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The Diamond Jim Brady Award had to go to Howard Pardee who brought both of his Shelbys to the convention all the way from Connecti-cut. He his R-Model, 5R095, shipped out on Cobra Automotive’s tractor trailer rig while he drove his ‘07 GT500 cross-country. In a glibattempt to recreate history, Pardee stopped at the Little America Travel Center on I-80 in Little America, Wyoming so he could recreate thescene pictured in the 1965 Sports Car Graphic 10,000-mile road test article [above. right]. SCG Editor John Christy drove a ‘65 GT350 pub-lic relations car (SFM5007) from Los Angeles to Daytona, then to Sebring, then to New York City and then back to Los Angeles in Febru-ary/March of 1965 and chronicled his exploits in an expanded road test (which was carried in the June and July issues). Pardee waitedpatiently until the same gas pump in Christy’s picture was available and parked his car in the exact same spot. The only thing missing inPardee’s photo were the attendants wearing white coveralls and swooning over the car. Traveling companions Aliberto and Kopec filled in.After his fill-up Pardee asked if they gave S&H Green Stamps like they did in 1965. The attendant looked at him like he had three eyes,nodded his head towards the door, and told him to “hit the road.”

SAAC-32 was the first convention that had newgen ‘07 GT500s in attendance and the owners of these cars were certainly not bashful aboutputting them on the track. The fact that these cars were under warranty seemed to provide a degree of comfort not afforded to those drivingoriginal GT350s and GT500s..

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One of the more exciting incidents taking place during theopen track was when a red Mustang experienced a cata-strophic fuel line leak. Raw fuel hit the exhaust and thecar caught fire but the driver didn’t panic: no easy thingwhen all you see in your rear view mirror is flames. Nev-ertheless, he had the presence of mind to pull off the trackright near a corner station. Not out in the middle of no-man’s land. He remembered something important fromthe driver’s meeting—the corner workers have the fireextinguishers. So he coasted to a stop within 10 feet of thecorner worker and bailed out of the window. The fire truckwas there in the blink of an eye. With marshmallows.

We’re pretty much convinced that if someone attended every SAACconvention they would have seen every car with a unique history.The “Flip-Top” was Ken Miles’ idea of a special, lightweight bigblock Cobra that would make mincemeat out of the CorvetteGrandsport. And it did. At the Nassau Speed Weeks in Novemberof 1963 the appearance of this car turned a lot of smug smiles inGM’s camp into frowns.

Bill Murray can usually be found behind the wheel of CSX3032 atmost of the larger vintage races. The car is owned by Larry Millerand he tapped Murry to drive it beginning back in 1999. Since thenhe has had several victories at Daytona—where it was clocked at190 mph—and Watkins Glen. Murray has also driven the car atGoodwood. He had his hands full shepherding Miller’s cars aroundall weekend so he had to leave his race helmet in the trailer. Theother drivers all breathed a sigh of relief.

CSX3011, a comp 427 owned by Lorne Leibel of Ontario, Canadasaw some open track action, proving it’s not just another prettyface. We wish we could say the same for Lorne.

Charlie Lillard brought a couple of cars to the convention. One wasthe 1967 GT500 Super Snake. This ‘66 GT350 vintage racer is hisfavorite track car and he gave it a real workout at MMP.

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Peter Brock is a class act. He and his wife Gayle took turns drivingtheir Superformance Brock Coupe from their home in WashingtonState to Salt Lake City for SAAC-32. The car is #73, and is pow-ered by an all-aluminum 427 cubic-inch Windsor engine pumpingout 568 horsepower. But you’d never know that because it’s a com-fortable road car. As you would expect, he has kept himself busymaking a few small, unobtrusive upgrades that improve the drive-ability. Brock is a dabbler who just can’t keep his hands off the fin-ished product.

Unquestionably one of the best alternatives to an original Cobrahas got to be a Kirkham car. Built to original Cobra specificationsin Poland by fabricators who previously had been making Soviet jetfighters, the cars are so well done that over 125 of them have beenpurchased by Shelby American as the basis for CSX4000 models.Kirkham leases a garage at the track so they had a selection ofrollers that could be purchased on the spot. For how much? Wouldyou believe $49,995? Just add engine, trans and paint.

CSX3134 was a beautifully finished 427 Cobra and Colin Comer,from River Hills, WI exercised a great deal of self restraint bykeeping it stock. No S/C roll bar, hood scoop, side pipes, fuel filleror quick-jacks. It was perfect, and everyone was expecting it to winthe Speciasl Recognition Award, and it probably would have exceptthat Earl Pfeifer drove his 427 Cobra, CSX3282, from Caslo,British Columbia and that’s all it took to get Peter Brock’s vote.

Everybody has seen pictures of one of the original Cobra Dragon-snakes, but at SAAC-32 you could see one of the actual cars—slicks and all.

Less than 30 289 Cobras were built with automatic transmissions.Of course there was one at SAAC-32: CSX2569 owned by JimPetersen. He didn’t have too far to drive because he lives in Sandy,UT—a stone’s throw from Salt Lake City.

History? This MK IV, #J-4, won the 1967 Sebring 12-Hours in thehands of Bruce McLaren and Mario Andretti. It is restored to 1967specs. It is another of the toys in Larry Miller’s toy box.

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A lot of Larry Miller’s cars are parked at the Shelby American Collection in Boulder, CO but he also has a nice-sized museum on thegrounds of MMP. Most of the cars were moved outside for SAAC-32 but not all of them. The Dragonsnake [above, left] isn’t one of the factorycars. It is, in fact, the beginning of Larry’s love affair with the Cobra—the first one he owned and he drag raced it, so he eventually paintedit like one of the factory cars. The AC MK III Coupe [above, right] was built by AC Cars and originally intended to carry a 427 engine but itwas never completed (and never serial-numbered). It exists today in its original state. One of seven GT40 MK III road cars [below, left] wasalso in the museum.

If there is an R-Model or a Shelby Trans-Am notchback at a con-vention you can count on seeing Chuck Cantwell [left] and BernieKretzschmar not far away. They are drawn to these cars like mothsto a flame.

A lot of people stake out the lanes at Tech Inspection early in theconvention so they can get a good, up-close look at some of the carsthey will see out on the track. It’s part curiosity and part pre-con-vention excitement. Each time a car is backed out of a trailer on thefirst day a small crowd takes notice and gravitates towards it.

Everyone wants to be in the open track’s A Group but with safetyin mind, we try to put those with less experience or lower perfor-mance potential cars in the other two groups. Norman Novice, inhis stick-six ‘65 Mustang, would be trouble waiting to happen inthis run group.