[lamaluv]

Well we have finally got to what this trip was all about. We pulled into Altoona, IA at 2:30 pm Friday. It was forcast to rain on Saturday so I called Gail Rhoten and asked if we could come by Friday.


We pulled into Gail's farm and met in his shop to look over the hundreds of pictures he had of the Cobra and swap stories about the car. He also had some pretty nice Ford muscle cars.









This is a picture of the car just after Gail bought it from David Page in 1991 before the meatballs and race stripe.



This is a younger Gail and Carrol Shelby at a SAAC convention and Carrol signed the air cleaner on ERA EXP002. Gail tells me that Carrol had not started charging for his signature at that time. We also met a friend of Gail's, Doug Dire who is building a Shelby 4000 series car that he is just about finished with. He said that seeing my car made him want to get his car finished right now. It was really great meeting Gail and talking about the car. Gail doesn't have any children and he considers his cars to be "his kids". He told me it was great to have one of his kids come home for a visit.