A couple of pages back, Jamo mentioned a thread that Evan started on the Team Shelby site. I went there to read it and a few things quickly became very apparent.
First off as Jamo said no one knew what type of car Evan was talking about until pictures were posted, they had no idea about the importance of the letters
CSX. Secondly, almost immediately some of the regulars there referred to Evan's car as a replica
and Jamo managed to give Evan a mild kick in the rear. Fourthly, Evan was very polite and did not try to push the "REAL" aspect of his car. Fifthly, the people on that site seem to like to refer to the man as "Carroll", not the old man or old phart, the Texas chicken farmer, CS, etc, as you would often see here.
Most importantly however, it quickly became obvious that the traditional Shelby fans (fans of Cobras, GT-350s, GT-500s, etc) are a completely different group compared to the fans of the new Shelby Mustangs. Our love, our passion, our obsession, is with the cars (and the replicas of the cars) that were built in the 60's. The new group doesn't know, and couldn't care less, that Shelby produced anything other than a souped up version of the new Mustang. The two groups appear to have very little in common IMHO, except that they both love cars tied to a man called Carroll Shelby.
It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense for Shelby to go after SAAC when it is obvious that their target market is another market segment all together. It would seem to make sense for Shelby to allow SAAC to continue to do their thing with Shelby automobiles made before 1996 (or some other specific date) and for Team Shelby to then concentrate on the newer cars. Instead it appears that Shelby doesn't want anyone else playing in the sandbox, or even being allowed to have their own sandbox in which to play.
This is all becoming very sad.
By the way, can someone tell me what the difference is between a 2008 Mustang GT and a 2008 Shelby Mustang? Is this just cosmetic (stripes & stickers), or are there significant mechanical differences? Do they all come out of a Ford plant or do they go to Shelby for the upgrades like back in the 60s?
Wayne