02-27-06: Anything can happen in Las Vegas. In our weekend at the Shelby American Automobile Club - SAAC Does Vegas X event, we found that the best place to get lucky is with this gang.

Friday, the opening day of the event started with open track at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The road course is laid out with a good number of flat straights allowing some high speeds. Those high speeds made for some of autodom’s most sacred sounds - Shelbys blasting by at 120 mph! Whooooh it makes me shiver just typing it! While the weekend warriors were at it, a road rallye for non-track participants took the group to the Valley of Fire and back in time to watch the remaining half of open track sessions.

That night the opening dinner banquet was the forum for Shelby American’s new President of Operations, Amy Boylan to talk about the company’s state of affairs. She was followed by Carroll Shelby who spoke in his matter-of-fact style about where the company has been where they are going. On the past issues of getting cars built on time and the organization’s personnel changes he stated, “All the crap is gone. We are going to start getting cars delivered on time or we’re going to shut the damned doors”. You gotta love Carroll’s straight approach. There were a few presentations including the keys and title of Carroll Shelby’s CSX 1000 Cobra to Gary Goudie of Knoxville, Illinois, the winner of the Shelby CSX raffle drawing.

On Saturday the hits kept coming with more open track sessions and another road rallye! We followed along to the most stunning place in Nevada, the Red Rock Valley. The poker run rallye was about a 2 hour drive through the mountain roads and scenic route that proved a great opportunity for photos.

Back at the track, we were able to spend some time with participants and vendors to see what was new for 2006. Shelby Automobiles had a cavalcade of cars on display ranging from the new CSX Cobras, Shelby Mustang Continuation Series cars as well as their SV6 and West Coast Custom models. We had a chance to talk to a number of Shelby owners about their take on the “Continuation Cars” where old Mustangs are being rebuilt into “genuine” Shelby Mustangs complete with serial numbers and Shelby Registry status. Some were happy that a real Shelby Mustang was being offered again that they could afford while others felt that the cars dilute the value of the real vintage cars. Only time will tell.