Named after a sleepy town just 17 miles north of the Mexican border, where Carroll Shelby, Bill Neale, and crew would spend their downtime drinking, shooting guns, and blasting Shelby cars on the vast expanses of open highway, the Shelby Terlingua Mustang represents a slap in the face to what society expects a muscle car to be. So says Shelby President Amy Boylan, who spent some time with me yesterday talking about the history of this wonderful town and the inspiration for their latest creation. I wouldn’t want to mis-quote her, so I will simply paraphrase:

Amy said that Carroll Shelby and crew spent long hours for weeks on end building race cars for Ford, designing new components, testing, and racing, and Terlingua was a place where he could get away from everything and everyone. He bought 120,000 acres, built a small ranch on it, and when he wasn’t racing, would head down to Terlingua and break all the rules. Continue reading…

Continue reading "Driving the Shelby Terlingua" »

Driving 1800 miles in two days (while easily doable given a proper car, a case of Red Bull, and a company gas card) can still beat the crap out of you. That’s why our arrival at the Lajitas Resort just outside Terlingua, TX was a welcome break from the road. The parking lot was filled with dozens of cars from Shelby’s entire recent model range including the relatively mild Shelby GT, to the positively insane  600+ horsepower GT500 Super Snake. As nice as our glass roof Mustang was, it was just too sedate given the company we were in.

I handed off our keys to Jim Owens, VP of Marketing for Shelby Autos, and in turn was handed a new set of keys, this time to a posh hotel room by the pool. Though the Lajitas Resort is about twenty miles from anything, we had come a long way since the Super 8 motel. I showered and headed down to dinner. At the buffet-style dinner, I shook hands with all the major players at Shelby Autos, Amy Boylan, President, Gary Patterson, design engineer extraordinaire and test driver, and Carroll Shelby himself. As it turns out, they were pleased with the promotional work we did for them surrounding the GT500KR launch and as such, greeted us with great enthusiasm. It was nice to see a friendly face after our Texas dive-bar experiences.

Continue reading…

Continue reading "Lajitas Resort" »

Day two on the road to Terlingua took us through the rolling hills of Oklahoma, stopping on the way to film windy back road sequences for our internet TV show, Garage419. There was no shortage of random dirtroads to practice drifting the Mustang, which proved to be very easy and controlled with traction control turned off. Nine hours, 700 miles, and one speeding ticket later (92 in a 75) we arrive in Wichita  Falls, Texas, the first sign of actual civilization once across the Texas border. We park the car at the hotel and proceed to the nearest watering hole, which is where our story turns interesting.

Continue reading "Heading South in a Glass Roof Mustang GT, Part Two" »

Sometimes I amaze myself with how stupid I can be. After a long night of drinking in Las Vegas, I woke up in my hotel room just in time to see Northwest Airlines flight 544 fly past me overhead. Realizing that maybe I should have set an alarm clock before starting drinking, I immediately panic, throw my stuff in my bags as quickly as possible, and book it to the airport, while trying to book the next available flight to Detroit. And what was in Detroit that was so important? Actually, its what’s in Texas that’s really important. By now, you’re probably very confused, so let me explain:

Several weeks ago I was invited by Shelby Autos to participate in the Shelby Bullrun Rally, starting in Terlingua, TX. Terlingua has a special significance for Shelby fans, as that’s where Carrol and crew used to street race in the sixties. This rally honors the spirit of those days, and as such, I needed an appropriate vehicle to attend. Ford SVT happily provided me with a spanking new, zero miles Glass Roof Mustang GT for the event, except I had to pick up the car in Detroit, some 1750 miles from Terlingua, which is in West Texas, just north of the Mexican border. The road trip is one of the greatest American pastimes, second only to Baseball (which I hate) and NASCAR (which I hate even more). So it’s at the top of my personal pastime list. Continue reading…

Continue reading "Heading South in a Glass Roof Mustang GT" »

When Lotus took the cladding off of its Eagle project, I was a little underwhelmed—and I’m hardly alone in that opinion. Plenty of folks who piped in on my original post agreed that the company missed the mark, and even on Lotus Talk, the car has gotten mixed reviews. So I was a little curious to see what the guys from Garage 419 thought about the new British 2+2. Check out the video below.