For those of you who are interested, you may do some additional reading on the
subject at the following url's:
http://www.saac.com/press_release_112507.htm
http://www.shelbyautos.com/news.asp?id=21
http://www.midamericafordmeet.com/
>From 1982 to 1994, I served on the Board of Directors of the Oklahoma Region
of SAAC. We grew the Mid-America Shelby Meet into the only Ford-Performance
event in the country that rivaled the yearly SAAC National Convention. I can
remember that, for whatever reason, there seemed to be a lot of bad blood
between the Oklahoma Region and SAAC National HQ and it seemed to turn it into
an "us against them" type of deal. Now, with all the legal wranglings going
on between Carroll Shelby and SAAC, I'm not at all surprised that he has
chosen the Mid-America event as Team Shelby's inaugural national convention.
We always had a good working relationship with Carroll and others who were
instrumental in the formation and growth of SAAC over the years.
During my "Shelby Club" years, I had various Tigers, a '67 G.T. 350 and a '65
G.T. 350. I have since sold both Shelbys but still have what I consider to be
a pretty nice Tiger. What I am now a little concerned with in all of this is
how Team Shelby will treat Tiger owners. Well known, of course, is the story
of the Shelby/Tiger connection. Equally well known is that SAAC included
Tigers as a recognized Shelby vehicle in the club because of that connection.
One must admit, however, that SAAC's involvement in the Tiger world over the
years has been very light. No records are kept by them on Tigers (we have
Norm to do that...and I think we'd all agree on what a great job he does...),
while they have closely guarded Shelby and Cobra records over the years. Now,
with SAAC going out of the picture, I think the inclusion of Tigers in with
the other Shelby vehicles at Team Shelby events could be in question, given
their admittedly "thin" ties to Shelby American (comparatively speaking, of
course...). I may be way off here, but I think that anyone out there who is
interested in maintaining any kind of a participatory relationship with a
local or national Shelby organization (read "Team Shelby") might want to
e-mail Team Shelby and inquire as to their intentions when it comes to Tigers.
I would hate to see the history of our cars and their ties with Shelby
American (which we have always traded on in the past) be cut by Shelby's new
organization just because they were not produced at Shelby's facility. I
apologize if it sounds like I'm being a bit of an alarmist here, but I've been
very close to the situation for years and I could see this easily happening.
I'd sure be interested to read another perspective on this...anybody wanna
take the ball and run with it?
Andy Walker
Edmond, OK
B382001600LRXFE
B9006857LRX
_______________________________________________
Tigers@autox.team.net
http://autox.team.net/mailman/listinfo/tigers
|