Shelby Americanand worked in the competition depart-ment on GT40 MK IVs, Cobras, Trans-Am and Can-Am cars. After he left theShelby Racing Company he opened hisown dry sump manufacturing businessand raced his own cars.

The Cobra is a fantastically suc-cessful car; more so than anyone couldhave imagined in the 1960s, inside oroutside of Shelby American. Asidefrom the 998 original chassis builtbetween 1961 and 1967, over a hun-dred companies are presently buildingCobras in some form, in a dozen differ-ent countries. When PetersenPublications was putting out a maga-zine called Kit Car back in the 1990s,they came up with an interestingstatistic: less than one third of allCobra kits were eventually completed

by their original buyers. We suspectthat statistic hasn’t changed. Whenyou buy a kit Cobra you are essential-ly buying a dream. If you buy someoneelse’s uncompleted kit you’re oftenbuying a nightmare. You’re left withmore questions and answers.

This book provides the answers. Itincludes sections on all of the majorchassis variations, fromContemporary, Butler, E.R.A., C.A.V.and Factory Five. Original CSX2000and CSX3000 chassis are included andbecause Shelby CSX4000 andKirkham chassis are built to originalspecifications, they are covered, too.There are sections on suspension,steering, rear end and brakes; wheels,tires and seats and transmissions.Wiring, the dashboard and gauges areextensively covered. Every single com-ponent is there, from hoods andscoops, roll bars, bumpers, gas caps,carpeting and even LeMans stripes.

Make no mistake, this is not astep-by-step, how-to shop manual butmore like a reference book that pointsyou in the right direction or eightsource for every aspect of building aCobra kit car. Henny used his ownexperience in building aContemporary 427 Cobra in 2004 as aguide for this book. It also has exten-sive references to websites. In fact, itwas originally published as an e-Book,meant to be read on an iPad. It isinteractive, enabling you to click onvarious links which include YouTubeand see thousands of Cobra racingvideos. You can get a look at the bookon Amazon.com (go to Phil Hennybooks) to see portions of the Kindleedition.

The eBook was completed thispast summer and proved very popular(especially at the Kindle price).However, in a nod to those who preferto hold an actual book in their handsand turn its pages, Henny put togeth-er a printed version. Only 100 copieswere produced and they all wentquickly. It’s likely more will be pro-duced in the near future.

Note that this book is aimed atproducing a car that is as close as pos-sible to an original specification Cobra.There is no mention of non-Fordengines, lug nut hubs or other typicallow-end components.

TOP MUSCLE by DarwinHolmstrom; photography by RandyLeffingwell. 10˝ x 11 1/ 2˝ hardcover;224 pages, 217 color photos. Publishedby Motorbooks, www.motorbooks.com$50.00.

This is a perfect example of a cof-fee table book. It contains beautifullydone studio shots of 25 perfectlyrestored muscle cars from GM, MoPar,AMC and Ford/Mercury/Shelby. Onlyone was a Shelby, a 1968 GT500KR.That’s probably not enough content tomake a Shelby enthusiast lunge forthis book, but if you have any interestin 1960s-1970s muscle cars you’ll wantto give this book a second look. Thething we found interesting was thatall of the cars were located in oneplace—a 600-car museum owned bytwo brothers who demanded privacyand were never named in the book. Afuture semi-public museum wasreported to be in the planning stage.In the foreward (written by SAACmember Charlie Lillard), some of themore interesting cars in the collectionwere listed: four 1969 Trans-Am con-vertibles (half of all built); eight HemiCuda or Hemi Challenger convert-ibles; two 1957 factory superchargedFord Rancheros. These brothers areserious collectors. Choosing 25 cars forthis book had to be an impossible task.Ok, it could have used a few moreShelbys or a Cobra, but maybeHolmstrom is saving that for his nextbook.

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SAAC SHELBY REGISTRY 1968-1969-1970 4th Ed itio n . Edited byRick Kopec and Vincent Liska. 8 1/ 2˝ x11˝ hardcover; 1,472 pages, 808 blackand white photos. Published by theShelby American Automobile Club,www.membership@saac.com $205 plus$12.35 US postage, $61.75 outside ofthe US and the rest of the galaxy.

Do we have the audacity, insolenceand pluck to review our own book? Ina word, yes. This is the third volume ofa trilogy of registries. So much infor-mation on Cobras, GT40s and Shelbyshas been unearthed over the yearsthat it was necessary to separate itchronologically and print three indi-vidual books. They are all hefty tomes:1,618, 1,352 and 1,472 pages respec-tively. It they were combined andprinted as one Webster’s UnabridgedDictionary-sized volume, it would havebeen 8˝ thick and contain 4,441 pages.It would have needed wheels and ahandle like a piece of carry-on luggageor a couple of coolies to trundle itaround. This registry is no differentfrom the first two; everything we’vebeen able to gather on these cars hasbeen put into this book. If you haveany questions about 1968, 1969 or1970 Shelbys, this book will answerthem.

SHELBY MUSTANG – FIFTYYEARS by Colin Comer. 10 1/ 8˝ x 121/ 4˝ hardcover; 240 pages, 115 blackand white and 242 color photos.Published by Motorbooks, QuartoPublishing Group, USA, Inc. www.col-incomerbooks.com $50.00.

Just when we think we’ve seenthe last serious book on Shelbys any-one could possibly write, along comesanother one. Well, no kidding, this isthe last one, and we’re not issuing achallenge, here: aside from some newcolor photos, it probably isn’t possibleto spin the Shelby Mustang yarn againand make it as interesting as ColinComer has done in this book. This isthe third Comer Cobra/Shelby book infairly quick succession which demon-strates his ability to keep his nose tothe Shelby grindstone.

The foreword was written by LeeIacocca and how Comer was able toarrange that is anyone’s guess.Incriminating photos? If anyone couldturn them up, Comer can. Everythingabout this book screams quality. Thecolor photographs are excellent andthe paper is so thick you’ll pinch thepages while turning them, thinkingtwo are sticking together. Most of thephotos are displayed in oversized for-mat, making the text appear to shrink.It’s an optical illusion. The writing isas factual as it gets and tightly edited;no wandering, no tangents, no fluff orfiller. This is Comer’s finest book yet. Ifyou consider yourself a real Shelbyperson, this book should be on yourcoffee table. If you’re not, it just mightmake you one.

50 SHADES OF RUST by TomCotter. 8 1/ 2˝ x 10 1/ 4˝ hardcover; 192pages, 22 black and white and 162color photos. Published by Motorbooks,Quayside Publishing Group,www.motorbooks.com $30.00.

The term “barn find” has come tobe associated with author Tom Cotter,probably because he has filled sixbooks with stories about finding andresurrecting long lost cars. We knowTom as a SAAC member with a 289(barn find) Cobra who has attendedpast conventions. While one of his pas-sions is playing automotive detective,most of the stories included in thisbook (94 total) have been collectedfrom fellow auto hobbyists who eager-ly send him their stories. If the bookwas limited to only his personal expe-riences it would be much thinner. Andlikely not as interesting.

Finding a long forgotten car in abarn (or warehouse, open field orwherever fate has left it) is a thrill forthe finder, whether or not he or she isable to come to terms with the car’sowner. But almost as satisfying arethe stories and photos of these discov-eries. When someone unearths a dis-appeared car, they are experiencingthe thrill of the hunt. The thrillremains whether they eventually buythe car (the kill) or not.

We immediately flipped throughthe book and found stories about a 289Cobra drag car (CSX2353) which isstill in limbo, a ‘65 GT350 (5S545), a67 GT350, a Shelby Group II Mustangand a Boss 429. Read ‘em and weep.

CARROLL HALL SHELBY: APic torial Odyssey by Art Evans. 113/ 4˝ x 8 3/ 4˝ hardcover; 279 pages,252 black and white and 40 color pho-tos. Published by Photo Dats Research,Redondo Beach, CA, www.photo-dataresearch.com $39.95.

Art Evans was introduced tosports car racing in SouthernCalifornia by his uncle in 1956. Hebegan taking photos of race cars andthe men who drove them and as aresult, he developed lifelong friend-ships with drivers like Dan Gurney,Phil Hill, Ken Miles and CarrollShelby. He has published severalbooks about racing in that era andformed a special friendship withShelby. This book is the result of thatrelationship.

It is an excellent pictorial historyand although we can not verify it, itprobably contains a photo of every carCarroll Shelby ever raced. And as adriver between 1954 and 1960 it’sdoubtful that Shelby ever turned downa ride. It is his life in pictures, fromchildhood to the last months before hepassed away. Text is sparse; mostlyShelby’s own words remembering cer-tain races or what is going on in a pic-ture here and there. People in the pho-tos are almost all identified by name,which helps in understanding howthey passed in and out of the Shelbystory. We’ve seen virtually every bookwritten about Carroll Shelby and to behonest, we didn’t think there was roomfor one more. We were wrong. Youmight know all about Cobras andShelbys but this is a gem of a bookthat will help to know all aboutCarroll Shelby as a driver and the carshe raced. Art Evans has done a mas-terful job of assembling an amazingcollection of photos—many of whichyou probably have not seen before.Make room on your bookshelf for thisone. You’ll probably find yourself refer-ring to it often.

The Amazing Life of JOHN COOP-ER FITCH by Art Evans. 5 1/ 2˝ x 81/ 2˝ softbound; 191 pages, 96 blackand white photos. Published byEnthusiast Books, Hudson, WI.www.enthusiast books. com $29.95.

When John Fitch passed away atthe ripe old age of 95, more than oneperson said, “We’ll not see the likes ofhim again” and it was true. You couldwrite a book about the exploits, adven-tures and experiences that made upJohn Fitch’s life. And in fact, someonehas. Art Evans is the perfect individu-al to tell Fitch’s story because he hasbeen close to the racing scene in thiscountry since the 1950s and came toknow almost every American driver inthat early era.

It is hard to believe that one mancould have done all the things JohnFitch did. In 1941 he went to armyflight school and was one of the firstfliers sent to Europe. While piloting aP-51 Mustang he shot down aMesserschmitt ME 262 jet fighter. Hereturned from the war with a desire torace sports cars and successfully com-peted at tracks in the U.S., Europe andSouth America. He advised in themaking of the Kirk Douglas movie“The Racers” and designed the LimeRock race circuit. He raced during themost dangerous years of the sport andseeing so many deaths prompted himto invent the displaceable guardrailand the inertial barriers used on mosthighways today. There is much more,and it’s all in this excellent book.

FORD MUSTANG 1964 1/2 - 2015 byPeter C. Sessler. 5˝ x 8˝ softbound; 240pages; 107 color photos, 6 black andwhite photos.Quarto Publishing Groupautobooks.com $24.99.

Peter Sessler has put togethermore Mustang (including Shelby)specification and price guides than wecan count. He has come out with oneevery few years, including the newestcars. He has found his niche, and he isvery good at it.

We’ll admit there’s not much wehaven’t seen concerning the 1964 1/2through 1970 cars, so we find our-selves zipping through those pages.But where this book really shines, forus, are the 2006 through 2015Mustangs. Production figures for allcars are included and Ford’s ShelbyGT500 cars are broken out. It doesn’tseem like they have been produced forthe past seven years.

One thing the book doesn’thave—and this is by no means meantas a criticism—are production figuresfor the latest Shelby post-title cars.The factory seems, for some reason, tobe very protective of these numbersand one has to wonder why. If thenewest generation of Shelbys are to beconsidered as collectibles, and if theyare expected to appreciate like col-lectibles, verifiable production num-bers will be required. Our guess is thatwhen they are available, Sessler willhave them.

CARROLL SHELBY – The Road ToVic tory by Al Satterwhite. iTunes e-book; 43 pages, 88 black and whitephotos. www.alsatterwhite.com $11.99.

We first met Al Satterwhite in1980 when he was a Car and Driverphotographer. The magazine wasputting together an article with driv-ing impressions on a Daytona Coupe,427 Cobra and a 1966 GT350. Actuallythe article was originally intended toinclude only the Coupe and the 427Cobra but we were not embarrassed tooffer 6S118. They snapped it like ahungry dog being offered a hamburger.We met editors Rich Ceppos and DonSherman and photog Satterwhite atConnecticut Dragway and afterCeppos’ drove the car and Shermanrowed through the gears a couple oftimes on the strip, we were turnedover to Satterwhite who spent anentire afternoon shooting a couple ofhundred 35mm images. About a half-dozen ended up in the magazine’sApril 1981 issue. Satterwhite hadowned a ‘66 GT350 at one time so hewas a kindred spirit. He also attendedseveral races at Sebring and Daytonain 1963, 1964 and 1966 with press cre-dentials so he was able to get up closeto shoot Cobras and GT40s.

Al Satterwhite has had a full andfruitful career since then. His workhas been exhibited in galleries andmuseums around the world and hisimages have been used in SportsIllustrated , Life, Look, Time,Newsweek and Playboy. As a result,his work commands a premium price.He recently decided to put some of the

images he took at these races—ofCobras, GT40s, Shelby and some of thedrivers and crew members—into aniTunes book which we had a chance tosee. We were impressed.

We’re so used to seeing the sameDaytona Coupe photos over and over(mostly taken by Shelby Americanphotographer Dave Friedman) inalmost every book we pick up [fulldisclosure: we’ve relied on those photos,too] that when we see “new” photos ofthese same races and cars we getexcited. Although this book is only 43pages (stuffed with 88 photographs)its price of $11.99 makes it veryaffordable. The downside, of course, isthat once you buy it you can only viewit on your iPad. Unless you pony up$225 for a printed version. Either way,there are still new pictures turning up.And that’s a good thing!

are accurate because we have it ongood authority that Comer reliesheavily on SAAC’s registries, andthis is one of the reasons why wepublished them.We believe insharing the information weunearth, whether it is used byenthusiasts, owners or authors. Sowe had no problems with the accu-racy of Comer’s books.

He authored a Cobra book intime for that car’s 50th anniver-sary and when the 50th for theGT350 rolled around two yearslater, Comer’s publisher thought itwould be the perfect time toupdate his 2009 book: a new cover,a quick rewrite of the portions thatindicate Carroll Shelby and PhilRemington were still alive, andincluding details on the ShelbyMustangs produced between 2009and 2015 in Las Vegas. The bookwas still selling well forMotorbooks International (includ-ing being printed in three lan-guages).

So, it is truly a revised andupdated edition, but not anything“new” which would necessitate itbeing purchased by someone whoalready has the 2009 edition –with the exception of the mostseriously deranged Shelby litera-ture collectors. And how aboutthis: anyone in that deep will alsohave to have a copy of the book inthe three other languages. Yikes!

SHELBY – The Complete Booko f Sh e lb y Automo b i l e s –Co bras Mustangs and SuperSnakes by Colin Comer. Hard-bound; 10 ̋ x 11 1/ 4 ̋ , 256 pages;139 b&w photos, 309 color.Published by MBI Publishing Co.,Minneapolis, MN $45.00.

If you have a good memory,you’ll recall that we reviewed thisbook in the Fall 2009 issue of thisaugust publication. SAAC memberColin Comer has managed to keephimself busy writing books onCobras and Shelbys and he does amasterful job. His books details

REM Remembered by his Friendsby Phil Henny. 18 1/ 2˝ x 11˝ hardcov-er; 250+ pages. Published by EditionsCotty, Portland, OR.www.philhenny.com. Available Spring,2015.

There is no one at ShelbyAmerican we respected more than PhilRemington. When he passed away atthe end of February 2013 at 92, every-one who knew him— evenremotely—felt a huge sense of loss. Hewas a genuine icon and was irreplace-able, and we feared that his passingwould go without a book about his lifeand times. We know such a book wasbegun on three separate occasions, bythree different writers in the last fiveyears of his life. Rem didn’t really liketalking about himself and would relatesome of the more challenging projectshe was involved matter-of-factly, as ifanyone could have done them but itwas just a coincidence it had been him.He never bragged, although as theysay, it’s not bragging if you can do it.And he could do almost anything.

So, for Phil Remington to sit downwith a writer and relate the story ofhis life was a painfully difficult task,to say the least. He could be cantan-kerous, curt and blunt and did not suf-fer fools. At all. It isn’t hard to imaginehim losing his patience and telling thewriter it wasn’t going to work and toget lost. Then another writer camealong and pitched a book again. Remprobably had the feeling that his expe-riences needed to be told, and almosteveryone he came into contact withreinforced this.

PHIL REMINGTON – REMRemembered b y h is Fr iends byPhil Henny. 8 1/ 2˝ x 11˝ hardcover;234 pages; 96 black and white photosand 143 color photos. Published byEditions Cotty, Portland, OR.www.philhenny.com. $89.00.

We “pre-reviewed” this book in theFall 2014 issue. It was still goingtogether but we had seen major partsand were excited about it. Why? PhilRemington was arguably the one indi-vidual at Shelby American mostresponsible for the success of everyvehicle that left the company. Forseven decades he was involved withmany of the most historical and iconicrace cars coming out of the west coast.His mechanical and fabrication skillswere unparalleled. After his passing in2013 at 92, we were afraid that nobook about him and his experienceswould never be written. It would havebeen nothing short of a crime to let hispassing go unremembered. We haveShelby team member and author PhilHenny to thank that it has not.

Henny assembled most of whatwas written about Rem, addingremembrances of those who knew himand a couple of hundred photos. It isan excellent tribute to a man knownfor his modesty.

Carroll Smith, Shelby American’sGT40 team manager said of Rem, “Ifthere’s a piece of an automobile thatPhil Remington can’t fix, then he canmake a perfect copy to replace it. And ifhe can’t copy the piece, then you’ll haveto wait until God creates another. He’sthe best fabricator in the world andthat’s not his strong point.” If you’rereading this magazine you need toread this book.

So he forced himself to cooperate andstarted from scratch, relating his storyonce again. And once again it was anunpleasant experience. He invited thewriter to stay in the guest room in hishome so they could compress the task.And once again he ended it, despite anunderstanding of how important itwas to tell his story. Maybe the twofalse starts had just been personalityconflicts. By the time a third authormade a pitch Rem had completely lostinterest in the project. He realized howdifficult it would be and just didn’thave the energy or the desire. So abiography of Phil Remington wasnever written. And that was animmeasurable loss.

Phil Henny, a former ShelbyAmerican team race mechanic andfabricator realized it, and was not will-ing to let that happen. Since Rem wasno longer around, Henny began col-lecting the remembrances of as manypeople who knew him as he could. Hecombined everything into this book.Rem was so well liked by everyonewho worked with him that Hennyreceived more responses than he hadplanned for. Virtually everyone wantedto be involved in the project, and pro-vide some of their remembrances. As aresult, the book is taking longer thanexpected. So we can only estimate thenumber of pages.

Printing is set for sometime in thespring of 2015 and we will provideordering details in the next issue.Henny is still sorting through photos.Phil Remington lived an extraordinarylife. He was involved, at some point, inalmost every aspect of the automotiveworld. People were proud to say theyknew him. He was a unique individu-al.

SHELBY COBRA – The SnakeThat Co nqu e r ed Th e Wo r ld byColin Comer. 10˝ x 12˝ hardbound (nodust jacket) 264 pages, 375 color and125 black and white photos. Publishedby Motorbooks International,Minneapolis, Minnesota www.motor-books.com $75.00.

Full disclosure: this is not a brandnew book. It is an updated and re-issue of Colin Comer’s previous Cobrabook, Shelby Cobra - Fifty Years whichwas published back in 2011. Comerwas contracted to update this “collec-tor’s edition” and he edited small por-tions of the text that related to peoplewho have passed away since the bookwas originally written. He also addeda chapter of remembrances of Shelby.

When we first reviewed the origi-nal book in the Fall 2011 issue of TheShelby American we said, “While thiswon’t be the last book written on thesecars, it is probably the last one thatneeds to be written. It is that good. Andthe timing is perfect.”

We’ll stand by that. Our guess(based on nothing more than intuition)is that the original book sold out andrather than just reprint it, the pub-lisher released a new edition with asnappy new cover carrying a nicelydebossed Cobra emblem. Since thefirst book was printed, Carroll Shelbyand Phil Remington passed from thescene, Shelby at 91 and Rem at 92.Their stars shone so brightly that theyseemed to bleed a little from everyoneelse associated with Cobras.

There’s nothing wrong with anupdated reprint of Comer’s originalbook, unless you aren’t a ShelbyAmerican reader and think it’s anentirely new book. If you’re readingthis, that won’t happen. Any one elseis on their own. We can’t keep everyeagle from flying into a windmill.

This book is a comfortable combi-nation of history, accurately reported,and photos chosen to tell the story orenhance the cars. Most of the morerecent pictures are large format andcoffee table quality drool-producers.The period photo black-and-whites arereproduced large enough to be usefulin research. Some others photos arereproductions of snapshots taken backin the day by enthusiasts (as opposedto professionals). They were probablysmall format 3 1/2˝ x 3 1/2˝ colorprints, taken by Instamatics or otherlow-tech cameras that everyone (otherthen pros) used in the 1960s and1970s. Enlarging them for a book likethis results in diminishing quality. Itcan’t be helped, but their importanceto the story overrides the less thanperfect reproduction. Also included aretwo 12˝ x 18˝ color gatefold illustra-tions by automobile artist HectorCamemartori.

Should you buy this book? Yes, ifyou don’t already have a copy of theoriginal. No, if you do. Although if youare a hardcore collector you’ll have tohave one of each. That’s just a crossyou have to bear. Nobody ever saidthis would be easy. Or cheap. Stopcomplaining and suck it up.

MUSCLE CAR WARS by B.J. Miller.6˝ x 9˝ softbound; 392 pages; no photos.Published by Anaphora Literary Press,Atlanta, GA. anaphoraliterary.com$25.

As a rule, novels do not usuallyfind their way into the pages of thismagazine, but only because not manyworks of fiction are written thatinclude Shelbys as part of the story.Miller’s tale, however, is an interestingone. As a muscle car enthusiastthroughout high school in the mid-1970s, he describes his life, interestsand the cars that came into and wentthrough his life. In great detail.

One was a 1966 GT350 (6S1703,as pictured on the back of the book)and it obviously played an importantpart of his life. Unfortunately, the cardoesn’t enter the picture until the lastquarter of the book. You have to plowthrough a lot of pages and read abouta lot of other cars before you get there.Is it worth your time? That’s up to thereader. Miller certainly puts a differ-ent spin on things and it’s prettyunique; you probably won’t find it any-where else.

FORD TOTAL PERFORMANCE -Fo r d ’s L eg end ar y High -Pe r f o rman c e St re e t an d Rac eCars by Martyn L. Schorr. Hard-bound; 9 1/ 2 ̋ x 11 ̋ , 208 pages; 199b&w photos, 136 color. Published byMBI Publishing Co., Minneapolis, MN$45.00.

To understand the significance ofthis book a little background is inorder. In the 1960s and 1970s, therewere three basic groups of automobilemagazines: the Big Boys (Car andDriver, Road & Track, Motor Trend,Sports Car Graphic, Motorcade) whichtended to spotlight new cars, automo-tive trends and sports car racing; thewest coast hot rodding magazines(Hot Rod, Car Craft, Rod & Custom,Speed & Custom, Popular HotRodding); and the east coast musclecar magazines (Cars, Hi-PerformanceCars, Speed & Supercar, Super StockStock & FX, SS & Drag Illus-rated).There was, of course, some overlap butgenerally if you knew the magazine’stitle, you knew its editorial viewpointand the content they provided.

The west coast hot rod magazineswere on the upscale side: slick layout,sharp photos (initially printed in palegreen ink because it was cheaper),good quality paper and first-rate writ-ing for a bunch of “car guys.” The eastcoast muscle car magazines were,maybe, a half-step behind. They wereprinted on rougher paper with a littlemore grain in the pictures (most wereinitially black-and-white) and thewriting, while literate, was morestraightforward.

Marty Schorr was always a carguy but instead of burying himselfunder the hood like his pals, he took aliking to the printed word. In 1955 hewas the publicity director for a carclub in Yonkers, New York called theDraggin’ Wheels. This was back when

hot rodders were trying to break out ofthe stigma of being considered outlawsand hooligans who raced at night onthe streets. That was mainly becausethey raced at night on the streets.

Members of the Draggin Wheelshad a number of serious hot rods anddragsters...but nowhere to race them.The only place was on the streets. Hehad a small Brownie camera and tooksome pictures and sent them in with ashort article to Custom Rodder maga-zine. They paid him $25 (over $200 intoday’s dollars) and that’s where hiswriting career began. Soon he washired as the magazine’s editor for $100a week. He attended college at nightstudying English, writing, advertisingand public relations and during ashort stint in the army in 1959, he wasassigned to a photography lab wherehis experience increased.

By 1961 Schorr was the editor ofCustom Rodder, Car, and Speed andStyle magazines. Instead of writingpuff pieces to satisfy advertisers of theperformance cars he was testing, headopted a brash, “tell-it-like-it-is”style. Readership subsequentlyincreased and he soon found himselfeditorial director and then vice presi-dent of the publishing company’s auto-motive group. By the early 1960sSchorr had created additional maga-zines and eventually had titles aimedsquarely at Ford, Corvette, Mopar andChevy enthusiasts.

Marty Schorr has fifty yearsworth of experience with performancecars. He also has fifty years worth ofphotographs he took during that time.He shares them in this book – somewhich have been used before and oth-ers which have not. For detail freaks itis a treasure trove. The chapters areordered by year, starting in 1961 andrunning through 1971.

The time frame of this book isbasically a historical look at Ford’s“Total Performance” program, usingsome of the most well-known cars asexamples. However, included are pho-tos and details of some of the lesser-known cars from this era. This book islike a textbook of Ford’s TotalPerformance campaign. The formatallows a lot of the photos to be repro-duced in large size making intricateperiod details more visible.

There have been a lot of bookswritten about performance Fords. Weknow, because we have a wall full ofbook shelves filled with them. We arehappy to add Marty Schorr’s book toour shelf. If you’re reading this review,you will be, too.

THE ART OF THE MUSTANG byDonald Farr, photography by TomLoeser. Hard-bound; 10 ̋ x 12 1/ 4 ̋ ,240 pages; 240 color. photographs.Published by MBI Publishing Co.,Minneapolis, MN $50.00.

This book is exceptionally welldone. It is well written (as we havecome to expect from Donald Farr) andthe photographs are top shelf.Photographer Tom Loeser shot 29 carsfor the book in a studio, demonstrat-ing that he knows what he is doingbehind the camera. The photos arespectacular.

There are between six and tenphotos of each car, including severalthat are printed full-page or acrosstwo pages. Each one is in sharp focusand the lighting is perfect. The book isseparated into four sections: earlyMustangs (1964 1/2 - 1968); theMuscle Mustangs (1969-1976); FoxBody Mustangs (1984 - 2003); andModern Mustangs (2005 - 2015).Rather than attempt to include everyyear and/or model, choice exampleswere selected to represent the morevaluable or unusual Mustangs. Forexample, instead of a GT350 R-Model,which you might expect, one of the1965 GT350 Shelby Driving schoolcars is included. The 1967 indepen-dent Trans-Am Mustang notchbackowned and raced by J. Bittle, preparedfor current historic racing, is restored to 1968 race specs. Bittlealso supplied a ‘66 Mustang Super Probracket race drag car. The Bittle-festcontinues with a 2014 Cobra Jet facto-ry drag car and a 1989 JBADominator Fox-body, a tuner modelBittle’s speed shop created, based on aSaleen.

This book represents the presentand future of Mustangs. Only a thirdis dedicated to the early cars. Thenewest cars are becoming classicsbefore our eyes.

FORD GT - How Ford Silenced theCr i t i c s , Humb le d Fer r ar i an dCo nqu e r ed LeMan s by PrestonLerner; photography by DaveFriedman. 10 1/ 4˝ x 12 1/ 4˝ hardcov-er; 76 color photos, 227 black & white.Published by Quarto Publishing GroupUSA www.motorbooks.com

Haven’t there been enough bookswritten about GT40s already? Untilwe saw this one we would have said,yes. But if you are intrigued aboutFord’s campaign to beat Ferrari atLeMans in the mid-1960s, this is thebook you’ve been waiting for.

Author Preston Lerner, who hasbeen writing for Automobile magazinefor the past 30 years, teamed up withformer Shelby American photographerDave Friedman for this book that cen-ters around Ford’s LeMans victories in1966 and 1967. The story of Ford’sGT40 program has been told andretold almost since the mid-1960swhen it was breaking news. The carsare as exciting now as they were fiftyyears ago and this is reflected inLerner’s text. Some of the people whowere there when history was beingmade are no longer alive, but thosewho are still with us prove they haveexcellent

excellent memories and the perspec-tive gained over the past five decadesmakes for interesting reading.

Like any proper telling of Ford’sLeMans victory, the story begins withHenry Ford II’s desire, encouraged byLee Iacocca, to purchase Ferrari. AfterEnzo Ferrari dangled his company likea teasing suitor under Ford’s nose, hepromptly withdrew it, angering HF II.“You go to LeMans,” Ford told DonFrey, the Assistant General Managerof the Ford Division, “and beat hisass.” This prompted a swarm of Fordcorporate underlings to begin scouringthe landscape for a suitable startingpoint for a Ferrari-beating endurancerace car. That was in 1963 and thebook includes Ford’s discoveringEnglishman Eric Broadley and hisLola GT which morphed into the newFord GT.

The story continues through con-struction of the earliest GTs, testingand the first foray to LeMans in 1964.Conventional wisdom was that a newcar required a minimum of three yearsof trial and error before it could winLeMans. This proved to be true, andthe book covers all of the high and lowpoints. Finally the planets aligned in1966 and Ford had it’s never-to-be-for-gotten 1-2-3 photo finish. The storyincludes the circumstances around the“Ken Miles affair” and it is even morepoignant in the retelling.

The story, as you know, did notend in 1966. Henry Ford II did notwant the victory to look like a fluke sohe ordered a new car, built at Ford inthe U.S., which became the MK IV. Itwon again in 1967 and was then out-lawed by the French in the FIA. Fordthen pulled the plug on its factoryeffort. If you’re looking for yet moreFord GT pictures you’ve never seen,you’ll find a bunch of them in thisbook. We’re happy to have it on ourshelf.

THE COBRA-FERRARI WARS1963-1965, Second Edition byMichael L. Shoen. Hardcover; 8 1/2” x11”; 372 pages; 473 black & white pho-tos, 57 color photos. Published byCFW, 6719 E. Malcomb Dr, ParadiseValley, AZ 85253 480-483-3537 ;www.thecobraferrariwars.com $80.00+ $10 shipping,

We reviewed the first edition inissue #57, back in 1990. At that timewe said, “it is unlikely a better bookwill ever be written about the Cobra’sFIA Manufacturers Championship.”And we were right. It was the firstCobra book to sell for $100 and whilesome people rolled their eyes andwhistled, it eventually sold out. Therewere so many requests for anotherreprinting that Mike decided toundertake the project, even thoughthe original printer had lost the pro-duction films in 1995, and he hadreturned all of the photos and materi-al he initially borrowed. So it tooktime to retrace his steps.

The new edition contains someminor text corrections. The authoralso spoke with many of the originalCobra team members who added someperspective that was not available tohim the first go-around. He also soft-ened his view of Enzo Ferrari some.

“The Cobra-Ferrari Wars” tellsthe complete story of the CobraTeam’s advance, from the first SCCAproduction races in southernCalifornia in 1962 all the way to the1965 FIA events in Europe. The textis chronological, race by race and eachcar is discussed along with each driv-er. If you missed buying this book thefirst time around don’t let that hap-pen again because it’s not likely therewill be a 3rd printing.

SHELBY MUSTANG – Racer ForThe Street by Randy Leffingwell.Hardcover; 10 1/4” x 10 1/4”; 186pages; 8 black & white photos 289color. Published by MBI PublishingCo., Galtier Plaza, Suite 200, 380Jackson St., St. Paul, MN 566101;www.motorbooks.com $34.95 + $3.95shipping,

There haven’t been a lot of Shelbybooks written in the past few years,and for that you can thank the ShelbyAmerican World Registry. The lastregistry sucked the air out of theShelby book business. We’re not say-ing it contained all there was to writeabout these cars, but it put a majorchunk of it between its covers. Whatwas left? The retelling of Shelby histo-ry, shuffling some figures and bringingin some first or second person storiesabout individual cars. And of course,the photos. You can never get enoughphotos – especially rich, color shotsspread across a full page (and some-times a page and a half) in a large for-mat book. Or close-up detail shots of athings you miss when looking at theoverall car – a ‘68 Shelby fender badgeor a Cobra steering wheel center cap.And that’s where this book shines.Every type and model Cobra andShelby is represented. The cars are,for the most part, accurate restora-tions. Sprinkled through the pages area few historical shots that providesome context necessary to retell thestory. To sum it up, this book deservesa place on your book shelf. Afteryou’ve read the text and thumbedthrough the photos, you’ll put thisbook away, and then you’ll find your-self bringing it out six months later tohave another look. And you knowwhat? You won’t be bored.

COBRA – The First 40 Years byTrevor Legate. Hardcoverd; 11 3/4” x11 13/8”; 288 pages; 154 black &white photos 170 color. Published byMBI Publishing Co., Galtier Plaza,Suite 200, 380 Jackson St., St. Paul,MN 566101; www.motorbooks.com$50.00 + $6.95 shipping,The Cobra story is ongoing, and the

reason for that is the car’s popularity.Simply put, there are more people whowant a Cobra than there are Cobras togo around. Well, original Cobras, any-way. The supply of other Cobras –everything from AC MK IVs toCSX4000s and CSX7000s to just aboutany kind of Cobra replica you canname – is pretty much unlimited. Andthat’s why a new Cobra book is help-ful.

The original Cobra story, startingin 1961 and going through the end ofthe 1960s, has been recited,researched and rehashed ever sinceinterest in the cars took off like a bot-tle rocket in the 1970s. Everyone tellsthe story a little differently becausethere is no one “correct” perspectivebut the basic facts are unchanged. Sowhy, then, a new Cobra book? Theanswer can be framed in the “whathave you done lately” idiom. MostCobra histories tack on a few chaptersat the end to acknowledge the post-production Cobras – essentially any-thing looking like a Cobra and builtafter 1968. These look like the afterthoughts they are. But Trevor Legate,author of an earlier Cobra book whichwas equally well done, neatly encapsu-lates all of the Cobra variants – essen-tially Shelby’s current crop of cars, thecars turned out by AC Autokraft, andCobra replicas – into the yarn. Thereader sees where everything fits andalong the way is treated to some of thebest photography of these cars thatyou’ll find anywhere. If it’s been awhile since you bought a Cobra book,this is the one to break the draught.It’s that good.

FORD GT Then, and Now byAdrian Streather. Hardcover; 10 1/8” x10 1/8”; 240 pages; 190 black & whitephotos 302 color. Published by VelocePublishing Ltd, Dorchester, England.Available from Motorbooks, PO Box 1,Osceola, WI 54020; www.motorbooks.com $74.95 + shipping,

When Ford recreated its GT andunveiled it to an excited public morethan two years ago, it created an unin-tended consequence. The Ford GTstory now had a different ending and ahandful of perceptive automotive writ-ers rushed to their computers andword processors to update the tale.This isn’t a bad thing, because thereare far more period photos of FordGTs that there have been books pub-lished to showcase them in.

As the Ford GT project gainedmomentum, so did the photographicrecord of the cars’ progress. At firsteverything was in-house Ford but inan effort to keep interest high, thecompany began letting “outsiders” –journalists and photographers – get alook at the cars and talk to thoseresponsible for them. Several veryearly books resulted before productionwas completed. Others, like this one,saw the new Ford GTs as the secondhalf of the GT40 story. Context isrequired to show where the cars hadcome from and the 1964-1969 racingseasons provide that, in spades. Thebook dedicates about 25% to the newcars and then the last 25% to replicas.

The color photography is excellentthroughout the book but we have toadmit we were bothered by the graph-ics. Duo-tone photos were placedbehind a lot of the text, making it dif-ficult to read. Also, some photos hadborders and others did not. The lack ofconsistency detracted from the overallcomposition. Small points, but morethan made up for by the excellentquality and quantity of photos.

12 HOURS OF SEBRING 1965 byDave Friedman and Harry Hurst; pho-tographs by Dave Friedman.Hardcover; 11 1/4” x 9”; 196 pages;131 black & white photos 38 color.Published by Hurst CommunicationsInc, 111 Ladderback Ln, Devon, PA19333 610-725-9600; www.glorydaysofracing.com $39.95 + shipping, 250copies, numbered and signed byFriedman, Hurst and Jim Hall areavailable for $74.95 plus shipping.

An entire book about one race? Wecan hear Dave Friedman trying topitch that idea to a publisher. “It wasan important race... and I was there. Ishot a ton of really good photos...” Youcan sense the skeptical publisherbeginning to bend a little. “It was1965, the middle of the Cobra’s glorydays which led to the FIAChampionship...” More bending. “Butit wasn’t only the Cobras. There wasthe Chaparral, the Ford GT40s, theFerraris...” Finally the publisher iswon over.We won’t attempt to give you a his-

tory lesson about this race here.Suffice it to say that a lot of veryimportant elements were in play andthis book, through the use ofFriedman’s excellent period photogra-phy and Hurst’s brief snippets of text,shows how they all fit together to tellthe story of one of the most importantraces of the time. The photos appearchronologically, so although there aremultiple photos of the same cars, theircondition and race order is continuallychanging as the race progresses. Thereare also brief pull-quotes from some ofthe participants that explain thebehind-the-scenes stuff that makesracing so interesting. The appendixcontains detailed finishing results,Ford’s post-race report and examplesof media coverage. An added bonus isthe foreward by Jim Hall whichincludes commentary on hisChaparral and his driving techniquein it.

KEN MILES by Art Evans. Hard-bound; 11 1/4” x 9”; 124 pages; 129black & white photos. TBS, PO Box466, Hudson WI 54016; 800-289-3504orders@conografixing.com $34.95 +$3.95 shipping,

Carroll Shelby is the first one totell anyone that he could have neveraccomplished what he did with theCobras and Ford GTs without KenMiles. Miles was practically a legendin southern California sports car cir-cles before he went to work for CarrollShelby as a development driver andCompetition Manager. But most ofwhat we know about Ken Miles comesto us through his relationship withCarroll Shelby and Shelby American.The fact that he lost his life in 1966 —in the middle of Shelby American’sglory days — has resulted in a myopicview of Miles’ life.

Art Evans grew up in southernCalifornia and was introduced tosports car racing in 1954 when hisuncle took him to a race in PalmSprings where Ken Miles drove. Hewas 20 years old and he became a ded-icated fan. He went to every sports carrace he could, photographing cars anddrivers and especially Miles. A rela-tionship grew out of those early racesand the two became friends for therest of Miles’ life. This is a biographi-cal scrapbook told through remem-brances of Miles’ friends, competitors,and those who knew him. Evans alsomakes use of news clippings and pho-tos of Miles throughout his drivingcareer.

We know Ken Miles from racereports, period magazines and theflurry of memorials that followed hisdeath. This is a wonderful book (thefirst printing of 1000 sold out immedi-ately and a second printing was done).It fills in all the blanks of the life ofone of the best and most respectedCobra drivers who ever lived.

“...Just Call Me Carroll...!” by PhilHenny. Hardbound; 11 1/4” x 8 3/4”;147 pages, 101 color photos, 142 black& white. Published by Phil Henny,Portland, OR. Available throughwww.justcallmecarroll.com $69.95includes shipping & handling; $99.00for VIP edition, autographed andnumbered in slipcase.

So much has been written aboutCarroll Shelby, the people who workedfor him, and the cars they made thatit’s easy to think there’s nothing newto learn from yet one more book about“the Shelby days.” So this book comesas a pleasant surprise. Phil Hennywas hired as a race mechanic in 1967,so his book is written in the first-per-son. The stories are fresh – not thewords of some writer who was notthere, listening to those who were andthen retelling their stories.

Henny was born in Switzerlandand eventually graduated as a preci-sion mechanic. His love of racing andrace cars led to work as a racemechanic in Switzerland and in 1965his path crossed with the Cobra teamwhen the car he was with was garagednext to Shelby’s Daytona Coupes andGT40s at Monza.

In 1967 he finally got to America,landing in Los Angeles with a touristvisa and finding his way to ShelbyAmerican where he contacted TeamManager Carroll Smith, who he hadmet racing in Europe. His English wasnot the best but it was his fluency inItalian that got him the job. Al Dowdassisted him in negotiating the INSmaze and getting a green card.

This book is very interesting toread, and is chronological so it’s easyto follow. There are plenty of photos ofcars and people and a bonus are theautographs reproduced alongsidesome of the photos. Henny’s stories arefresh and unique. This book is a must-read for anyone who is interested inShelby American, the car and the peo-ple who made them. We recommend ithighly.

FORD RACING CENTURY - APhotographic History of FordMotorsports by Larry Edsall andMike Teske. Hardbound; 10 1/4” x 101/4”; 304 pages; 173 color photos, 232black & white. MBI Publishing,Galtier Plaza, Suite 200, 380 JacksonSt, St. Paul, MN 55101 $39.95.

Ford’s one-hundred year historyhas spawned several excellent retro-spects and this is one of them. When aprominent company like Ford stepsinto the racing arena, it does so in theglare of the spotlight where its fail-ures are as well documented as itssuccesses. There is no shortage of pho-tographic evidence of Ford’s competi-tion history and one of the most diffi-cult job in writing a book like this isdeciding what photos not to usebecause each one tells part of thestory. The 1967 LeMans line-up is onthe cover not by some coincidence oraccident. When Ford won LeMans itwas a milestone for the company.When they came back a year laterwith a totally new car it was the stufflegends are made out of. But this bookisn’t primarily about the Ford GTs. Itcovers Ford’s 100 years of competitionlike a blanket; everything from theearly days beginning with 999through Indianapolis, drag racing,NASCAR Grand National competition,sports car endurance races, drag rac-ing, Trans-Am, off-road and interna-tional rallying. At one point or anotherFord was involved in all of them andsooner or later they won them all. Thisbook capsulizes Ford’s hundred yearcompetition history nicely.

“The Cobra in the Barn” by TomCotter; 6” x 9”; 256 pages, 155 black &white photos. Published by MBIPublishing Co, St Paul, MN. Availablethrough www.motorbooks.com $24.95.

“Finding a desirable, old, aban-doned car in a half-forgotten barn –it’s one of the most potent dreams inthe automobile world.”

So begins Peter Egan’s forewordat the very beginning of Tom Cotter’snewest book. In one sentence, Egannails it. We all dream about finding agem of a car sitting somewhere –unrecognized, unwanted and unloved.The slimmer the chances, the morepowerful the dream. We’re lucky tohear about one “barn find” in a decade.Tom Cotter a SAAC member and aCobra owner, gathers up about fourdozen stories for his book, includingpictures. A lot are in the finders’ ownwords. Interesting reading, of course,but what it really translates into ishope for the rest of us. These are noturban legends – these cars were actu-ally found. They are a cross section ofcollector cars – including four differ-ent Cobras, a King Cobra and aShelby GT350.

This is an enjoyable and easyreading book that can be picked up forfifteen minutes at a time. And best ofall, it proves that dreams can cometrue.

RACING IN THE RAIN: My Yearswith Brilliant Drivers, LegendarySports Cars and a Dedicated Teamby John Horsman. Hardcover; 8 1/2” x9 1/4”; 426 pages; 230 black & whitephotos 52 color. Published by DavidBull Publishing, 4250 E. CamelbackRd, Suite K150, Phoenix, AZ 85018www.bullpublishing.com $49.95 +shipping,

Unless you’re a dyed-in-the-woolGT40 enthusiast you’ll probably needan introduction to John Horsman. Hewas an engineer for Aston Martin’sMonza-winning race team in 1963.Following that he joined John Wyer atFord Advanced Vehicles, playing alarge part in developing the GT40.With Wyer, he was a director of JWAutomotive, in charge of developmentand preparation of the Gulf Miragesand GT40s which won LeMans in1968 and 1969. When Gulf switched toPorsches in 1970, he was responsiblefor the Gulf 917s winning the FIASports Car Championship in 1970 and1971. He then developed the M1, M2and M3 Mirages and the subsequentM6, GR7 and GR8 Mirages, one ofwhich won LeMans in 1975.This book covers all of these cars in

fine detail, as well as the drivers whopiloted them. But not only that (as if itwasn’t enough), Horsman alsoincludes many behind the scene sto-ries that only someone on the veryinside can know. And the picturesalone are worth the book’s price.

Winning race teams are success-ful because of a number of factors:designers, fabricators and mechanics,drivers and a number of others whoplay a crucial role. But the head engi-neer is the one who creates the car onwhich the mechanics work and thedrivers drive. The credit for trulygreat teams is usually laid at the feetof one man who keeps everyone elsefocused. For the Gulf team that wasJohn Horsman.

THE SALEEN BOOK - 20 Years ofSaleen Mustangs and OwnerRegistry 1984 - 2003 by BradBowling. Hardbound; 11” x 9 1/4”; 318pages; 554 color photos, 132 black &white; Driveway Books, PO Box 5247,Concord, NC 28027 www.driveway-books.com $60 (autographed/num-bered edition $120).

We’re always intrigued by reg-istries, having dabbled in that subjectourselves every now and then. Seeinghow others attack the problem isalways interesting and often enlight-ening. Brad Bowling’s Saleen book isreally two books in one. The first partis a detailed, year by year history ofthe Saleen Mustang. There are plentyof color photos – of cars as well asunique features. It’s hard to believethat the first year of production was1984.

The second part of the book is theactual registry. Each car is listed insequential production order, alongwith the cars’ shipping date and, formost cars, special equipment on thecar when they left the factory. Noattempt has been made to track thehistory of each car, with the exceptionof listing past owners where known.

Steve Saleen’s wife, Liz, has beenthe keeper of records since the verybeginning, so most of the original own-ers are listed. The Saleen Mustangshave always been thought of by theirowners as being special. Team Saleenhas maintained this feeling by encour-aging owner updates. Communicatingwith “the factory” has an aura all itsown and this adds to the Saleen mys-tique.

Also included is a MediaBibliography containing a listing, inchronological order, of every magazinearticle featuring a Saleen. It’s a prettyamazing list.

If you own or ever thought of own-ing a Saleen, you need this book.

The Complete Guide To CobraReplicas. 4th Edition by Curt Scott.Softbound; 8” x 10 1/2”; 84 pages, 20in color. Crown Publishing Co, PO Box1337, Santa Clarita, CA 91386.www.cobracountry.com $22.95 plus $5shipping & handling

This is the 4th edition of the inde-fatigable Curt Scott’s guide to theworld of Cobra replicas, and it keepsgetting better each time. Scott is alsothe webmeister of one of the bestCobra sites on the internet –www.cobracountry.com. Does this guyever sleep? Make no mistake — thisbook is a lot more than just a catalogof manufacturers’ ads, road tests andhow-to-buy articles. Included is a his-tory of Cobra replicas, a detailed arti-cle about driving in an open trackevent, articles about ERA and its facil-ity, the West Coast PerformanceCenter, and Cobra suspensions. Thereare also extensive listings of Cobramanufacturers, Cobra clubs and Cobraparts suppliers. This book is informa-tive, concise and well done. In fact,when someone contacts SAAC HQ andasks about Cobra replicas, we referthem to this book. Can we give it anyhigher recommendation that that?

MUSTANG RACE CARSby Dr. John Craft. Hardbound; 192pages; 88 B&W photos,106 color. MBIPublishing Co., St. Paul, MN $39.95.There haven’t been very many new

Mustang books to hit the racks lately.That’s probably due in part to the factthat there just isn’t that much newmaterial that has been unearthed. Thefield has been plowed, replowed andplowed again. So there’s nothing newleft to tell. Right?Don’t tell that to Dr. John Craft.

We’ve known John for a long time (hisSAAC membership goes back some20+ years) and to say he knowsMustangs is an understatement; likesaying it gets warm in Florida inAugust. And being from Florida (nicesegue, eh?), he also has a deep interestin cars of the NASCAR persuasion.“Mustang Race Cars” begins, appro-

priately enough, in 1965 when theMustang was brand new. A handfulwere made into race cars almostimmediately and they are covered insome detail, showing where they fitinto the overall racing history. As youwould expect, a fair amount of space isdedicated to Shelby race cars. Craftuses a good combination of archivephotos and stuff he has shot a vintageraces and car shows. The evolution fol-lows to Trans-Am cars in 1966, 1967and 1968, then the ‘69-71 Boss 302s. Dr. Craft also fills in the blanks on a

less well known Mustang racer - theNASCAR Grand Touring/GrandAmerican Division. Sometimes called“Baby Grands,” these cars were run atNASCAR tracks in the south and wereeffective marketing tools for ponycars. All in all, this is a pretty comprehen-

sive book with lots of photos you’venever seen before. It ties up racingMustangs into a nice, neat packagethat shows you just where a particularMustang race car fits into the mar-que’s overall history. You’ll learn some-thing you didn’t know.

CANNONBALL! World’s GreatestOutlaw Road Race by Brock Yates.Hardbound; 288 pages; 55 B&W pho-tos, 20 color. MBI Publishing Co., St.Paul, MN $24.95.Is there a living, breathing motor-

head worthy of the name who doesn’tknow what the Cannonball is? Wedoubt it. For the uninitiated, it was arace from the east coast to the westcoast. There was only one rule: “thereare no rules.” Any number of driverscould could take any land-based vehi-cle, outfitted with any equipment andtravel over any route they chosebetween the starting point and thefinishing point. Lowest elapsed timewould win.Five Cannonballs were run between

1972 and 1979 and no less than sixmajor motion pictures would eventual-ly be made, loosely based on thisevent. It was the brainchild of automo-tive writer and Car and Driver SeniorEditor Brock Yates. “Why the hell notrun a race across the United States?”Yates proposed to fellow C/D staffersone day in early 1971. “A balls-out,shoot-the-moon, screw-the-establish-ment rumble from New York to LosAngeles to prove what we had beenharping about for years, i.e., that gooddrivers in good automobiles couldemploy the American Interstate systemthe same way the Germans were usingtheir Autobahns. Yes, high-speed travelby car a reality! Truth and justiceaffirmed by an overtly illegal act.”Some of his peers at the magazine

decried the idea as childish and ridicu-lous and labeled Yates a lunatic andan anarchist. This only goaded himon. A few months later he quietlyissued a word-of-mouth challenge to ahandful of enthusiasts who had ini-tially expressed a high level of interestin participating in the adventure, butby the time the starting date rolled

around they had all disappeared.Undaunted, Yates, two other drivers,and his fourteen year-old son wheeleda new Dodge van they named “MoonTrash” from Manhattan to RedondoBeach, non-stop, in 40 hours and 51minutes. The exploit was dutifully reported in

his monthly column in C/D, and Yatessimply could not resist hinting thatthere just might be another attempt inthe near future. In so doing hetouched a raw nerve within the U.S.automotive community. Virtuallyeveryone who read the magazineseemed to have an opinion on the ulti-mate car, the ultimate equipment andthe ultimate route.

The rest is, as they say, history.However, it was mostly an oral historyand you know how details morphwhen a story is passed from person toperson. By the time the inauguralCannonball was approaching its 30thbirthday, it had become a bona fidelegend. The idea to write the book,Yates confides on the first page of itsintroduction, grew out of a phone callhe received from a college student whowas writing a senior thesis on theCannonball races and their impact onsociety. The young man wanted tointerview him in order to talk about“The Cannonball Run” movie, whichhad starred Burt Reynolds and FarrahFawcett, and for which Yates had writ-ten the screenplay. The studentexplained that the movie had becomea late night cult classic; it waswatched over and over in frat housesand dorms, to the point where parts ofthe dialog could be repeated by heart.Most, however, had no idea that the

movie was based in fact. TheCannonball was not an urban legendor a piece of fiction that had beenturned into a slap-stick Hollywoodscreenplay. There really had been aseries of coast-to-coast races in whichdrivers screamed across the country ina mad dash to get to the other coastfaster than anyone else. And scamsbecame a part of the equation. Oneteam dressed in black suits withreversed collars, impersonatingpriests. Another tried to scare offauthorities by posing as satellitetrackers armed with Geiger countersand veiled threats of radioactivity.Two doctors carried a specimen jarcontaining pigs eyes, ostensibly trans-porting them to an emergency eyetransplant operation. A trans-conti

nental ambulance was outfitted withuniformed attendants, a real doctorand a supposedly critically ill passen-ger sprouting an IV. And yes, one hap-less chucklehead even attempted(unsuccessfully, as it would turn out)to impersonate a police officer inhopes of receiving “professional cour-tesies” when apprehended for speed-ing.Yates’ book is an attempt to get

everything on the record before thedetails become lost forever to thecloudy memories of the participantsdue to their advancing age.What’s this all got to do with Shelby

American, you ask? Well, it just sohappens that one of the cars that par-ticipated in the 1979 running was a1965 GT350 (5S176, to be exact). Ex-Cobra team driver Dan Gurney co-drove a Ferrari Daytona 375 GTB-4with Yates to win the event in 1971with a time of 35 hours and 54 min-utes. When asked by a reporter fromthe LA Times how fast they had driv-en, Gurney said, with a straight face,“At no time did we exceed 175 milesper hour.” That was the truth becauseat one point, out of curiosity, he hadnudged the Ferrari to its top speed of172 MPH through the desert along I-10 in California. One of the bogus priests in the 1972

run was Cobra Daytona Coupe design-er Peter Brock. They drove aMercedes sedan and finished third.And in 1975, one of the drivers of aChevy-powered 1951 Studebaker wasCobra, GT350 and Mustang Trans-Amdriver Ray Cuomo. Due to a leakyrear main seal their entry consumed57 quarts of oil during the trip andfailed to finish.All in all, this book is a very enter-

taining read and contains enoughnuts-and-bolts details to get youthinking about what YOU would driveand what route YOU would take ifthere ever was another Cannonball...But there won’t be, so just keep

dreaming.

LOST MUSCLE CARS by Wes Eis-enschenk. 6 1/4˝ x 9 1/4˝ hardcover;240 pages, 90 color photos, 49 black &white. Published by Car Tech, ForestLake, MN. wwwcartechbooks.com$26.95

The term “automotive archeology”seems to have been coined about adozen years ago, around the time that“barn find” entered the automotive en-thusiast’s lexicon. This coincided witha noticeable jump in prices of col-lectible cars, which some have attrib-uted to the arrival of televisedauctions on cable TV, notably Barrett-Jackson in Scottsdale, Arizona. Theyare all interconnected, although whichcame first and led to the others is achicken-and-the-egg question.

Finding a long-forgotten car in abarn is one of the Holy Grails that carenthusiasts search for. Initially one ofthe motives is, certainly, the idea ofbeing able to find an abandoned car,ideally with low mileage and notpicked clean of significant parts, andbuy it at a bargain basement price.

Another aspect is the thrill of thehunt, only occasionally followed by thepleasure of the kill. More often thannot the search leads to a dry hole. Thisonly motivates the dedicated detectiveto continue, and stories of close callsand dead ends are sometimes as inter-esting as finding a car itself. And find-ing it is no guarantee of anything.Neglected and forgotten cars can oftenturn out to be virtually worthless andserve as little more than a thinning ofthe herd. One less treasure to be dis-covered.

Not all barn finds are createdequal. There is a hierarchy which val-ues the aforementioned low mileage,condition and rarity. Up near the topof the scale are race cars, prototype orshow cars, muscle cars, cars withunique history or that have hadcelebrity owners. Stories about “lost”cars are always of interest to auto en-thusiasts and are eagerly read in carmagazines and on Internet websitesand blogs. They also provide materialfor books. Like this one.

Wes Eisenschenk has collectedforty-five stories about, as the book’ssubtitle says, “the most elusive andvaluable muscle cars.” Not all of themhave been found, which provides hopefor the dreamers among us. The bookis divided into four sections: concept/promo/prototype muscle, rare musclecars, race cars and celebrity-ownedmuscle cars. Eisenschenk has not per-sonally engaged in all of thesesearches, but has combined storiesfrom a number of others to form thebody of this book. It makes for a veryfascinating read, even if, as a Shelbyguy, you’re not really that interestedin Camaros or Dodges. You begin tosee it’s the story that counts, not thekind of car it centers around.

On particular interest to Shelbyenthusiasts are the chapters on two

famous cars which remain missing tothis day: Jim Morrison’s ‘67 GT500“Blue Lady” and 1969 Playboy Play-mate of the Year Connie Kreski’s pink‘69 GT500. Interest in both cars is offthe scale because although they arewell known, neither has ever turnedup, leaving the possibility – howeverslim it might be after four decades –that someone could hit the lost car lot-tery. There is no way to predictwhether that might come as the resultof painstaking and dedicated detectivework or just dumb luck. Either way,help won’t come from either celebrityas they have passed on to a placewhere cars are not needed for trans-portation.

As a sub-category, probably thelargest number of lost cars are theones that have been drag raced. Notall of them were campaigned bynames you would recognize or by bigname performance dealers. Sometimessomeone working at a dealershipwould convince the owner that spon-soring a car optioned for drag racingwould be exactly the kind of advertis-ing that would attract hoards of buy-ers to their doors. Sometimes it did,but often it took a long time commit-ment for a dealership to become notedfor performance – not one car.

Typically with most drag cars,after something faster was found theowner would sell the “old” car and itusually started it’s way down the foodchain. At some point enough partswere taken off of it that it no longerhad any value as a race car. Cars likethis often passed through so manyowners that their original history waslost. Many of the features that madethem identifiable had been removed,replaced or modified. Stories aboutcars like this are interesting and thisbook is filled with them. Once youstart reading it’s hard to stop.

CAR GUY SHTUFF – Bugs in YourTeeth, Wind in Your Hair by BillFulk. 6 ˝ x 9˝ softcover; 259 pages, 62black & white photos. Published byBill Fulk. Sacramento, California;available from www.amazon.com$9.99, $4.99 Kindle.

SAAC member Bill Fulk fromSacramento, California began attend-ing various Shelby meets in 2012 withthe idea of taking photos of the Cobrashe saw and writing a brief report ofwhat went on. Turns out he is a prettygood writer, using a light, conversa-tional style and adding enough obser-vations and opinions to keep hisnarrative moving right along. It’spleasantly addicting.

Fulk pretty much limited himselfto Shelby club publications: the Nor-Cal Region’s monthly newsletter, “Dri-ven,” and SAAC’s quarterly ShelbyAmerican magazine. This make sensefor two reasons. First, the subjects heis covering are exactly what readers ofthese publications are interested in.And second, club publications alwayshave trouble trying to fill their pageswith good articles and pictures con-tributed by members. With essentiallyno budget to pay for anything, tryingto keep a club publication on scheduledepends on a steady stream of articlesand pictures. Once an issue is printed

there is another one coming alongright behind it. Editors are grateful forinteresting articles and the more wellwritten they are, the better. For peoplewho enjoy writing, it’s a perfect fit:they can always find a spot for theirwork. They are only limited by theirimagination.

The book contains more thanthirty chapters which are, in essence,reports of events he attended. The nubof the book revolves around theCobra’s 50th birthday celebration. TheCobra was introduced in 1962 andwhen its 50th anniversary rolledaround, virtually every event on thecalendar had some sort of a Cobracommemoration. They started in LasVegas, home of Shelby American, inMarch with a “50th AnniversaryBash.” A month later there was a cel-ebration in Pomona, California at theWally Parks NHRA Museum and Fulkwas there, rubbing elbows with thevarious VIPs and snapping pictureseverywhere.

Fulk next appeared up at SAAC’s37th convention at Watkins Glen, onthe other side of the country. It had, aspart of its activities, yet another Cobraanniversary celebration. It was herethat we caught up with Fulk and witha wide grin on our face and our tonguefirmly planted inside our cheek, wechallenged him to cover every majorCobra 50th Anniversary event: AutoWeek in Monterey including the Con-cours on the Avenue in Carmel, thevintage races at Mazda Raceway, thePebble Beach Concours, the show atThe Quail and a handful of auctionssprinkled around the Monterey Penin-sula. The NorCal Mini-Nats at SearsPoint Raceway in Novato, California;the Shelby American Collection mu-seum get-together in Boulder, Col-orado; and the Goodwood MotorsportsRevival in England.

In all honesty, we never expectedFulk to accept our challenge. He callsSacramento his home, so attendingthe Mini-Nats and Monterey were no-brainers. Boulder was more than ahop, skip and jump away and a trip toEngland? That was a major excursion.When he filed reports for The ShelbyAmerican and included photos hisstock rose exponentially.

This book goes beyond 2014 asFulk traces his tracks from event toevent through 2015, with an eye onCobras and Shelbys. Obviously notmany people can afford to go to all ofthese events, so being able to readabout them is the next best thing.Fulk’s words help bring them eventsto life. We have recently learned thatBill Fulk was named as editor of Nor-Cal’s “Driven” magazine, so we expectwe will be seeing a lot more of his“schtuff.” We have a feeling this mightbe just the first such book. If that’s thecase, we look forward to the next one.

1968 SHELBY MUSTANG GT350,GT500 and GT500KR by Greg Ko-lasa. 8 1/4˝ x 9 ˝ softcover; 96 pages,132 color photos. Published by CarTech, Forest Lake, MN. wwwcartech-books.com $18.95

Car Tech Auto Books is publishinga series of books called “Muscle Carsin Detail,” each one concentrating ona particular classic muscle car. To datethere are six in the series: ‘70 ChevelleSS, ‘71 Plymouth Cuda, ‘69 CamaroSS, ‘69 Plymouth Road Runner, ‘73-’74Pontiac Trans-Am, and ‘68 ShelbyMustang.

Written by SAAC member GregKolasa, who has gained broad experi-ence with Shelbys, serving as theclub’s Hertz and GT40 registrar aswell as researching and writing sev-eral sections of its various registries,the book is well written and taughtlyorganized. It begins with an overviewof Ford’s performance program in the1960s, where and how Carroll Shelbyfit into the picture, and the basic his-tory of where the 1968 models fit intoShelby history. Context is needed totell the story, and Kolasa providesplenty of it.

The book uses color photography(both historical and current) to showspecific Shelby-unique details. Thetext explains them in great detail.Much of this can be confusing to thenovice and Kolasa does a great job insorting everything out and explainingthe exceptions to the rules – and withlimited-production cars like Shelbysthere are plenty of exceptions.

The book is not afraid to dive intothe mechanical nitty-gritty, explainingthe different specifications for thethree basic models: GT350, GT500and GT500KR. It explains productionaspects and answers questions suchas, why convertibles were added to theproduct line and outlines options andcolors. In short, it’s all here and whilenot making everyone who reads thisbook a concours judge (no book can), atleast they will be able to identify thevarious models and know the differ-ence between them. It’s an excellentstarting point to begin the trip intoShelby history.

Kolasa also takes time to explainside issues, like options and specifica-tions (using easy-to-understandcharts), the explanation of serial num-bers (the pedigree of any Shelby), spe-cial colors, rarity and values. For 1968,Shelby production was shifted fromSouthern California to Michigan, tothe A.O. Smith Corporation and this isalso explained. There was a Hertzrent-a-car program for 1968 and thisis also detailed, as is production ofFord’s 1968 Mustang California Spe-cial, a cousin of the Shelby. In short,Kolasa has left nothing out in tellingthe 1968 story.

It is obvious Car Tech’s series willeventually include books on each yearShelby, and if they are as thoroughand well written as this book they willalso be as successful.

It is fascinating and we won’t givetoo many of the details away, but itturned out that Shelby had no fundingand Ford was not about to begin shov-eling money at him. He knew Hugusthrough sports car racing (in the1950s it was like one big fraternity)and saw Hugus, owner of a successfulforeign car dealership in Pittsburgh,as a potential affiliate that he couldpartner up with to get productionmoving on the East Coast (where en-gineless cars would be brought intothe country). Hugus, with connectionsall over the East Coast, would alsomake a perfect distributor for the car.

Ed Hugus was happy to get in-volved because it was an exciting proj-ect, but he never wanted to be Shelby’spartner. All he wanted was to be adealer and to race a Cobra. Ford, how-ever, seemed more satisfied withHugus’ business operation than withShelby’s, which was non-existant. Inthose early days when nothing wascertain and Shelby was scrambling tomake his idea reality, he was alsoparanoid that someone – like Hugus –could get between him and Ford andtake his idea across the goal line.Shelby was in a tight spot: he neededHugus but didn’t quite trust him, andFord was not completely sold on theTexan. It is a fascinating story, toldwith the authority that only a princi-pal has.

This book corrects many miscon-ceptions of Cobra history and becauseof the through research that Walkerhas done, the story becomes muchclearer. In addition, the serial numberof every Cobra involved is included inthe text, giving it that much more au-thority. It is obvious that this researchwas provided by Cobra Registrar NedScudder, who is credited in the book’spreface. The foreword is written byPeter Brock.

The book is profusely illustratedwith pictures from Hugus’ personalcollection as well as race entry lists,photos of his awards, dash plaquesand other memorabilia. Ed Hugusraced from the early 1950s through1970, but the Cobra portion was,clearly, the most important. You won’tknow the complete Cobra story untilyou read this book.

thusiasts). He was soft-spoken andmodest about his experiences and his-tory. Walker, a Cobra owner living inPebble Beach, was competing at theMonterey vintage races and was alsorestoring an early Cobra. He was men-tioned in an article in the Carmelnewspaper and that prompted EdHugus, also a Pebble Beach resident,to contact him. Hugus had a couple oforiginal Cobra pieces and inquired ifWalker would like to have them. Thisled, first, to lunch and then to a friend-ship that lasted two years, untilHugus passed away from pneumonia.During that time, Hugus spoke in de-tail of his experiences with CarrollShelby and the part he played in thebeginning of Cobra history. As Walkerheard Hugus’ revelations, he realizedhow thin the beginning of the storywas after fifty years of Cobra adora-tion. Here was a story that needed tobe told.

The Cobra tale, as we presentlyknow it, came almost exclusively fromCarroll Shelby. Shelby explainedeverything in his 1965 book, “TheCobra Story” (as told to John Bentley).Shelby was interviewed about the carby anyone remotely considered to bean “automotive journalist.” It was a re-markable story and Shelby became ex-ceedingly good at telling it. Thetrouble was, it was his story; he con-trolled the narrative. He provided thedetails that others wrote about. Andnow, fifty-five years later, we learnthere is another side to his story. ForCobra enthusiasts, this is juicy stuff.

The beginnings of the Cobra storyhave traditionally been told using asimplified time line: Shelby has hisidea for his own sports car. He contactsAC Cars and proposes building a sportcar (Shelby’s term) using a new light-weight Ford engine. Almost simultane-ously he contacts Ford and tells themhe has a perfect sport car, if only hehad an engine. Ford, on the brink oftheir Total Performance campaign,leaps at the opportunity to have a“Corvette-slayer” in its showrooms.Actually, it turns out there was a lotmore to it than that, and there was agood reason why Shelby stuck to hisown script. Through Ed Hugus,Walker unrolls the real story.

COBRA PILOTE – The Ed HugusStory by Robert D. Walker. 9 1/4˝ x 111/4 ˝ hardcover; 304 pages, 114 colorand 146 black & white photos. Pub-lished by Dalton Watson Fine Books,Deerfield, Illinois. wwwdaltonwatson.com $89.00.

After fifty years, you’d think thatall the books about Cobras and thosewho raced them would have alreadybeen written. You’d think. But as soonas you do, another book pops up, likethis one, which is not a rehash ofsomething previously written. It’s abrand new book, in this case, aboutsomeone who played an integeral partin the Cobra story in the earliest daysbut as things spooled up, he was leftby the wayside. In short, if youthought you knew the beginning of theCobra story, you don’t. After you readRobert Walker’s book, you will. It isthoroughly researched and well writ-ten.

Ed Hugus passed away in 2006and for a period of time prior to that,he stayed out of the public eye (as wellas the probing inquiries of Cobra en-

TRANS-AM ERA The Golden Yearsin Photographs: 1966-1972 by DanielLipetz. 9 1/2˝ x 11 1/4 ˝ hardcover; 224pages, 65 color and 203 B&W photos.Published by David Bull Publishing,Phoenix, AZ. www.bullpublishing.com$69.95

The Trans-Am Series between1966 and 1972 was one of the mostpopular racing series in this country.The cars were based on models youcould actually buy in a showroom. Thefactories were not afraid to back theirteams. And the drivers the series

SHELBY MUSTANG GT350 byChuck Cantwell with Greg Kolasa. 91/2˝ x 11 1/4 ̋ hardcover; 224 pages, 68color and 113 B&W photos. Publishedby David Bull Publishing, Phoenix,AZ. www.bullpublishing.com $49.95

This book has been a long time incoming, but it has been worth thewait. If you don’t know who ChuckCantwell is, you’re reading the wrongmagazine. Chuck has not exactly beena stranger in Shelby circles; he hasbeen to more conventions, meets andcar shows than you can count, and hasspoken at virtually all of them. So hisexperiences and remembrances shouldbe fairly well known to those of us whoeagerly drink this Shelby stuff up.Right? Well, yes – and no.

In telling his entire story throughthe pages of this book, Chuck bringsGT350 history life, not in small biteshere and there, but in one completemeal. It’s also told in his own words(and why not – it’s his book). Whilereading it you have no trouble imagin-ing you are sitting across from him,listening to him spin the tale. And an-swering all of the questions you wouldhave never thought to ask.

attracted were some of the best in thiscountry. What’s not to like?

The subject of the Trans-Am hasbeen captivating for both racers andrace fans. It has been thoroughly cov-ered by a number of books and numer-ous magazine articles. One of thereasons for this current popularity isthat these cars have been found, re-stored to the way they were originallyraced, and they compete in more thana dozen vintage Trans-Am racesthroughout the year, every year. Andat these events they are usually themost popular class. They are colorful,loud and exciting and they bring backmemories of a simpler time in racing.Maybe Dan Gurney, Parnelli Jonesand George Follmer aren’t drivinganymore, but that are frequently in-vited as special guests for the week-end.

With all of the books and articlesthat have been written and all of thepictures used to illustrate them, you’dthink there was not much you to belearned by yet another rehash of theTrans-Am. And you would be wrong.Every time someone decides to writeabout something like the Trans-Am,new pictures surface, new captions arewritten and new stories are told in thetext. The Trans-Am is a is a rich vine-yard for these stories. The low-hang-ing fruit has already been picked butall that means is that someone has togo back and reach higher and digdeeper for new stories. And Dan Lipetzhad done his job there. We know thestory and we know how rach raceturns out. But it turns out there’s a lotwe never knew about the Trans-Am.We don’t care how many Trans-Ambooks you’ve read – if you want to bewell-versed on this subject you need toread this book. Thank us later.

Anyone who thinks they know alot about early Shelbys is going tolearn a lot by reading this book. Muchlike a jigsaw puzzle, you might knowthe intricacies of most of the pieces in-dividually (the details of a ‘65tachometer, intake manifold, tractionbars, etc) but it’s not until ChuckCantwell lays everything out that youwill see where all of the pieces fit.

Greg Kolasa, an exceptionallyknowledgeable Shelby enthusiast,knows what questions to ask to keepCantwell focused and on point. As a re-sult, the story never wanders or stum-bles. This book is an absolute must-read for anyone who wants to knowthe “why” behind the GT350 story.

RACING TO RIVERSIDE by BradR. Leach. 8 ̋ x 10˝ softcover; 151 pages,45 color photos, 60 black & white.$25.95. Available only from:

www.racingtoriverside.com

MOTOR BINDER - Classic photo-graphs from the golder age of motorracing by Roy Spencer. 10 3/4˝ ˝ x 81/4˝ softcover; 321 pages, 13 colorphotos, 176 black & white. $69.00.Available only from:

www.motorbinder.comThis is one of the most interesting

books of its kind that we’ve seen lately.The 1950s and 1960s were, truly, thegolden age of sports car racing in thiscountry. European cars like Ferrari,Jaguar, Maserati, Lotus and Porschewere just finding their way into this

Leach leaves nothing out. Certainlyone of Hane’s high points was winningthe 1966 SCCA B/Production NationalChampionship at Riverside; hence thebook’s title. There are also plenty ofpictures. We imagine they came fromHane’s scrapbook. Most racers assem-ble something like this over the years.While you are racing you don’t havetime to take pictures but photogra-phers and fans are always happy toshare pictures they took with you. Ifyou like R-Models, if you enjoy readingabout the 1965-1966 period in general,or if you just want to see how the storyof one car can masterfully be told, thisis an excellent example. You’ll want toadd it to your library. Walt Hane hasan interesting story to tell about histwo years in 5R103’s driver’s seat andBrad Leach was the perfect guy to tellit to. We have the feeling that thisbook will sell out quickly.

We can’t recall ever seeing anotherbook like this, and it is both extremelyinteresting and well done. Essentially,it is the detailed story about one car –5R103 – and its driver, Walt Hane,during the 1965 and 1966 racing sea-sons. We can only guess at the incred-ible amount of time it took authorBrad Leach to interview Walt Hanebecause he has included the prepara-tion of this car, Hane’s racing it in eachevent, and maintaining it after eachrace, using a very large magnifyingglass. If you ever wondered what itwas like to race one of these cars backin the day, here it is. Leach has toldthe story and instead of it reading likea dull shop manual, it’s closer to a his-torical novel. Every race is covered inchronological order, and Walt Hane’smemory is flawless. As an engineer, heaccurately recalls the details of every-thing that was done to the car. But healso recalls every detail of each race.

country. American manufacturerswere stepping up to meet them head-on with the Corvette and the Cobra inthe forefront. Drivers that we now rec-ognize as the great names – Dan Gur-ney, Phil Hill, Ken Miles, Jim Hall,Bruce McLaren – were cutting theirteeth, on their way to becoming house-hold names. At least in racing house-holds. History was being made andthis book shows important snatches ofit. It is not a complete overview ofsports car racing history during thesetwo decades, and makes no attempt atbeing one. The photographic imageswere taken from, as author Spencerdescribes, “an archive that languishedfor almost for decades.” The pictureswere taken by a variety of photogra-phers. Most are printed in sharp-focusblack and white, and are accompaniedby brief but detailed captions thatidentify the people in them and pro-vide capsulized information about howthe cars or people, or both, fit into thehistorical landscape. The final third ofthe book is dedicated to Bev Spencer,a San Francisco Buick/Ferrari/Lotusdealer who actively campaigned a va-riety of big bore sports cars (as a teamowner and not as a driver). Most of thepictures show him or the cars he spon-sored. The book’s author, Roy Spencer,is Bev’s son and that explains a lot.Spencer’s first real race car was pur-chased a 1962 Maserati Tipo 151Coupe which had previously run ashigh as second at LeMans. Spencerasked local driver Stan Peterson to behis wheelman. The first race was atVacaville Valley Raceway and on thesecond lap Peterson, with no time be-hind the wheel, left the track, flippingthe car and doing some serious dam-age. The pictures of the car, before,during and after are thought-provok-ing. This book is a terrific look back atan exciting period in sports car history.

tion. In putting this book together heinterviewed more than seventy-fivedrivers, engineers, team owners andrace mechanics and tells the story ofthe series in their words and throughtheir eyes. Helping to document thingsare the photos of Pete Biro, one of thebest known race photographers of thetime. He attended every Can-Am raceand his photographs were widely usedin Road & Track Car and Driver andSports Illustrated.

There’s no doubt the Can-Am se-ries was the most exciting, colorful andjust plain kick-ass racing in the late1960s and early 1970s. Innovationspopped up at every race, making it acontinuous game of catch-up. It at-tracted the best drivers in the world.There was nothing to match the thun-dering stampede of three dozen ofthese mechanical monsters as theytook the green flag and dove into thefirst turn. Levy captures all of it. Thisbook makes you wish you were there.

CAN-AM 50TH ANNIVERSARY -Flat Out with North America’sGreatest Race Series 1966-1974 byGeorge Levy, photographs by PeteBiro. 10˝ x 12 1/4˝; hardcover; 269pages; 136 black and white photos, 166color. $60. Quartoknows.com

You might think that with a hand-ful of other books already writtenabout a specific subject like the unlim-ited Can-Am series from 1966 through1974, there wouldn’t be much thatcould be said about it. But you wouldbe wrong. Those previous books onlyserve as a review of what is alreadyknown; not that there is nothing moreto be discovered about the subject.George Levy has approached the Can-Am from a refreshingly different direc-

that has already been thoroughlytrampled. Glatch’s book is different; heprovides context. Fords (and Shelbys)were not produced in a vacuum. GMand Chrysler were creating musclecars at the same time and there wasnot only competition on race tracksbut also in dealer showrooms.

Glatch divides his book into threesections: dealers that produced theirown specialized versions of productioncars, creating a niche market for buy-ers who wanted something more thanthe manufacturer was willing to pro-vide; specialists like Shelby Americanwho built special models; and themajor manufacturers, themselves, whoprovided the basic cars the other twosegments used as stepping stones. Thebook provides details on all three.

The COMPLETE BOOK OF AMER-ICAN MUSCLE SUPERCARS byTom Glatch. 10˝ x 12 1/4˝; hardcover;324 pages; 28 black and white photos,324 color. $50. Quartoknows.com

We are naturally attracted to anybook that includes Shelbys, and thisbook has them – from the first Cobrato the current Shelby Mustangs. Butplenty of Shelby books have been writ-ten, and most all of them cover ground