[DeTomaso] How did they do that, GT-40 Proto-type sold for two million and change, ok no Pantera content

[MikeLDrew at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/16/09 18 19 44, rimov at charter.net writes:


> The Million dollar auction plays again 4/20 on channel 775 HD. Really gotta
> catch it to see some of the cars and of course the 1965 GT-40 prototype with
> 289 with reversed intake/exhaust set up.
> 

That's not a 289--it's a quad-cam 255-inch Indycar engine.

I just realized, that's a repeat of an auction from way back in 2005.   The 
car in question is GT/103, the earliest GT40 still in existence (the first two 
were wrecked).   It had a short and mostly unsuccessful racing career early on 
(initially powered by an aluminum 255 pushrod Indy motor, it failed to finish 
all the races it was entered in 1964, due to gearbox or suspension failures), 
but then it became a Shelby team car.   The aluminum dry-sump 255 was yanked 
and replaced with a Cobra-fied wet sump 289 (saving some 60 pounds in the 
process), and Ken Miles and Lloyd Ruby drove it to the very first GT40 victory, at 
the 24 Hours of Daytona in '65.

It had a short but decent professional career after that, and at the end of 
the season it was sold to a fellow named Bill Wonder, who was a flight engineer 
for American Airlines.   He modified the body to fit wider wheels, repainted 
it from its blue and white Shelby colors into a rather lurid purple, and 
continued to race it in SCCA and later vintage races well into the 1980s.   At the 
time of his selling it in 2004, his was the longest continual ownership of a 
GT40.

At some point long after he stopped racing it competitively, just for giggles 
he'd replaced the 289 with a Ford quad-cam Indycar engine (which had the same 
block architecture as the pushrod Indycar engine it originally raced with, 
but it used gear-driven dual overhead cams instead of pushrods), and configured 
it with the wild Indycar intake/exhaust setup.

He finally sold the car to Symbolic Motor Cars in the San Diego area in 2004, 
and they put it up for sale asking $3,000,000, with no takers.   

After awhile, it was repainted back into Shelby colors and sold at the 
auction in 2005.   It was purchased by incredible Shelby fanatic Larry Miller, who 
just died a few weeks ago, and was buried in a coffin painted Shelby blue with 
white stripes!   Photo here:

http://www.saac.com/images/stories/articles/news/breaking/miller/thumbnails/th
umb_9623.jpg

He was a super-successful car dealer who owned over a hundred dealerships, 
plus the Utah Jazz NBA team, and a whole bunch of Cobras, Shelbys, and GT40s, 
which he kept in two museums, one being at his private racetrack he built 
outside Salt Lake City (Miller Motorsports Park).   I just visited that museum a few 
weeks ago, and although he had three of his GT40s there, this one is part of 
the other museum he was a partner in, the awesome Shelby Museum in Boulder, 
CO.   (I visited that one with POCA member and forum lurker Pete Kittridge back 
in 2003, when one of my C-5 loadmasters fell and broke his leg loading cargo 
at Buckley AFB, outside Denver.   The poor guy wasn't even on his second bounce 
before I had my POCA registry and cell phone in hand....)

Photos of the car (and the crazy, has-no-business-being-in-a-GT40 Indycar 
engine) here:

http://shelbyamericancollection.org/collection/p103.shtml

Mike (As much of a GT40 dork as he is a Pantera dork!)


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