By
Terry Shea
—
Updated
in Magazine, Muscle Cars, Muscle Machines
The Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance has become perhaps the East Coast’s premier showcase of classic cars from all eras and from all over the world–and they are none too shy about embracing muscle cars
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When you start to gather cars on a golf course at a Ritz-Carlton property, finding American performance and race cars is seemingly not always given the priority that coachbuilt classics and European sports cars get, but the organizers of the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance have embraced performance cars since their first show 21 years ago. In the past, they’ve presented awards in NASCAR, Trans-Am, Greenwood Corvette and other categories of interest to our readers. For 2017, the concours included a Camaro class, several race car classes that attracted American entrants and sports car classes that included the likes of cars created with the Shelby name on them–cars that stacked up well against those from Europe whose names ended in vowels.
The Camaro class included both Yenko and other COPO 1969 Camaros, along with GM’s own 1969 SS/RS convertible Indy Pace Car pulled from the company’s Heritage Center. Both first- and second-gen F-bodies were well represented, at least those with the Bowties on their grilles. With Al Unser as the featured honoree for the event, quite a few of his Indy Cars, as well as a 1977 IROC Camaro with his name emblazoned on the doors, formed the Cars of Al Unser Sr. class.
Regular goers to the Amelia Island Concours will not be surprised, and most car fans can appreciate the many other classes that make up the event. The only big surprise this year was a last-minute change, announced the Friday before the event, that saw the main show moved up from Sunday, March 12, to Saturday, March 11, due to a bleak, rainy forecast. Fortunately for organizers, turnout proved excellent, and no entrant had to see his car get soaked.
1987 OLDSMOBILE AEROTECH RESEARCH VEHICLE
At a track now known as the Bridgestone Texas Proving Ground near Fort Stockton, A.J. Foyt drove this Oldsmobile Aerotech Research Vehicle to a closed-course record 257.123 MPH lap in 1987. Built on a single-seat March Champ Car chassis and styled by Ed Welburn, former GM design chief, then at the Oldsmobile design studio, to be extremely aerodynamic, the original Aerotech featured a turbocharged version of Olds’s then-new DOHC Quad 4 engine, producing as much as 1,000 horsepower. In addition to the 257 MPH lap, Foyt also hit 267.88 MPH in the flying mile and was said to have reached a top speed of more than 290 MPH on the straights of the 7.712-mile oval. As a showcase to the groundbreaking Quad 4, Oldsmobile–and GM–garnered years of publicity from the Aerotech.
1966 SHELBY 427 COBRA CSX3131
1963 WATSON INDY ROADSTER
A.J. Watson’s roadsters dominated the Indianapolis 500 from the mid-Fifties through the early Sixties. With star driver Rodger Ward and owner Bob Wilke, the “Three W’s” made the Leader Card racing team a force to be reckoned with. Though Ward was not victorious in 1963, as he had been with wins in 1959 and 1962 in Watson roadsters, he did finish in fourth place with this 255-cu.in., 450-horsepower Offenhauser-powered roadster wearing the number 1 Ward had earned the right to wear on his car with the previous year’s victory. Today, the roadster is owned by Bob and Diane McConnell of Urbana, Ohio.
1966 SHELBY 427 COBRA CSX3131
After Carroll Shelby and crew decided to stuff Ford’s big-block 427-cu.in. engine under the hood of their giant-killing Cobra (since the giants had caught up to the 289 Cobra and were beating it), they ultimately made 343 of the cars for street and competition use. While the majority of 427 Cobras had extra-wide rear fender flares to accommodate the massive rubber required to get its prodigious power to the ground in such a featherweight machine, 33 of them were built with less exaggerated rear fenders and are referred to as “narrow hip” 427 Cobras. This example, CSX3131, is owned by Brendan and Mary Kay Finn of San Anselmo, California.
1977 CHEVROLET CAMARO Z28 IROC
1957 CHEVROLET CORVETTE SUPER SPORT
A styling study for the auto show circuit as a showcase for the debut of Chevrolet’s innovative “Ram Jet” fuel injection system, this 1957 Corvette Super Sport started life as a production car before GM’s Styling department got its hands on it. Assembled to mimic a rally car, the show car featured a pair of cut-down, bubble-type windscreens for the driver and navigator alike. Its pearlescent white paint featured a blue stripe on the top of the body from stem to stern, and there were blue leather seats inside. Brushed aluminum coves with the now legendary crossed flags and “fuel injection” badges completed the look outside. Under the hood, the 283-hp/283-cu.in. small-block V-8 showed off the goods with highly polished components. A close-ratio, three-speed manual got the power to the ground.
1968 CHEVROLET CAMARO BALDWIN-MOTION
Legendary well beyond Chevrolet aficionados, Baldwin-Motion-modified Camaros featured some outrageously powerful drivelines, such as this example, one of four built with the Corvette-only L-88 engine option. Joel Rosen’s Motion Performance tuned every car and the L-88 Camaros were said to produce 600 hp with a promised 11.50-second quarter-mile time–or your money back! Allegedly, Rosen claims to have never had to buy any car back against that claim. Mark Hassett of Ashtabula, Ohio, currently owns this gem.
SPIRIT OF RETT
1977 CHEVROLET CAMARO Z28 IROC
Although not technically part of the Camaro class at Amelia Island, this car was chosen as one of Al Unser’s race cars; the four-time Indy 500 champ was this year’s honoree of the Amelia Island Concours. The second-gen IROC Camaros included chassis work by Banjo Matthews before additional fabrication and final assembly from Penske Racing. Featuring a classic Chevy 350 racing small-block said to produce around 500 hp, these IROC Camaros put power to the ground via a T-10 four-speed transmission. Al Unser won the title in 1978, possibly earning points with this car, which is known to have been driven by Emerson Fittipaldi, Bobby Allison, Johnny Rutherford, Peter Gregg, Cale Yarborough, Tom Sneva and even Al’s brother Bobby Unser. Today, it is owned by David Lawrence Silver of Beverly Hills, California.
1965 FORD GT40 MARK I
Benjamin Levy drove away with the one award we’d like to think we’d pick up, were we owners of his remarkably original, never-raced ’65 Ford GT40: The Driving Enthusiasts Award for “the individual who drives his car regularly.” This particular GT40 was completed in 1967 to “semi-road car specs” by Ford Advanced Vehicles and later used by Shell Oil for a commercial that never aired. Ford did use it in a U.K. ad campaign and then, later again, it was loaned to Ford in 2001 as work began on the development of the modern Ford GT supercar that the company produced in limited numbers during the past decade.
1967 SHELBY G.T. 500 CONVERTIBLE
1969 DODGE CHARGER DAYTONA
When Chrysler Corporation pulled out all of the stops to take on NASCAR’s top teams in 1969, they did it with the Dodge Charger Daytona, the insane be-winged aerodynamic wonder that crushed previous track records with its sleek, wind-cheating profile and monstrous, unrestricted 426 Hemi under the hood. This example carried stock car legend Bobby Isaac to the 1970 Grand National title, a season that saw him take 11 wins, 32 top fives and 38 top 10s out of 47 starts. Master builder Harry Hyde fabricated this car for Nord Krauskopf’s K&K Insurance team. After NASCAR pulled the plug on the winged Hemi cars, Hyde and Isaac ran the car at Bonneville, setting new standards in 28 categories.
1911 MARMON WASP
An unusual sight away from its permanent home base at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Hall of Fame Museum, this aptly named, one-off Marmon Wasp powered Ray Harroun to the checkered flag as the first winner of the Indianapolis 500 in 1911. Not only did Harroun pilot the Wasp to that historic win, but as an engineer at Marmon’s Indianapolis factory, he also helped design and build the Wasp. Harroun also earned the distinction of inventing the rearview mirror for automobiles, with its first application on the Wasp, eliminating Harroun’s need to take on the race with a co-driver on board to spot other racers. The folks from the Motor Speedway Museum drove this incredible machine across the fairways to accept the Chubb Insurance Trophy, this year given to the Most Historically Significant Marmon, which we can hardly argue with.
SPIRIT OF RETT
In recent decades, land-speed record attempts have all been jet powered. In the glory days of the sport, fearless drivers would take their wheel-driven cars to the Bonneville Salt Flats to prove their mettle. In 2010, Charles Nearburg drove his car, the Spirit of Rett (named in honor of Nearburg’s son who had died of cancer at the all-too-young age of 21 in 2005) to an official wheel-driven land speed record of 414.316 MPH. The Spirit of Rett set that speed record–among many others–with power from a single, normally aspirated Reher-Morrison GM 523-cu.in. Pro Stock-spec engine that produced 1,182 horsepower at 8,500 RPM, along with 820-lb.ft. of torque, all on gasoline. A nitrous-oxide-injection system could boost horsepower into the 1,700 range.
1958 CHEVROLET IMPALA FROM AMERICAN GRAFFITI
Can you imagine owning Steve Bolander’s 1958 white Chevrolet Impala from American Graffiti? Well, while you can imagine it, Ray Evernham lives it. The famously successful former NASCAR crew chief and team owner acquired the car about two years ago and then had his team painstakingly restore the machine to as close as possible to how it appeared in the movie. This meant pulling the engine that was in the car when he bought it and replacing it with what the young street racers claimed to have under the hood: a 327. In reality, it seems that car had a 348 when George Lucas and company made the movie in 1972. Evernham then sourced a correct Offenhauser intake with six Stromberg two-barrels on top. Even the dent that The Toad inflicted on the car when he accidentally left the car in reverse for the movie has been preserved by Evernham.
1971 PJ COLT “JOHNNY LIGHTNING INDY SPECIAL”
Al Unser put his stamp on Indianapolis when he won his first 500 in 1970 for the Vel’s Parnelli Jones Racing team behind the wheel of a PJ Colt Ford-powered machine. He returned to repeat the trick in 1971, this time with the number “1” emblazoned on this Johnny Lightning-sponsored PJ Colt. Unser’s repeat win made him the fourth driver up to that point to capture the Indy 500 in consecutive runnings. Team owners Vel Miletetich and Parnelli Jones again turned to famed Indy Car mechanic and crew chief George Bignotti to build the PJ Colt, which was based on a 1969 Lola chassis. Unser led a race-dominating 103 laps with the Colt, including the last 82, finishing with a massive 22.88-second margin of victory.
1967 SHELBY G.T. 500 CONVERTIBLE
Of the serious muscle cars made with the Shelby name, many are rarities, but how about one of one? Though Shelby and Ford had initially planned to produce a convertible version of the all-new big-block G.T. 500 for 1967, those plans were scrapped due to a variety of reasons, leaving this early car, bearing serial number 0139, as the only big-block Shelby Mustang convertible manufactured that year. It also bears the distinction of being just the third big-block Shelby Mustang made and sports a proper dual-quad Ford 428-cu.in. V-8. The car was recently restored to factory specifications, including a single-stage Candy Apple Red refinish, and currently resides in the Styles Collection in Delray Beach, Florida.
1959 CHEVROLET STINGRAY RACER
A true piece of General Motors history from a time when GM’s chief designer and the head of the Corvette program could surreptitiously build a custom race car while such activities were banned at the boardroom level. This Stingray Racer made the field not in any historical race car class, but as a member of the Movie Cars class, as it appeared with “The King” himself at the wheel: Elvis Presley drove the car in that cinematic masterpiece Clam Bake. With GM forbidding race activity, new design chief Bill Mitchell privately commissioned this Stingray–neither the Corvette nor Chevrolet names appeared on it–and enlisted Zora Arkus-Duntov to help with the mechanical bits, the latter sourcing a stout 315-hp version of Chevrolet’s vaunted 283-cu.in. fuel-injected small-block. The racer was retired at the end of the 1960 season, after having been entered in SCCA events. Mitchell had a second seat and a windshield added before he drove it on the street himself.
1967 CHEVROLET CAMARO Z-28
Patrick Ryan of Asheville, North Carolina, brought out one of the earliest and most distinctive Penske race cars of all time: this 1967 Camaro Z/28 that featured the now legendary blue and yellow Sunoco livery. Roger Penske and his top driver, Mark Donohue, had an ace up their sleeve with the Trans-Am Camaro: They had the car’s body panels acid dipped for lightness, shaving weight off Chevy’s competition pony car. They eventually got busted and SCCA banned the car, but Penske and Donohue got the last laugh as they surreptitiously flouted the scrutineers and entered the car in the 1968 Sebring 12 Hours, which included a Trans-Am class at the time. The lightweight Z/28 dominated its class, qualifying 1.4 second faster than the competition from the Shelby team’s Mustangs. Found in a barn in 1985, restored in 1987 and vintage raced by Ryan since, this car continues to get regularly exercised at speed.
